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Well, Morgan Freeman Did Play Nelson Mandela In A Movie

By Mark Memmott
Published December 20, 2013 at 9:48 AM EST
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Among the memorials to Nelson Mandela put up across India is a billboard in Tamil Nadu that features a photo of actor Morgan Freeman, not the iconic anti-apartheid hero from South Africa who died earlier this month.

The businessman who paid for the sign says it will be replaced with one that has the right image.

Perhaps the billboard's designer got confused because Freeman portrayed Mandela in the 2009 movie Invictus.

As you might expect, a photo of the botched billboard has been whipping around Twitter.

Freeman has inadvertently been part of such a mix-up before. At President Obama's inauguration back in January, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos got famously confused. He thought basketball great Bill Russell was the actor.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
See stories by Mark Memmott

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