John Malkovich was booked for one night in Tel Aviv next April. He isn't going anymore.

The 72-year-old actor pulled out of a scheduled April 13, 2027 performance of "The Music Critic" at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium after a press release circulated quotes he says he never gave. The Jerusalem Post ran the release on September 5, which had Malkovich saying he was "thrilled to return to Israel" and looking forward "to meeting the warm Israeli audience once again, to whom I feel a strong closeness and solidarity," according to The Hollywood Reporter. The paper later pulled the quote and appended an editor's note confirming it had been "falsely attributed to him."

Alon Yurick, the Israeli producer behind the show, called it a misunderstanding and apologized for the error, per that same editor's note. The PR firm his team hired went further, issuing its own statement: "Mr. Malkovich did not make, provide, authorize or approve this statement, nor was it approved by his representatives. We sincerely apologize to Mr. Malkovich and his representatives for the incorrect attribution and regret that this occurred."

By the time Malkovich found out, through THR's report on the original release rather than from the producer directly, the damage was done. He told the outlet on Tuesday that a PR company "drafted a quote for the article that was attributed to me, though I never made the statements that were quoted, nor was I consulted before they were printed." His response was blunt: "I did not utter these phrases, and they most certainly are not approved by me, nor do they reflect my feelings." He called the whole business "unacceptable and untenable" and said that's why he's out.

"The Music Critic" is a satirical theatrical-musical piece written by violinist and composer Aleksey Igudesman, and Malkovich has been touring versions of it, along with other classical-music collaborations, for close to two decades. He's performed in 47 countries by his own count, and the Tel Aviv date was supposed to be one stop on a longer run through Europe and the Middle East. That context matters to him. In his statement he was careful to separate showing up somewhere from endorsing it: "My appearance in any country, even my own, does not constitute approval of said country's policies, nor actions, nor its elected or unelected leaders." He added that his presence wouldn't "condone nor mean that I am in supposed 'solidarity' with any particular political cause, nor with the killing of innocents, nor with any acts of terrorism, nor any other kind of barbarity."

He closed with a line about who gets to write his dialogue. "Only playwrights, novelists and screenwriters can put words in my mouth," he said, "and even then, only in the service of storytelling." Anyone else trying that, he made clear, should expect consequences.

What happens to the rest of the European and Middle East leg of the tour, and whether Yurick's production tries to rebook Tel Aviv with someone else, hasn't been addressed yet.