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Liam Neeson Just Admitted To Wanting To Kill A Random Black Man After Friend’s Sexual Assault

Actor Liam Neeson recalled a shocking, racist revenge fantasy he had after “someone close to him” was sexually assaulted.

Speaking with The Independent about his upcoming film, Cold Pursuit, Neeson said he’d never admitted his impulse to anyone before and that he was ashamed of how he felt. He revealed that after he found out about the rape, he cased the streets for a week with a cosh—a baton-like weapon—hoping a black person would antagonize him.

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“I’ll tell you a story, the actor is heard telling journalist Clémence Michallon in the taped interview, “This is true.” He explained that the unnamed woman told him she had been raped by a black man while he was overseas.

“She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way. But my immediate reaction was …” There’s a pause. “I asked, did she know who it was? No. What colour were they? She said it was a black person.

“I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody — I’m ashamed to say that — and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some [Neeson gestures air quotes with his fingers] ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could,” another pause, “kill him.”

Neeson said it took him a week or two to put the impulse to rest and that it “was horrible, horrible, when I think back, that I did that and I’ve never admitted that, and I’m saying it to a journalist. God forbid.”

His Cold Pursuit co-star Tom Bateman reportedly replied, “Holy sh*t.”

The Taken actor continued: “It’s awful. But I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, ‘What the f**k are you doing,’ you know?… I come from a society—I grew up in Northern Ireland in the Troubles—and, you know, I knew a couple of guys that died on hunger strike, and I had acquaintances who were very caught up in the Troubles, and I understand that need for revenge, but it just leads to more revenge, to more killing and more killing, and Northern Ireland’s proof of that.”

The apparent ease with which Neeson admitted to wanting to murder a random black man did not go unnoticed across social media.

Neeson plays a man who goes on a revenge spree after his son is killed by a drug gang in Cold Pursuit.

h/t Vulture