Liam Neeson has had to explain a joke that sailed past everyone’s heads back in February – including Kochie’s.
The rumour mill went into overdrive after the Irish actor appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise earlier this year promoting Blacklight – which was filmed in Melbourne in 2020 – “gushing” over the Australian crew and a “mystery” woman he met Down Under.
During the interview, Neeson discussed filming during what became one of the world’s harshest COVID lockdowns.
“I loved Melbourne. I loved our Australian crew, they are fantastic workers,” he gushed.
“Every department was superb. They were their own people, do you know what I mean? They had a great sense of humour.”
He then went on to joke about the “mystery woman”.
“I made a couple of pals and fell in love once while I was there, but she was taken,” he told Channel 7’s showbiz reporter Nelson Aspen.
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News.com.au reported his comments under the headline: “Liam Neeson reveals he fell in love with mystery Australian woman on-set of latest movie.”
He has had to explain to Daily Mail that it was, in fact, a joke related to the name of his most famous film franchise outside Star Wars.
“I said, ‘I fell in love, but she was taken.’ That’s a joke,” he told the publication.
“It was b***ocks.”
Neeson enjoyed massive box office success with the 2008 blockbuster, Taken, in which his character – a retired Green Beret and former CIA operative – goes on an international hunt for his daughter after she is kidnapped in Paris.
The actor has barely dated anyone since his wife Natasha Richardson died in a tragic skiing accident in 2009.
Speaking to Anderson Cooper in 2014 about his loss, Neeson recalled doctors telling him his wife was brain dead after her accident.
“She was on life support… I went in to her and I told her I loved her. I said, ‘Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this, you’ve banged your head,'” he said.
“She and I had made a pact, if any of us got into a vegetative state that we’d pull the plug. That was my immediate thought, ‘Okay, these tubes have to go. She’s gone.'”
