Minorities in Hollywood

[Carolina]

Apparently, the estate of Nina Simone is not a fan of the project, to say the least.

[discoprincess]

Feb 10, 2006 17:47:02 GMT -4 Ladybug said:

Uzo Aduba

This is a good suggestion.

They could have had a casting call and found someone who is a total unknown. Heaven knows there are black actresses who are looking for more opportunities in the industry. The people behind this film wouldn't have lost so many points with me if they had Zoe Saldana appear in her natural skin tone. Putting Zoe in de facto blackface was unnecessary and offensive. Come on, now.

LOL at Nina Simone's estate telling Zoe Saldana to keep Nina's name out her mouth.

[Deleted]

The producer put out some bs statement about how creativity and quality shouldn't be judged on color or physical likeness. But if they really believed that then why darken her skin at all? Sure, Zoe Saldana looking as she always does as Nina Simone would be ridiculous and still a bit offensive but not as bad. And speaking from a purely aesthetic perspective that is one bad makeup job. It looks like it would rub off on anything she touches. Not that there is such a thing as tasteful blackface but that is about the fakest look they can do.

I wonder if because the 2 biggest movies that Zoe Saldana did had her changing the colour of her skin that she doesn't see the difference here. Of course playing a blue or green alien is completely different.

I'm curious about the music for the movie. Do they have the rights to use her songs? I know that Nina's estate is very against the movie. Did they still license the music to the movie? Or is someone else in charge of her music?

[chonies]

I have no idea, but based partially on the Miss Simone documentary, I got the idea that Nina's estate is very chaotic. I would not be surprised if they do not really own much at all, or an unlikely person is actually okay ing things.

ETA: I can't post from this stupid iPad, but according to Google, Simone's estate is scattered between her family, including the family of her abusive exhusband and former manager, and Sony. I just googled 'who owns the rights to Nina Simone's recordings' and got a lot of articles from May 2015.

[fabrichnova]

Also, this was also posted on Nina Simone's official FB page the day the movie trailer was released. And I laughed a lot.

[Neurochick]

I think Uzo Aduba would have been a perfect choice. Orange is the New Black is a popular show; a lot of people know who Uzo Azduba is (she was also great in The Wiz on TV).

Some people say, "well isn't it about acting?" It is. But Hollywood has a track record of whitewashing characters.

I watch Black Sails on Starz, a series that is two main things, a series about the golden age of piracy and also a prequel to Treasure Island. Now, in Treasure Island, Long John Silver has a wife who is described as "a woman of color" "of African decent" and "a negress" more than one time in the book. In the show, many people thought his wife would be one particular character; I hoped they were wrong because I felt it would be a whitewashing of that character. Now, even though we never even learn his wife's name in Treasure Island, the fact that she is described as a "negress" made me believe that she looks black. This character people thought would be his wife is very, very light skinned. Well in this season, they introduced a character who looks like she might be his wife, this character is brown skinned, she looks black.

Why is this important, when in Treasure Island, we don't even know the woman's name, or really what she looks like? Because I'm sure that when most people read the book, they assumed his wife was black and looked black. Also, there is a very nasty attitude in Hollywood and in a lot of the general public that a white man would NEVER want to be in a serious relationship with a brown skinned black woman; also the actor playing John Silver is quite attractive.

My problem with the Nina Simone movie (for some reason, I have a vague memory of being a teenager and meeting a girl who said she was Nina Simone's daughter), is that once again, Hollywood has the attitude that no one will come and see a brown woman in the title role of a movie. That's the ugliness that I'm feeling because I don't think Zoe Saldana is that much of a name. Most of the movies she's been in have been science fiction ensemble movies, Star Trek, Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy, they've made a lot of money but mostly because of the subject.

[thneed]

The issue with the Nina Simone story, is music industry people told Simone she would never make it because she was dark-skinned and didn't have what we consider conventionally attractive Western features. A big part of Nina Simone's story was that she achieved success at her level, in an era when the only famous black singers were Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. You can't tell that story with some powerful man telling Zoe Saldana she's too ugly, because the audience will not ever stop laughing. It's the same reason you can't have Morgan Freeman or Jennifer Lawrence play Abraham Lincoln in a biopic, even if you held auditions and they were the best two actors for the part. When you make a biopic, (unless you're doing something experimental like in I'm Not There, which you hardly ever are) you have to cast an actor who sort of looks like the person they're playing. And you have to match up the particulars like age and race. They don't have to be twins. Benedict Cumberbatch looks nothing like Alan Turing. Chadwick Boseman looks nothing like James Brown. That's fine. But you don't have Zoe Saldana play Nina Simone for the same reason you don't have Tom Cruise play a basketball player.

Although I do wonder why Simone's family and estate didn't put a stop to this when the casting of the movie first happened. I remember hearing about this controversy years ago. Often (though not always) surviving children of the biopic protagonist can convince movie studios to do things, in exchange for not waging a public campaign against the movie. I don't blame Zoe Saldana for taking the role either, because it's clear Oscar-bait, but somewhere, the director or the studio should have made a better choice.

For what it's worth, two of the EPs are black. That makes it even worse somehow.

[discoprincess]

Mar 8, 2016 11:26:48 GMT -4 thneed said:

But you don't have Zoe Saldana play Nina Simone for the same reason you don't have Tom Cruise play a basketball player.

...unless the basketball player was around the same height as Muggsy Bouges.

That said, it's notable that someone managed to bring Nina Simone's story to the big screen in the first place. *shrug* I remember reading that some notable black entertainers had issues doing the same with Dorothy Daindridge's story, and even then it ended up on cable.

[gremlin45]

Didn't Tom play 6'5" Jack Reacher? (To a huge amount of eye-rolling, but still.)

[forever1267]

...and Halle Berry couldn't even get the movie onto the big screen. HBO was the one who aired Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.