Latest move! Miriam Margolyes sparks outrage with new statement on Andi Peters ‘racism row’

Miriam Margolyes Breaks Silence on Andi Peters Row After Controversial This Morning Exchange

Miriam Margolyes has spoken out after her awkward exchange with Andi Peters on This Morning triggered a wave of criticism, insisting she never intended to embarrass or upset the presenter.

The Harry Potter actress came under fire after questioning Peters about his accent, ethnicity and skin tone during a live appearance on the ITV daytime show.

The conversation took an uncomfortable turn when Margolyes bluntly asked Peters: “What are you?”

After he repeated the question back to her, seemingly confused, she continued: “Well, you’re a mix, aren’t you?”

Peters agreed he was “a mix”, before Margolyes appeared to make an assumption about his family background.

“So you’ve got a black daddy and a white mummy,” she said.

Peters immediately corrected her.

“No, no, no. Both my parents are black,” he replied.

Trying to keep the exchange light, he then asked: “Am I a lighter shade than normal?”

Margolyes responded by describing him using the dated expression “high-yalla”, prompting Peters to ask what the term meant.

Miriam Explains What She Was Trying to Ask

The conversation quickly generated backlash from viewers, with some later claiming that the exchange was missing from the version of the episode made available through ITV’s on-demand service.

At the time, ITV had not publicly addressed the reported edit.

Margolyes has now discussed the controversy while attending an event in Southend to promote her latest novel.

“I didn’t want to embarrass or hurt Andi because he seems very nice,” she said.

“I’d never met him before; I didn’t know who he was and I didn’t know he was black until I saw him.”

She continued: “When you see someone, of course you know they’re black.”

Margolyes said her questions came from an interest in how people view their own identities and how they feel about the way others perceive them.

“I wanted to know what he thought about it because that’s what interests me,” she explained.

She then listed different groups while discussing identity, including Black and brown people, disabled people and those who are overweight.

The actress used an outdated term when referring to disabled people, prompting a fresh round of criticism after her comments were reported.

“All of us feel something about who we are and how people see us, what they think of us,” she added.

‘I Am Fascinated by Other People’

Margolyes went on to explain that her interest in people extends far beyond celebrities.

“I am fascinated by other people,” she said.

“They are the people that interest me, not the celebrities so much. It’s everybody.”

She added that she likes discovering “what their story is, what made them who they are, why you are the way you are.”

However, her explanation failed to end the controversy.

Some critics argued that the new remarks only intensified concerns about the original conversation with Peters.

Piers Morgan was among those who reacted publicly.

“Good grief… it’s time this repulsive ‘national treasure’ had her title removed,” he wrote.

Another social media user criticised the outdated language Margolyes used when referring to disability, while another said her attempt to explain the incident had made the original exchange appear “far worse”.

Backlash Continues

Margolyes has made clear that causing offence was not her intention, saying her questions were motivated by curiosity about identity rather than a desire to upset Peters.

But much of the criticism has focused on the way those questions were asked rather than what she says she meant by them.

Peters appeared to deal with the moment using humour and did not publicly attack Margolyes during the exchange.

Even so, her assumptions about his parents and her choice of language quickly became the focus of discussion online.

The actress has now offered her explanation, but the reaction suggests the controversy is unlikely to disappear immediately.

For critics, the issue remains the gap between Margolyes’s stated intentions and the words she chose during a live television conversation with someone she had never met before.