Liam Neeson says he hoped to kill a black man to avenge a loved one’s rape
In an interview with a British publication, “Taken” star Liam Neeson described wanting to kill a black person after a woman close to him told him she’d been raped by a black man.
Fans expressed shock on social media, and apparently Neeson did, too — shock at himself that he revealed that story to a journalist.
He told Clémence Michallon of the Independent, a British online newspaper, during a press junket interview in New York City.
She wrote that the actor’s admission involved “how he learnt about the rape of someone close to him many years ago, how he roamed the streets for a week afterwards carrying with him a cosh and brutal, racist thoughts, and how this taught him that violence and revenge do not work.”
The topic of revenge was apropos of Neeson’s new movie, “Cold Pursuit,” in which he seeks to avenge the murder of his son by a drug gang, according to IMDB.
“There’s something primal – God forbid you’ve ever had a member of your family hurt under criminal conditions,” he said in the interview. “I’ll tell you a story. This is true.”
He said upon returning from a trip overseas a woman close to him — he did not identify her — told him she had been raped by a black person.
Neeson described walking “up and down areas” with a cosh, or bludgeon, “hoping I’d be approached by somebody – I’m ashamed to say that – and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some ... ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know?” he said. “So that I could (pause) kill him.”
Michallon wrote that Neeson clearly knew that what he said was “shocking” and “appalling.”
“It’s awful,” he said. “But I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, ‘What the f**k are you doing,’ you know?”
Fans on social media expressed shock, anger and a need to talk about what he revealed.
“Liam Neeson talks about how these “horrible” feelings were tied to Northern Ireland’s culture at the time,” tweeted journalist Richard Horgan. “... this can be the start of a long, meaningful examination. Let’s hope that happens beyond today’s Twitter reaction.”
Filmmaker David Drake tweeted that it wasn’t a “bad thing” that Neeson volunteered the story.
“People are blowing up over Liam Neeson’s interview,” Drake wrote. “The interview was honest and open. He volunteered the unsavoury and ignorant internalisations from his past ... and expressed how he’s evolved and grown since then. That’s not a bad thing people. Read it.”
The Independent also published an opinion piece by one of its columnists, Kuba Shand-Baptiste.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad that Neeson was so forthcoming about this story that he ‘never admitted’ to anyone else. Because it has shed light on a phenomenon that too few understand and that we need to talk about,” she wrote.
“Although the actor believes that he learned a lesson from the ordeal . . . I’d argue that there’s something even bigger to glean from all of this. Whether we like to admit it or not, racism has and will continue to have a far deeper psychological impact on society than many of us realise.”
This story was originally published February 4, 2019 at 12:15 PM.