Liam Neeson has found himself under the cloud of controversy regarding his recent remarks. He openly acknowledged of wanting to kill a Black person after someone he knew said she was raped. Neeson now is doing damage control.
The Taken actor stopped by Good Morning America on to promote his upcoming film, Cold Pursuit. He attempted to address the controversy, saying that he “sought help” after the incident.
“The topic of a film is a dark comedy, but its base is revenge and the lady journalist was asking me how I tap into that and I remember an incident nearly 40 years ago where a dear friend of mine was brutally raped,” he said. “She told me, and she handled the situation incredibly bravely but I had never felt this feeling before, which was a primal urge to lash out.”
“I went up and down areas with a (crowbar), 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? So that I could—kill him,” he said.
He said that having that impulse had hurt him and that he spoke to a priest and two of his friends to get help, along with power walking for two hours a day.
Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, asked if he would have reacted in the same way, with the same vitriol if the person who reportedly raped his friend was White. He responded by saying that he would have and that he is “not racist.”
In conclusion, Neeson said, “If she’d have said a Brit, a Scot, a Lithuanian I would have reacted the same,” he said. “I was trying to show honor and stand up for my friend in this medieval fashion.”
