“I think people are absolutely right to be upset,” Fiennes said. “And it was a wrong decision. Absolutely. And I’m one part of that — there are producers, broadcasters, writers, directors, all involved in these decisions. But obviously if I’m upfront, I have become the voice for other people. I would love them to be around the table as well to talk about it. But you know, it came at a time where there was a movement and a shift and that was good, and it was, you know, a bad call. A bad mistake.”
Amid the controversy, Jackson’s daughter, Paris Jackson, tweeted about the episode: “It honestly makes me want to vomit.”
“I asked the broadcaster to pull it,” Fiennes now told The Observer. “There were some pretty hefty discussions, but ultimately people made the right choice.”
Elsewhere in his Observer interview, Fiennes revealed he rejected a five-picture deal from Miramax after he was bullied by the studio’s founder Harvey Weinstein. The disgraced film producer and convicted rapist demanded Fiennes accept the deal or risk having his career derailed by Weinstein.
“It was a bullying tactic that didn’t sit well,” Fiennes said. “The way he explained it was a shock to me. But I suddenly sat in the room very present, and happy and strong in myself to say, you know what, I’m not beholden to that. I’m stepping away.”
Fiennes recently appeared opposite Jennifer Lopez in the Netflix action movie The Mother, which has since become one of the streamer’s most-watched English-language movies of all time.
