Liam Neeson’s cameo on Donald Glover’s hit series Atlanta this last May was shocking in the best way, as the tenured actor used his real-life controversy to bring to life Glover’s sharp-edged satire and commentary on modern racism.
Speaking to Esquire Middle East, Neeson finally revealed why he said yes to the scene, which saw Neeson meet the show’s lead Paper Boi, played by Brian Tyree Henry, in a club called ‘Club Cancel’, in which they discussed not only Neeson’s media-fueled racism scandal, but took it in surprising directions.
It turns out that Neeson never expected the call, and after a few conversations in which Glover tried to convince him–and an intervention from Phoebe Waller-Bridge herself, Glover’s collaborator on the Mr and Mrs Smith series that she later exited over at Amazon, Neeson was convinced.
“I knew a tiny little bit about Donald. I think he had a number one hit. I vaguely remember the video of seeing this cool guy singing this song. And I thought, oh, he’s pretty cool. Then I read a little bit about him. Anyway, when he called me up to do this episode of Atlanta, I was very against it, because I was this particular episode that involved me and a bout of racism over 40 years ago,” Neeson told Esquire Middle East.
“A friend of mine was brutally raped, and it was by a black guy, I had a kind of a meltdown that I’ve never had in my life before that I caught myself on eventually. I thought, ‘what the f*** are you doing? You’re becoming an animal by having these thoughts.’ Anyways, I got over it. And then, you know, the press had their field day with me,” he continued.
“When Donald called, and he told me about Atlanta, and I had not seem the show at all. But after two or three calls. And he assured me it was going to be okay,” he said.
“I eventually trusted him because I saw his talent. He was working with Phoebe Waller-Bridge on something, she thought it was a good idea. And I had just watched Fleabag, which I loved. I thought, well, I’m a different generation here. Here’s this wonderful black performer saying to me, please do this show. Yeah, we’re gonna talk about race. It’s gonna be okay. And I thought, f*** it, do it. Jesus, do it. So we did it!” Neeson concluded.
Watch Atlanta here.