Pretty much all of the discourse surrounding this new celebrity relationship has been overwhelmingly positive, with many people sharing their joy at Liam and Pamela finding one another. But amid all of this, Liam’s widely forgotten racism controversy from 2019 has resurfaced, with some social media users expressing their confusion over how this has been overlooked by the general public.
“[Liam] is about to recount a disturbing incident from his past, a confession that he’s never made before,” the profile begins. “It will involve how he learnt about the rape of someone close to him many years ago, how he roamed the streets for a week afterwards carrying with him a cosh and brutal, racist thoughts, and how this taught him that violence and revenge do not work.”
“I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody — I’m ashamed to say that — and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some Black bastard would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could… Kill him,” he went on.
The following month, Liam issued an apology for what he described as an “impulsive recounting” of an incident from decades ago. In a statement, he said: “Over the last several weeks, I have reflected on and spoken to a variety of people who were hurt by my impulsive recounting of a brutal rape of a dear female friend nearly 40 years ago and my unacceptable thoughts and actions at that time in response to this crime.”
In May 2022, more than three years after the interview, Liam shocked people when he addressed the controversy during a cameo appearance in the Donald Glover TV series Atlanta. In the episode “New Jazz,” Brian Tyree Henry’s character “Paper Boi” meets Liam, who is playing himself, at a bar called Cancel Club. In the scene, Liam says: “You may have heard about my transgression.”
At this point, Paper Boi suggests that Liam hadn’t learned his lesson, and Liam agrees: “Aye. I also learned the best and worst part about being white is you don’t have to learn anything if you don’t want to.”
Liam has not made any public statements about the controversy since the Atlanta episode.