Actor John Malkovich has pulled out of a planned performance in Israel after accusing a PR firm working with the show of attributing fake quotes to him in its promotional material.
The two-time Oscar nominee is due to star in The Music Critic, a musical satire blending classical music and comedy, in which he plays an “evil critic” who tears apart composers including Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Chopin, before ironically reading a genuinely harsh review of his own career.
A tour across Europe and the Middle East was set to see him perform at Tel Aviv’s Charles Bronfman Auditorium on April 13 next year, with a press release for that event quoting Malkovich as saying he was “thrilled” to return to the Jewish State and felt a “strong closeness and solidarity” with its people.
However, following an initial report of the quotations in the Jerusalem Post, which has since removed them, the actor claimed he had never made the statement attributed to him and would now withdraw from the performance.
“A PR company hired by the Israeli promoter drafted a quote for the article that was attributed to me, though I never made the statements that were quoted, nor was I consulted before they were printed,” he said.
“I did not utter these phrases, and they most certainly are not approved by me, nor do they reflect my feelings. The fact that they were printed as direct quotes from me is unacceptable and untenable. For this reason, I have decided I cannot participate in the Tel Aviv performance.”
“Alon Yurick, the show’s Israeli producer, clarified that the original press release contained an incorrect quote resulting from a misunderstanding and apologised for the error,” he went on, before directly disavowing the quotation regarding “solidarity”.
“My appearances would also not condone nor mean that I am in supposed ‘solidarity’ with any particular political cause, nor with the killing of innocents, nor with any acts of terrorism, nor any other kind of barbarity,” he said.
“Only playwrights, novelists and screenwriters can put words in my mouth, and even then, only in the service of storytelling, and no one else should think they can do that without my consent and without the resultant consequences.”
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