JOSEPH FIENNES shot to fame playing the Bard in the Oscar-winning film “Shakespeare in Love,” but the news that he has been cast to play another great entertainer, Michael Jackson, has sparked controversy.

    The British actor will star as the late pop star in “Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon,” set to debut later this year on the British network.

    The half-hour comedy special is inspired by the (possibly apocryphal) tale of a road trip shared by Jackson, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in the aftermath of 9/11, when air travel was temporarily halted across the country. “Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon” co-stars Brian Cox as Brando and Stockard Channing as Taylor.

    The news arrived at a time of heightened sensitivity around the issue of race in popular culture prompted by the lack of diversity in this year’s Oscar nominations.

    “A White Actor will play MJ. Because we aren’t whitewashed enough in Hollywood, apparently,” read a tweet Wednesday from BET that was echoed by others on social media.

    Actress Angela Bassett weighed in more humorously with a tweet suggesting she should play Taylor: “BRILLIANT! Ordered my violet contacts & bathed in White Diamonds this morning, so I’m READY! Let’s do this! xo! Ang.”

    Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Sky Arts defended the decision to cast a white actor as the African-American Jackson:

    “’Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon’ is a Sky Arts comedy which takes a lighthearted look at a reportedly true event; Joseph Fiennes is cast as Michael Jackson. It is part of a series of comedies about unlikely stories from arts and cultural history. Sky Arts gives producers the creative freedom to cast roles as they wish, within the diversity framework which we have set.”

    Fiennes told “ET” that Jackson, whose dramatically altered looks were a source of constant tabloid speculation, “was probably closer to my color than his original color.”(SD-Agencies)