Piers Morgan has compared Liam Neeson’s “staggeringly racist” comments during a recent interview to the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, after the actor admitted to once wanting to “kill a black man”.
On Monday, Liam sparked outrage when an interview was published in which he described actively walking the streets with a cosh many years, hoping to attack a black person, as an act of revenge, after his friend was raped.
After the admission made headline news across the globe, Piers discussed the story on Tuesday’s Good Morning Britain, admitting he believes Liam’s career is in “serious trouble”.
“There’s no self-awareness,” he said. “It’s the indiscriminate nature of this revenge he talks about. He’s talking about any black person who he can find an excuse to kill. It’s like Ku Klux Klan stuff.”
He continued: “I would be very surprised if Liam Neeson’s career is not now in very serious trouble. I don’t know how he’ll talk his way out of this. I think he’s got a real problem now.
“You don’t want it to be [career ending] for someone of his stature, but when you actually hear him say this stuff I think there will be fully justified outrage.”
He added: “If I was a black person right now reading this I would not want to see this guy’s movies. Does anybody? It’s so indiscriminate and so racist.”
Piers and co-host Susanna Reid then spoke to the Independent journalist who conducted the original interview, who claimed Liam warned her to be careful with his comments, and has since declined to answer more questions.
US culture writer Clemence Michallon said: “The gravity of what he was saying immediately struck me. It was a matter of playing that tape over and over again to myself and going back to his team, trying to get more comments, which they’ve declined that opportunity. But we had more questions.”
She continued: “As the interview was wrapping up, he asked me if I was going to use that story, if I would be very careful. I said yes, because I’m always very careful, especially when I’m doing my work as a journalist.
“Then he sort of switched to his actor voice, and there’s a famous phone scene in Taken, where his character is talking to the people who have kidnapped his daughter, and he said: ‘I have a very specific set of skills and I will find you and I will kill you.’ It was, in his mind, clearly a joke. Whether or not that was appropriate remains to be determined. But he said, ‘I will find you’. He said that to me in the same voice.”
A spokesperson for Liam Neeson is yet to respond to HuffPost UK’s request for comment.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.
- Rape Crisis services for women and girls who have been raped or have experienced sexual violence – 0808 802 9999
- Survivors UK offers support for men and boys – 0203 598 3898
