It don’t matter if you’re black or white? Actor Joseph Fiennes cast as Michael Jackson

British actor Joseph Fiennes has been cast as iconic African-American pop star Michael Jackson in an upcoming TV comedy, provoking scorn on social media and fueling a controversy in the entertainment industry over opportunities for black artists.

Fiennes, who is white, will play the late “King of Pop” in an apparently real-life story for Britain’s satellite TV channel Sky Arts about a road trip across the United States the singer is said to have taken in 2001 with movie stars Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.

Sky Arts said in a statement on Wednesday that the 30-minute comedy, called Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon, is “part of a series of comedies about unlikely stories from arts and cultural history. Sky Arts gives producers the creative freedom to cast roles as they wish, within the diversity framework which we have set.”

Jackson, who had the medical condition vitiligo that lightened the colour of his skin, died in June 2009 at the age of 50 after an overdose of the sedative propofol.

News of the casting decision came two weeks after the omission of any actors of colour from the 2016 Oscar nominations for a second year that led Will Smith and Spike Lee to shun the Oscar ceremony in February and Oscar organisers to bring more women and people of color into their ranks.

Stereo Williams, an entertainment writer for The Daily Beast, said the casting of Fiennes was a “symptom of Hollywood’s deep-seated race problem.”