Sky Arts will screen the one-off comedy, co-starring Stockard Channing as Elizabeth Taylor and Brian Cox as Marlon Brando, about the trio’s supposed road trip west from New York after the 9/11 terror attacks 
 
 September 2001 was allegedly witness to one of the strangest road trips in history: Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando driving from New York to Ohio in an attempt to get home following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 
 
 The saga is now being dramatised in a one-off comedy special for Sky Arts, called Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon, starring Joseph Fiennes as Jackson, Stockard Channing as Taylor and Brian Cox as Brando. 
 
 Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson shows race problems before Oscars row Read more 
 
 Details of the improbable trip emerged in 2011 when it was reported in Vanity Fair. The story goes that Jackson invited the pair to his concert at Madison Square Garden. Following the 9/11 attacks, when air travel to and from New York was cancelled, the trio rented a car and began their quest back to California. “They actually got as far as Ohio – all three of them, in a car they drove themselves,” claimed a former employee of Jackson. Brando apparently insisted on stopping off at various fast food restaurants en route. 
 
 However, it may be a shaggy-dog story. One of Taylor’s assistants told Vanity Fair that the actor stayed behind in New York, visiting Ground Zero and praying in a church. 
 
 Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Marlon Brando 'fled 9/11 in hire car' Read more 
 
 After being originally announced in December, Fiennes has now described the script as “a challenge”, adding: “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.” 
 
 The half-hour comedy will be written by Neil Forsyth, who wrote – as alter ego Bob Servant – Delete This at Your Peril, a collection of humorous email conversations with would-be con artists and spammers. 
 
 It is also the first fruit of a new production company set up by The Royle Family and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps actor Ralf Little. ||||| Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 If we’re to believe Elizabeth Taylor’s former assistant Sam Kashner, in the days immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, Taylor, Michael Jackson, and Marlon Brando took a road trip together in an attempt to flee New York City. The story is of dubious nature even when you consider the bizarre tics and lifestyles of the three major players involved, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining to imagine, as Zadie Smith did in a humorous short fiction story for the New Yorker last year. And so it’s only natural that someone would want to recreate this urban legend for the screen. 
 
 Aisha Harris Aisha Harris is a Slate culture writer and host of the Slate podcast Represent. 
 
 Enter Scottish journalist Neil Forsyth, who has written the untitled half-hour TV special adaptation, and which has now announced its main stars: Stockard Channing as Taylor, Brian Cox as Brando, and … Joseph Fiennes as the King of Pop???* 
 
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 Ah, yes—Fiennes, a white English actor probably best known for playing Shakespeare, in love, is portraying the most iconic black American musician in the world. The announcement is certainly deserving of a double take, but if you think about it, this issue was bound to come up sooner or later: In any serious film involving a depiction of Jackson spanning several decades (or just covering his late-’80s period from Bad on), the question of whether you cast a black or white actor (or both) to play the part seems like a legitimate thing to ponder. After all, Jackson himself embraced his ever-morphing physical appearance both in life and in his music videos, and so taking creative liberties for a movie about him shouldn’t seem totally out of line, right? 
 
 The answer to that question, dear casting director, should be obvious: Nope, you don’t cast a white actor to play Michael Jackson—you get a black guy to play him, because MJ was black even when he was “white.” Just because our relationship and understanding of him evolved as his persona became more feminine and his skin tone more pale, that doesn’t mean he was a fundamentally different person—he was still the same guy who donned a wildly amazing ’fro on the cover of Off the Wall, the same dynamic superstar who had to fight to get his music videos played on MTV in the early ’80s because they were reluctant to play black artists at the time. Even long after he had made his physical transformation and black people accused him of racial self-hatred, he was still a guy who spoke unabashedly about how poorly the music industry has treated black artists in comparison to white ones. And even more obviously, you don’t cast a white actor to play Michael Jackson, because you’ve learned from the years of Hollywood whitewashing leading all the way up to last year, when Emma Stone was cast as an Asian character in Aloha. 
 
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 Nope, it’s still a terrible idea. Find the right black actor who can perfectly capture all of Jackson’s complexities—his femininity, his weirdness, his naiveté, and yes, his black cultural upbringing—and invest in better makeup and prosthetics than whoever was in charge of that terrible Man in the Mirror movie. Or cast a light-skinned black actor in the role. But casting a white actor in the role is uninspired, an easy way to ignore just how complicated he really was. And if there’s anything Jackson taught us, it’s that nothing is so simple as black or white. ||||| The casting of white British actor Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson in an upcoming U.K. film has left fans of the late King of Pop in a state of bewilderment and shock, with many airing their grievances on social media. Fiennes will co-star as Jackson in a movie titled Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon set to premiere later this year. The film is a comedic retelling of a fabled story involving the King of Pop, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando on a road trip from New York City to Los Angeles on Sept. 11, 2001. Acclaimed actors Stockard Channing and Brian Cox as Taylor and Brando, respectively, are so pitch-perfectly cast that neither requires much if any further explanation. But Fiennes as Jackson is a whole different story altogether. 
 
