Liam Neeson’s racist revenge confession shocked journalist
A journalist who interviewed Liam Neeson was shocked he confessed to wanting to kill a black man as twisted revenge for the rape of friend.
The 66-year-old star was promoting his new movie Cold Pursuit at a press junket where he spoke to The Independent’s Clemence Michallon and described why he identified with his character, a snowplow driver out to avenge the death of his son.
Liam said he was ashamed his response to a female friend telling him she’d been raped by a black man was to wander the streets brandishing a cosh looking for a “black bastard” who would fight him so he could kill him.
Speaking on U.K. breakfast TV show Good Morning Britain, Clemence said she had expected the 20-minute interview to be about “fluff” around the film and that she was taken aback by the “shocking” nature of the star’s revelations.
“The gravity of what he was saying immediately struck me,” she told hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid. “It was a matter of playing that tape over and over again to myself and going back to his team, trying to get more comments, which they’ve declined that opportunity.”
In an appearance on Good Morning America Tuesday, Neeson said he’s not racist and that his comments were meant to illustrate that violence breeds violence and bigotry breeds bigotry.
Neeson said he had asked about the race of the attacker, along with other descriptive characteristics.
The actor said we need to talk about these things because bigotry and racism exist.
Michallon said Neeson showed he was aware of the explosive nature of his comments and even joked he would come after her like his CIA agent character in the Taken films.
“As the interview was wrapping up, he asked me if I was going to use that story, if I would be very careful,” Michallon recalled. “I said yes, because I’m always very careful, especially when I’m doing my work as a journalist. Then he sort of switched to his actor voice, and there’s a famous phone scene in Taken, where his character is talking to the people who have kidnapped his daughter, and he said: ‘I have a very specific set of skills and I will find you and I will kill you.’ It was, in his mind, clearly a joke. Whether or not that was appropriate remains to be determined. But he said, ‘I will find you’. He said that to me in the same voice.”
Although the culture scribe was stunned by an episode Liam himself described as “horrible” and awful” she refused to be drawn on whether they should be career ending, as outraged fans have suggested on social media.
– with files from The Associated Press
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