Laurence Fox is currently embroiled in a libel case where he’s being sued by ex-Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and Drag Race UK star Crystal for calling them ‘paedophiles’ on Twitter in October 2020. In return, Fox is counter-suing them for calling him a racist.
The argument kicked off on a post where Fox, 45, objected to Sainsbury’s celebrating Black History Month. Fox was also called ‘a racist’ by Coronation Street actress Nicola Thorp, who he’s also suing.
Fox, who obviously denies being a racist, claims that their comments damaged his reputation, and resulted in him losing out on a role in top HBO series Succession. He also claims he was uninvited from an audition he had booked for Disney’s Obi-Wan series, a chance to appear on The Masked Singer, and as a contestant on Celebrity Catchphrase.
Fox also claims that he lost his acting agent over the whole ordeal, and that faeces were posted through his door on two occasions.
His lawyer, Patrick Green KC, said that there is ‘little doubt that Mr Fox’s reputation has actually suffered very considerably’ since the online beef: ‘The allegation of being “a racist” will have been looked upon very seriously by many of Mr Fox’s actual and potential colleagues… He is not a racist, he is a colour-blind liberal who dislikes racism, “progressive” and identitarian politics.’
Oppositely, Lorna Skinner KC, representing Mr Blake, Mr Seymour and Ms Thorp, said the trio ‘honestly believed, and continue honestly to believe, that Mr Fox is a racist’, citing several of Fox’s posts, including a June 2022 tweet of four pride flags arranged in the shape of a swastika and an August 2023 tweet where shared a photo of himself in blackface saying he had ‘racially transitioned’.
Now I’m not sure how the courts are going to decide whether Fox lost out on these roles specifically because three people called him a racist on Twitter. You’d imagine Hollywood or the BBC or whoever wouldn’t be too happy about him condemning Black History Month in the first place, especially around that time in 2020. To know for sure, the casting directors/producers will have to give evidence, and they’ll probably end up even more annoyed with him for being dragged into this dumb lawsuit.
I wonder what role Fox would have had in Succession, anyway? Maybe they had him in mind for the role of Connor Roy, who had a failed political run just like Fox did? Either way, he’s landed himself in more than enough trouble on his own, even without the racism allegations.
