Miriam Margolyes has broken her silence on the awkward exchange with Andi Peters that sparked a racism row on ITV's This Morning, saying she "didn't want to embarrass or hurt" the presenter.
The exchange happened on the 3 September episode, during a discussion about accents in which Margolyes impersonated Christine Lampard's Northern Irish voice. She asked Peters what accent would be "normal" for him, and when he replied, "This is normal. This is what I am," she responded by guessing he had "a Black daddy and a white mummy." Peters corrected her: both his parents are Black. Margolyes then used a term considered offensive slang for a light-skinned Black person, prompting Peters to tell viewers, "They're getting nervous now," as producers looked on. The segment was later edited out of the version uploaded to ITVX.
I didn't know he was Black until I saw him.
Miriam Margolyes
Speaking at a promotional event in Southend for her new memoir, Margolyes said she had never met Peters before and was simply curious about identity and perception. "How do Black people feel? How do brown people feel? How do fat people feel?" she said, insisting she is "fascinated by other people" rather than celebrity itself. She added that she didn't intend to cause offense because Peters "seems very nice."
MQ's Take
Margolyes has built a career on saying the unsayable, from swearing at a government minister on Radio 4 to an expletive slip during a sex-advice segment that made Holly Willoughby apologize on the spot. That reputation as Britain's cheerfully unfiltered
Source: PinkNews
Cover photo: CelebHeights.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
