Race row as Disney ‘browns up’ actors for remake of Aladdin
DISNEY has become embroiled in a race row after admitting to ‘browning up’ white actors for its forthcoming Aladdin remake.
The film giant claimed it could not find enough Asian actors to perform skills such as dancing and camel handling for the Guy Ritchie-directed film, so resorted to darkening white people for such roles.
Yet the move has enraged members of the film industry, who have pointed to the fact that much of the live-action remake has been shot in Surrey, near London’s one million-strong Asian population.
It also comes after the controversy surrounding Disney’s decision to create a new white character in the story, which is set in the Middle East. The new character of Prince Anders – played by Billy Magnussen – has been introduced as a love rival to Aladdin.
Kaushal Odedra, who was employed as a stand-in for a lead actor on the film, revealed that he had seen 20 ‘very fair-skinned actors’ waiting to have dark make-up applied.
The 32-year-old, who was involved in filming last September and also worked as an extra, said: ‘Disney are sending out a message that your skin colour, your identity, your life experiences amount to nothing that can’t be powdered on and washed off. I asked a Saudi cast member what he made of having these extras being tanned so heavily and he said it’s unfortunate.’
Mr Odedra said that white actors were made to look Asian for crowd scenes, adding: ‘On one set, two palace guards came in and I recognised one as a Caucasian actor, but he was now a darkly tanned Arab.’
The film, which stars Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott and Will Smith, is due out next year. Representatives of Disney told The Sunday Times the new film has the ‘most diverse cast ever assembled for a Disney live-action production’. They added: ‘More than 400 of the 500 background performers were Indian, Middle Eastern, African, Mediterranean and Asian.’