Liam fights to recover after sharing racist row
New York: After sparking a scandal by recalling a racist episode from his distant past, actor Liam Neeson is now battling to save his career — a task experts predict will be difficult but not impossible.
More than 40 years ago, Neeson recently told the Independent of London, he was enraged to learn of a friend’s rape by a man she said was black.
In a candid interview he recounted how he spent days roaming city streets, a bludgeon in hand, looking for a “black bastard” he could “kill.”
His unvarnished words sent shockwaves across the media landscape, and while he went on to apologise — insisting he was “not racist” — far from everyone was satisfied.
For the black director Ava DuVernay, whose films Selma and 13th explored episodes in America’s racially fraught history, Neeson symbolises a sort of “white privilege” that will tolerate actions that would not be accepted from a black man.
“Imagine if this was Will Smith,” she tweeted. In the flareup of reaction on social media, some posters demanded that Neeson’s scenes in the upcoming film Men in Black: International be reshot with another actor. “Don’t be surprised if someone doesn’t want to work with you,” actress Regina King told the Independent.
“Bad actions tend to be more damaging than bad words,” said Joseph Cabosky, a University of North Carolina professor who specialises in public relations.
“Neeson’s is a bit of a unique case because it wasn’t just what he said,i.E. An offensive opinion, but that what he said was attached to an actual be h avior: his sharing of a time when he thought of actual violent behavior toward a black male.”
But several crisis management specialists said the television interview Neeson gave the day after the controversy erupted was, at least, a good start. “In a world where media is instant, you need to move quicker than ever before. Today’s world where social media is omnipresent, you have to be very, very, very hyper- conscious,” said Ronn Torossian.
“He needs to continue to apologise and outright say that he made a mistake, rather than trying to defend his words or bring in more context. That’s the only way to save his image,” Torossian said. Actions speak louder than words,” said Steve Jaffe of Jaffe & Company, adding that Neeson needed to “be an active participant” in dialogue about racism.