Joseph Fiennes, brother of Ralph Fiennes, has landed an unexpected role. The Shakespeare in Love actor has been cast as Michael Jackson in a Sky Arts production of one of the world’s strangest road trips.
Legend has it that after on 9/11, as the towers were burning, Michael Jackson was rallying his entourage and best friends Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando out of New York City in a desperate bid for safety. With all airports closed, MJ couldn’t even get clearance for a private jet to take his crew out of New York and back to LA. So, he moved everyone to a safe spot in New Jersey, and then he took the ultimate road trip with Liz Taylor calling shotgun and Brando bringing up the rear. Supposedly.
The story is probably too good to be true, which is why it stings to hear a former assistant of Elizabeth Taylor’s tell Vanity Fair that the entire feel-good tale is bunk:
“Elizabeth stayed behind,” he insists, “where she went to a church to pray, and she went to an armory where people were who couldn’t get home or who’d stayed behind to look for the missing. She also went down to Ground Zero, where she met with first responders. Eventually, the airports opened and she flew home.”
Still, when you can put Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando in a car heading back to Hollywood with the black cloud of 9/11 chasing them, you don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. This is utterly fascinating.
(Via The Guardian)
