WTF: Joseph Fiennes Cast as Michael Jackson in Half-Hour Road Trip Comedy

With the current boycott of the Oscars due to its lack of racial diversity in nominees, it's just a dumb idea to cast white actor Joseph Fiennes to play black musician Michael Jackson; even if it's for comedy. While Jackson has been played by white actors Fred Armisen and Amy Poehler on SNL in the past, due to a combination of vitiligo and cosmetic surgeries and skin procedures to make Jackson look more like Peter Pan, even after those procedures he was still black and was been played black actors Tim Meadows, Chris Rock, and Dean Edwards on SNL; so it's entirely possible  and appropriate to still have a black actor play Jackson.

What makes this project even weirder is that it's about a reported road trip taken by Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando shortly after 9/11 from New York to Ohio; the visual of all three of them in one car is bizarre. According to Vanity Fair it happened, but there is some dispute about whether it was real or not.

Fiennes on the yet to be named movie project:

"I got the script the other day. It’s a challenge. It’s a comedy. It doesn’t poke mean fun, but it’s a story, possibly urban legend, whereby Michael, Marlon Brando, and Liz Taylor were all together the day before 9/11 doing a concert. Airspace was shut down and they couldn’t get out and Michael had the bright idea to go to hire a car and drive.

"It’s a fun, lighthearted tongue-in-cheek road trip of what celebrity of that kind is like. But also it’s rather beautiful and poignant about their relationships as well."

I'm not even sure how to process the layers of weird and the racial quandaries this whole thing stirs up. Right now at this moment, it feels like they've crossed a line, when in the past, few people batted an eye. What are your thoughts?

Source: Huffington Post