The Best Twitter Reactions to Joseph Fiennes Playing Michael Jackson

Not everything is black and white — just ask Joseph Fiennes. After the first trailer for the U.K. show Urban Myths landed Tuesday night, the Twittersphere exploded with commentary about whether he looked anything like Michael Jackson. As a quick refresh, Urban Myths describes itself as a tongue-in-cheek look back at celebrity history. Fiennes’s casting as the pop icon was first announced last year, in the thick of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy (oops), but the powers-that-be trudged ahead anyway. The result was this:

“At least if it was Meryl Streep, we’d be like, ‘Yeah, I mean, but she’s dope.’ But Joseph Fiennes? The guy who played Shakespeare? That’s like the whitest guy in history!” Trevor Noah joked when the news first broke. That commentary was nothing, however, compared to the firestorm on Twitter last night. Many users took a humorous approach to the loaded subject, but the underlying discomfort with assigning a white actor the role of an African-American singer was apparent.

Some took issue with Fiennes’s appearance.

For some, words weren’t enough.

Others wondered what had happened to allow this casting in the first place.

Jemele Hill had a helpful suggestion for a future project.

One pleaded for Jesus to intervene.

And others had one simple, but completely impossible, request.

Stockard Channing and Brian Cox also appear in the segment, as Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando. No one so far has taken aim at either of them, but we’re wondering how successful the series will be. Odds seem good that, at the very least, some viewers will tune in to get a glimpse of Fiennes as Jackson, if only to be able to complain on Twitter.