Liam Neeson apologizes for racist comments in Atlanta cameo…and does more

In a near-bones appearance on Thursday’s episode of “Atlanta,” the Irish actor played a version of himself, addressing his infamous 2019 interview in which he admitted he once tried to get revenge on any “black bastard” he found, after his friend was raped.

In the scene, Neeson is having a drink at a bar – the “Cancel Club” – while chatting with Brian Tyree Henry’s Paper Boi.

“You may have heard or read about my transgression…you know, what I said about what I wanted to do to a black man. Any black man, when I was younger. A one of my friends had been raped, and I acted out of anger,” Neeson tells him, in his “Taken” snarl.

“I’m looking back man, it really scares me,” he continues. “I thought people, knowing who I once was, would make it clear who I am, who I have become.”

“But, with all that said,” he adds with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I apologize if I hurt people.”

“Well, between you and me…I’m still fucking with Taken,” Paper Boi replies, to which they both laugh. “Damn man, listen: it’s good to know you don’t hate black people anymore.”

“What?” Neeson fires back. “No, no, no, I can’t stand you all.”

“Well, now I feel like this, because you tried to ruin my career. You didn’t succeed, look out,” he adds, sipping his drink. “However, I am sure that one day I will get over it. But until then, we are mortal enemies.”

“I’ll see you around my big one!” he smiled, shaking the stunned Paper Boi’s hand and going to leave.

“Wait,” Paper Boi stops him. “But haven’t you learned that…you shouldn’t be talking bullshit like that?”

“Yes,” Neeson replies, “But I also learned that the best and worst part of being white is that you don’t have to learn anything if you don’t want to.” – gaping at Paper Boi.

The “transgression” Neeson was referring to was first revealed in an interview with The Independent in 2019, during a press conference for “Cold Pursuit”, in which he revealed he had once returned of a trip abroad to be told by a friend. she had been raped.

“She handled the rape situation in the most extraordinary way,” he said at the time. “But my immediate reaction was…did she know who it was? No. What color were they? She said it was a black person.”

“I walked around areas with a cosh, hoping someone would approach me. I’m ashamed to say this, and did it for maybe a week – hoping some [Neeson gestures air quotes with his fingers] ‘black bastard’ was coming out of a pub and yelling at me about something, you know? So I can kill him.”

The 69-year-old said it took him about a week or a week and a half to figure out what had happened.

“It was horrible, horrible, when I think back, that I did that,” he said. “And I never admitted that, and I tell a reporter that. God forbid.”

After a flurry of backlash, he would later address his comments with Robin Roberts on GMA, insisting, “I’m not racist.”

“I deliberately went into the black areas of the city, looking to be attacked,” he admitted to Roberts. “It shocked me and it hurt me… I asked for help, I went to see a priest.”

“Fortunately, no violence occurred,” he added, but admitted he would likely have attacked and possibly killed a man if confronted.

He said he pressed his friend for a description of her attacker, insisting he would have had the same reaction if she had told him the culprit was white.

“If she had said an Irishman, or a Scott, or a Briton, or a Lithuanian, I know [it] would have had the same effect,” he said.

He said he finally saw the error of his ways.

“…it was that primal hatred, I guess, that really, really shocked me when I finally came down to earth and saw what I was doing,” he told Roberts. “Go out and pick a fight? Violence begets violence, bigotry begets bigotry.