The Jamie Lloyd Company has hit back after its production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” has been the subject of what they call a “barrage of deplorable racial abuse” aimed at an unnamed cast member.
The play, directed by Jamie Lloyd (“Sunset Boulevard”), stars “Spider-Man: No Way Home” star Tom Holland as Romeo and Francesca Amewaduh-Rivers (“Sex Education”) as Juliet.
On Friday, the Jamie Lloyd Company issued a statement, saying: “Following the announcement of our ‘Romeo & Juliet’ cast, there has been a barrage of deplorable racial abuse online directed towards a member of our company. This must stop.”
I only dislike it when historical shows or movies race swap, cause it kinda ignores the racism of that community at that point in time. Like a black woman playing queen Elizabeth wouldn’t make sense. Or Cleopatra for that matter
I’ve been watching white guys play samurai and pharaohs and Jesus my whole life. It’s not that hard to get used to someone with historically inaccurate pigment playing a role. But for some strange reason, it’s only a political choice when the actor with the “wrong” skin color is dark.
No it’s always been weird with white guys too. John Wayne playing Asian us fucked up, so is all the blackface throughout Hollywood’s history. I don’t expect them to go find an Aramaic Jewish actor from the middle east for a Jesus movie, but don’t make him Korean and act like it’s accurate or something
I guess what I’m getting at is that, when you watch John Wayne playing an Asian guy, do you spend the whole movie wondering why the other characters aren’t constantly asking about his skin color and facial features? Probably not, since we can easily accept that while the actor is white, the character is still Asian.
But when a black actor plays a white character in a historical piece, you want to know why everyone isn’t constantly asking about their skin color and facial features. The answer is exactly the same: the character hasn’t changed. The other characters in the film don’t see the actor, they see the character.
Ok but by that logic why can’t we get Cyllian Murphy to play Martin Luther King? Or hell, forget gender too, maybe we can get Allison Brie to play Pancho Villa, and it won’t be distracting cause all the other character in the movie are gonna act like it’s normal
Well, why not indeed? Both of those could be interesting films, depending on who was involved in making them, and what they were trying to say.
wait a minute. are you saying everyone accepts white washing? just because you do doesn’t mean we should all just get used to it. people are tired of their classic ethnic stories being played by a bunch of white dudes or changed to a full white cast for the sake of palpability for the west. nobody aside from white people want that shit…
I find it a little interesting the effect of casting women and people of color as Imperials in the Star Wars universe. The Empire is explicitly supposed to be a fascist racist organization. The casting of all lily-white poncy British-accented dudes in the original trilogy is supposed to read to the audience as “These are the bad guys; see how colonialist they look?”, while it’s the rebels and outsiders who are ethnically and gender diverse. The existence of Thrawn and Isard in the expanded universe was supposed to highlight just how brutal and talented they were, that they were able to succeed in such a racist and sexist Empire, even given their backgrounds.
I understand the idea of wanting more diverse casting in modern Star Wars, but making the Empire diverse seems to confuse the visual metaphor just a tad. I suppose that they’re keeping the “Empire is racist but only in the sense of it’s human-supremacist,” but it still seems a little odd.
The Empire is speciesist, not racist. It’s similar in the Witcher universe: There’s plenty of elves and monsters around for humans to hate so why hate on other humans.
Yeah I agree with that too, as a kid, racism was an obvious trait of the empire, even how they refer to aliens like chewy “where are you taking this… Thing?”
Suddenly the Empire is racially diverse and even has aliens and people of color in command.
a lot of people don’t understand that racism was different back then too. For example people in the Roman empire may not have understood the differences in skin color being that important, but would over index on tribe, religion or birth right
You would hate “The Great”. It’s semi historical but humorous and they cast all sorts to play what would be 99% just Russians and it is fantastic.
If it’s historical fiction it doesn’t bother me really