Whitewash? Skin colour doesn’t matter when you’re playing a cat, star insists
Ballerina Francesca Hayward rejects claims that film of Lloyd Webber musical hid her skin tone
A BRITISH mixed-race ballerina and actor has defended the Cats film amid claims it “whitewashed” her, saying skin colour doesn’t matter when you’re playing a cat.
Principal ballerina Francesca Hayward, who plays Victoria the White Cat in the Andrew Lloyd Webber adaptation, prompted debate after a trailer was released depicting her with a face of white fur.
Fans expressed their concern on Twitter, accusing the film of hiding the 27-year-old’s natural skin colour.
“She’s black?!” wrote one Twitter user, with another replying: “Wow.
You cannot tell. That’s deliberate and terrible.”
Some have pointed out that other famous stars in the film, including Taylor Swift, are easily identifiable despite their catlike appearance.
But Ms Hayward has spoken out to defend her appearance, telling the public not to “read into” the situation in an interview with the Sunday Times’ Culture magazine.
“Obviously, I would never have agreed to be a part of something that would change the colour of my skin had I been playing a human,” she said.
“The bottom line is, I’m playing a cat. There is no more discussion. I am a cat that’s white, let’s not read into it.
“I would just like it to get to the point where we can stop asking those questions, they seem irrelevant. It’s not something I ever focused on.” Ms Hayward, who was born in Nairobi, Kenya, before moving to Sussex aged two to live with her British grandparents, joined the Royal Ballet in 2010. There she went on to perform classic ballets including Romeo and Juliet, before being made a principal dancer in 2016. This year she appeared on the front cover of Vogue as one of the 15 women chosen as the Duchess of Sussex’s trailblazers.
Other stars have faced similar outrage for playing characters of a different race. Scarlett Johansson faced controversy surrounding her casting as Japanese woman Major Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell.
Fans said that, as the first ever live-action, English-language adaptation of the popular Japanese manga series, a Japanese woman should have played the lead. Emma Stone, the Oscar-winning actress, spoke out about her own controversy storm after being cast as a character of Hawaiian and Asian heritage in the romantic comedy Aloha. She said the backlash taught her the “history of whitewashing in Hollywood and how prevalent the problem truly is”.
But Tom Hooper’s Cats, which also stars Dame Judi Dench and Idris Elba, has been criticised for reasons other than race. Clips of the film, which was made using computer-generated imagery (CGI) and real human actors, were ruthlessly mocked with bemused comments online upon the release of the first trailer this summer. Filmmaker David Farrier described the trailer as “truly one of the most disgusting unsettling awful things I’ve watched in a long time”. “That CGI looks like something my actual cat vomits up,” wrote another
Twitter user. “What were they thinking?” said The New York Times, before adding “we have five months to get used to it”.
Director Tom Hooper has since revealed that alterations to visual effects have been made, partly in response to the viral criticism.
The original musical of Cats made its West End debut in 1981, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The tale is based on TS Eliot’s collection of fantasy poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical
Cats.
Universal Studios is thought to have sunk £230million into its big winter holiday release, which opens on Dec 20. It is already considered a ‘must-see’ by those who watch films for their perceived flaws and controversies.
‘Obviously, I would never have agreed to be a part of something that would change the colour of my skin had I been playing a human’