 Fiennes spoke about the bizarre project and acknowledged that playing the megastar Jackson would be “a challenge.” The Shakespeare In Love actor also discussed the tone of this bizarre comedy based on a disputed Vanity Fair story about the trio of legends who, unable to secure a flight out of New York on the day of the 9/11 attacks, took their show on the road. 
 
 “I got the script the other day,” Fiennes explained to WENN. “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. 
 
 “So the three of them got in a car and drove 500 miles to Los Angeles. It took them a while because they had to stop at a lot of Burger Kings for Marlon, but they got out!” 
 
 Fiennes didn’t say much, however, to address the 500-pound elephant (no, not Brando) in the room: Why was a white actor cast to play an African American entertainer? Even with Jackson’s specific physical attributes at that point in his life—he suffered from vitiligo, which causes the skin to lose its pigment—it’s not beyond reason to consider that there are qualified black actors out there that could convincingly portray Michael Jackson. One has to wonder if there is all that much consideration given to getting this “right” at all, especially when considering these industries’ inherent preference for white faces to sell. 
 
 Of course, this latest bit of questionable casting comes in the midst of a highly visible dialogue on race in mainstream cinema. The lack of diversity among this year’s Academy Award nominees has led to a revamp of the voting system and of the Academy itself, as well as a much larger conversation on opportunities in front of and behind the camera throughout the many tiers of Hollywood. 
 
 While Brits Charlotte Rampling and Michael Caine shrugged off the #OscarsSoWhite campaign (Rampling even said it was “racist against whites”), U.K. star Idris Elba recently spoke to the Houses of Parliament regarding the lack of varied opportunities for non-white actors in British entertainment and how it affected him both as a black fan and as a black actor. 
 
 “Because I never saw myself on TV, I stopped watching TV,” he said. “Instead I decided to just go out and become TV. 
 
 “There wasn’t enough imagination in the industry for me to be seen as a lead,” Elba said. “When you don’t reflect the real world, too much talent gets trashed. Thrown on the scrapheap. Talent is everywhere, opportunity isn’t. And talent can’t reach opportunity.” 
 
 Elba also shared his belief that Hollywood was far ahead of the U.K. regarding opportunities for people of color. 
 
 “I went to America because I was running out of parts,” he said. “The USA has the most famous diversity policy of all: the American Dream. I want that British dream.” 
 
 If Hollywood is the standard-bearer for opportunity, then we should all be deeply concerned about the state of diversity in the film industry. That isn’t intended to be glib, but to convey the gravity of the problem; how deeply we must go to uproot and rectify it. There is both a casual ambivalence and quiet hostility towards broadening the range of opportunities for non-white stars to truly thrive in the mainstream, and things like casting a white man to play Michael Jackson only serve as further proof that there are filmmakers who are deeply determined to tune out the cultural conversation. 
 
 Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason. 
 
 British actor and Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam was announced as the lead in the upcoming American Drug Lord, the story of Mexican-American Edgar Valdez Villarreal, who went from Texas high school football star to brutal cartel leader known as “La Barbie.” Villareal’s nickname was attributed to the fact that he had blue eyes and a fair complexion, “like a Ken doll.” 
 
 “It seems not well thought-through to be upset over casting an excellent actor to act as a character with whom he seems to share many physical resemblances,” argued producer Vincent Newman. “I suppose those offended by this would have disqualified Al Pacino from acting as Tony Montana or James Caan as Sonny Corleone. It’s acting after all, and the merit of the choice will be assessed as it is with all casting choices, on the quality and believability of his performance.” 
 
 Pacino’s famously over-the-top faux Cubano Scarface shtick isn’t exactly the best performance to cite as far as white actors tackling “ethnic” characters, but when there is already evidence of clear racial bias in which actors are even considered for roles in the first place, it should be clear why casting Fiennes as the famously pale Jackson or Hunnam as La Barbie raises questions. How many actually black or Latino actors had the opportunity to land these roles? How many producers already know from the first reading of the script that they would prefer to cast white guys who look like non-white guys as opposed to proper black/Latino leads? 
 
 These are questions that recognize how racial biases in casting, green-lighting, and marketing films are as detrimental as flagrant racist contempt. And long after awards season has passed, we’ll be left to answer these questions if we are committed to addressing the disparities that lead to white guys deciding who and what goes on screen. Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson is a symptom of a deeper sickness that moviemakers are only now beginning to treat. This movie won’t be the final say on this subject, but as it happens, it adds fuel to a very necessary conversation. Here’s hoping major film studios in both America and Britain pay closer attention to that conversation and do more than pay lip service to those initiating it. 
 
