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 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.