Joseph Fiennes says his Michael Jackson movie role is ‘tongue-in-cheek’

For obvious reasons, Joseph Fiennes’ casting as Michael Jackson in a British TV movie raised a lot of eyebrows. After the news broke, Fiennes tried to explain that the movie isn’t all that serious.

As previously reported, the strange film will be about an alleged road trip the King of Pop took with Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando after air traffic was stopped on 9/11. The story was published by Vanity Fair in June 2011.

Brian Cox (Braveheart, War and Peace) was cast to play Brando in the made-for-TV movie and Stockard Channing (Grease, The Good Wife) is Elizabeth Taylor.

In an interview with ET Canada, Fiennes insisted that the movie is lighthearted, perhaps in some effort to get us to not take it seriously. Fiennes also made it sound like the film was already made.

“It’s a tongue-in-cheek, fun, lighthearted look at three wonderful characters that we know - Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando - and they go on a road trip together,” Fiennes said. “Some say it’s an urban legend and our story basically says that, if it happened, maybe it happened like this.”

It’s not clear when the movie is supposed to air, but it’s listed on IMDb as Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon. It was directed by Ben Palmer (The Inbetweeners).