 And here’s hoping we don’t get a Ralph Fiennes cameo as Jermaine. ||||| Twitter Joseph Fiennes; Michael Jackson 
 
 This news is not coming from The Onion. I repeat: This is really happening. A white man has been cast to play Michael Jackson in Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon, a British TV movie about three celebrities escaping from New York City during 9/11. 
 
 The urban legend concerning Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando during 9/11 goes a little something this: Jackson was in town for his huge Madison Square Garden concert, but once chaos broke out, and since air travel was shut down after the twin towers collapsed, Brando, Jackson and Taylor got a rental car and drove west, but only got as far as Ohio. The story has been disputed by Taylor’s former assistant, but I guess it’ll make for an interesting story to tell. 
 
 But who cares about the story, right? Why in the world is a white man playing Michael Jackson? Did they also cast a black man as Marlon Brando? Or an Asian woman as Elizabeth Taylor? Of course not. Brian Cox will play Brando and Stockard Channing will play Taylor, according to The Guardian. 
 
 Fiennes said the script was “a challenge,” adding: “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.” 
 
 A challenge, you say? Yeah, I can see how difficult it would be as a white man to play the black King of Pop. And yes, let’s not be like fourth-graders and bring up Jackson’s skin color. 
 
 If Joseph Fiennes is going to play Michael Jackson, it's only fair that Gwyneth Paltrow should play Macaulay Culkin — Richard Lawson (@rilaws) January 27, 2016 
 
 Twitter: "Joseph Fiennes to play Michael Jackson" Me: pic.twitter.com/o20MuCzvYX — Eric Haywood (@EricHaywood) January 27, 2016 
 
 wait is Joseph Fiennes really playing Michael Jackson or do I need to dial way back on the DayQuil — Pixie Casey (@pixie_casey) January 26, 2016 
 
 Like... this is so ridiculous that it's ALMOST funny. White people are now trolling us. Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson, dude. — Awesomely Luvvie (@Luvvie) January 26, 2016 ||||| Joseph Fiennes has confirmed he’s the unlikely choice to play Michael Jackson in a new road trip comedy. 
 
 The Shakespeare in Love star will tackle the King of Pop in a new movie, about an imagined cross-country trip he took with Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor from New York to Los Angeles following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Big Apple. 
 
 Myth has it that Jackson was so determined to get home following a tribute concert in New York, he hired a car to take him and his superstar friends back to California after all flights in and out of New York were grounded following the atrocities. 
 
 Fiennes tells WENN he has landed the Jackson role, opposite fellow Brit Brian Cox as Brando and Grease star Stockard Channing as Liz Taylor. 
 
 “I got the script the other day,” he explains. “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. 
 
 “So the three of them got in a car and drove 500 miles to Los Angeles. It took them a while because they had to stop at a lot of Burger Kings for Marlon; but they got out! 
 
 “It’s a lovely thing about Michael’s relationship with Liz Taylor and Marlon Brando. It’s a fun, light-hearted 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.”
– In a new movie about Michael Jackson, the King of Pop will be played by ... a white British guy. Joseph Fiennes is set to play Jackson in Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon, a film that follows Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor (played by Stockard Channing), and Marlon Brando (played by Brian Cox) as they attempt a road trip from New York to California. The trip supposedly really happened, after Jackson invited Taylor and Brando to his concert at Madison Square Garden and then the 9/11 attacks kept them from being able to fly back home. Legend has it they made it to Ohio, although some insist the story isn't true, the Guardian reports. But, true or not, it will be immortalized on film with Fiennes playing a black man, a fact that has many shaking their heads: The Daily Beast calls the casting "a symptom of Hollywood's deep-seated race problem." Writes Stereo Williams, "Even ... with Jackson's specific physical attributes at that point in his life—he suffered from vitiligo, which causes the skin to lose its pigment—it's not beyond reason to consider that there are qualified black actors out there that could convincingly portray Michael Jackson." At Slate, Aisha Harris agrees—despite his shifting looks and persona, Jackson was still a black man. "Find the right black actor who can perfectly capture all of Jackson's complexities—his femininity, his weirdness, his naivete, and yes, his black cultural upbringing—and invest in better makeup and prosthetics than whoever was in charge of that terrible Man in the Mirror movie. Or cast a light-skinned black actor in the role." Fiennes recently called the script "a challenge," and at The Root, Yesha Callahan writes, "Yeah, I can see how difficult it would be as a white man to play the black King of Pop." BuzzFeed has rounded up a range of Twitter reactions to the news.