Firebrand Fox goes to war with Oscar star Mendes
EVEN before the dust has settled on his combative Question Time appearance, Laurence Fox has lined up another, rather bigger target.
For this time he’s taking aim not at an ethnicity lecturer from a provincial university, but Oscar-winner Sir Sam Mendes and, in particular, the film director’s World War I epic, 1917, which has been nominated for ten Oscars — including Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture.
Despite these plaudits, Fox, 41, questions the credibility of the film’s storyline and what he describes as the ‘incongruous’ inclusion of a Sikh soldier, Sepoy Jondalar, played by Nabhaan Rizwan, in the ranks of British forces.
This, says Fox, causes ‘a very heightened awareness of the colour of someone’s skin’ because of ‘the oddness of the casting’.
Speaking on writer James Delingpole’s podcast, Fox, until recently best known as the star of ITV drama Lewis, adds: ‘It’s like, “There were Sikhs fighting in this war” . . . OK, you’re now diverting me away from what the story is. There is something institutionally racist about forcing diversity on people in that way.’ Fox emphasises that his observations are no reflection on the quality of Rizwan’s performance. ‘He’s great in it,’ he says, before arguing that having a Sikh appear in the British Army ‘did sort of flick me out of what is essentially a one-shot film [because] it’s just incongruous with the story’. Sikhs fought with outstanding bravery in their own regiments, rather than in British ones, in many of World War I’s most horrific battles, including Ypres and the Somme. Sir Sam Mendes’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment. Asked if he would be offered ‘ more, better roles’ if he espoused ‘different views’, Fox agrees that is the case, but adds: ‘ What’s the point? You don’t want to go into a work environment and have someone thought- police you.’