In the wake of the 20 years of the film debut of X-Men, the first film in the Fox saga, various anecdotes from its shooting and production have come to the fore again.
One of them has as protagonist Michael Jackson, who auditioned with other famous celebrities of the time to play one of the members of the mutant team; among them, Mariah Carey and the basketball player Shaquille O’Neal.
In a magazine report The Hollywood Reporter, director Bryan Singer and producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter went over some details of this story, which had previously been sketched out by some of their witnesses.
The singer was running to take over one of the most important characters in the plot: the professor Charles Xavier, which finally fell on Patrick Stewart.
“I said (to Michael Jackson): ‘Do you know that Xavier is an older white man? ‘. And Michael said: ‘Oh yeah. I can wear makeup‘”Recalled Lauren, who interviewed him before the audition.
For the date, the man from Billie Jean came prepared. Singer and the producers, before any performance or casting, were shown his horror short film Ghosts (1996), co-written and protgonized by himself.
“Michael was in the eye of the hurricane for the accusations against him (for sexual abuse) at the time,” recalled a Fox executive of 1999.
According to the film’s producers, for this and other reasons, the possibility of having “The King of Pop” in the cast of X-Men it was never viable.
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