Earlier this week, it was announced that actor Joseph Fiennes would be portraying the late Michael Jackson in a TV movie "Elizabeth, Michael, and Marlon," and it's safe to say that not everyone was excited about the news, including the late pop singer's family.
The movie is expected to be a comedy based on a 2001 Vanity Fair article about Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando escaping from New York following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.
However, Jackson's nephew, TJ Jackson, said that basing a comedy movie around the his uncle and the events of 9/11 is "offensive to him and his family." TJ claimed that a road trip between the three artist never happened and that like everyone else, his uncle was "distraught, saddened and trying to process what had just happened."
"Following the events of 9/11, my uncle, Michael, stayed with a family friend in New Jersey for a week before flying back," TJ Jackson said in a statement obtained by Entertainment Tonight. "The rest of our family immediately took buses back to Los Angeles as planes were grounded. There was no road trip with Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando."
While trying to defend his late uncle, TJ chose not to comment on the casting controversy surround the movie.
Social media was unhappy after learning that a white actor would be playing the King of Pop. "A White Actor will play MJ. Because we aren't whitewashed enough in Hollywood, apparently," read a tweet posted on BET's Twitter page Wednesday.
Fiennes defended his role in the film, telling ET, "I'm a white, middle-class guy from London. I'm as shocked as you may be." The 45-year-old actor also called "Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon" an "endearing" and "light comedy."
"It's kind of off the wall, but the writing is a delight, and the kind of interaction between the three of them is funny and also full of pathos," he said. "It's people who are so iconic, but also can be detached. You know, you can get detached from society. So it's examining that kind of wonderful and mad detachment."
The TV movie will also star Stockard Channing as Taylor and Brian Cox as Brando.
