The star of the brand new Agatha Christie adaptation of Murder Is Easy, David Jonsson, has revealed that he initially turned down the role due to "colour-blind casting."
In a new interview the star explained that he originally said no to the job because the titular character Luke Fitzwilliam has been changed from a retired white colonial police officer to a black Nigerian.
In an interview, the star said that he is "not a big fan of colour-blind casting" and thought that "being blind to anything is not a good thing."
However Jonsson did eventually take on the the role due to the producers "persistence" and after speaking to the show bosses he realised they were "not being blind to anything."
He almost turned down the role due to "colour-blind" casting
PA
The British actor previously told The Telegraph: "It’s the first time they’ve had a black lead in the entire history of Agatha Christie.
"At first it really shocked me to the point I didn’t want to do it."
Talking about the adaption on Headliners last night Cressida Wetton, Francis Foster and Simon Evans said that "it is good he is willing to talk about the issue."
Simon said: "I suppose he's at least willing to talk about the issues.
Simon Evans said that they are using the show to explore the "end of an empire"
GBNews
"In a way it is not colour-blind casting is it, because they have said that he is a Nigerian. They're using it to explore the idea of the end of empire."
Foster added: "They're going to be butchering Agatha Christie. it is getting so tiresome. It's always Agatha Christie as well. They did the John Malkovich one, which presented post Brexit Britain as basically worse than Germany in the 1930s."
The decision was previously defended by Christie's great grandson, James Prichard, who said she believed stories needed to shift depending on the medium.
Asked by the Radio Times what Christie would have made of changing Fitzwilliam’s heritage to Nigerian, James Prichard, 53, said: “Rule one: I never try to second-guess my great-grandmother – therein lies madness.
The show is and adaption of the classic Murder Is Easy
PA
"One of the things I hold to is that the first few adaptations of her plays were done by other people, and she didn’t like them because she didn’t think they were radical enough for the change in medium.
“She recognised that, when you shift the medium, you need to shift the story.
"It does give us a degree of licence to change things, but I also believe these are adaptations, not translations, and you are always looking at the story from where you are now, 90 years after this was first written.
“But the story remains central, as does something essentially Christie. I think we know what it is, and whether it’s there or not. And it’s definitely there in Murder Is Easy."