Hmm. I'd say that reflects a kind of racism.

As it would with the shoes on other feet, a black fellow lurking to kill a random white man for the same sort of crime.

Liam Neeson: After a friend was raped, I wanted to kill a black man

Just any, apparently.

Somehow it does not seem likely that, if she had said in response to his pointed question that the guy was white, he would have hung around bars for a week waiting for a chance to kill a random white man.

In the interview for the Independent, Neeson says he understood the “primal” motivation his character feels. 

“God forbid you’ve ever had a member of your family hurt under criminal conditions,” he said, before recounting the story of a time, many years ago, when he returned from overseas to discover that a woman he knew well – he did not specify if she was a friend or a family member – had been raped.

“She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way,” he said. 

“But my immediate reaction was … I asked, did she know who it was? No. What colour were they? She said it was a black person.”

Neeson continued: “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.”

Neeson declines to name the victim and withholds details to protect their anonymity.

“It took me a week, maybe a week and a half, to go through that,” he continues. “She would say, ‘Where are you going?’ and I would say, ‘I’m just going out for a walk.’ ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘No, no, nothing’s wrong.’”

The interviewer gives every indication that Neeson is conscious of the gravity of what he is saying. She quotes him as saying: “It was horrible, horrible, when I think back, that I did that. And I’ve never admitted that, and I’m saying it to a journalist. God forbid.”

His breath reportedly “trembles” as he continues: “It’s awful. But I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’”