Movies

Disney ‘Making-Up’ Actors to Look Arabian

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8 January 2018

By Alex Khalil

Disney has admitted to ‘making-up’ some white actors on set of Aladdin for them to blend into Asian crowd scenes for its upcoming reboot.

The company said they filled background performer roles with white people ‘only in a handful of instances when it was a matter of specialty skills, safety and control.’

It was recently revealed Will Smith would star as Genie.

32-year-old Kaushal Odedra appears in the film as an extra and said he saw ‘around twenty’ other actors being made up to look Arabian. He believes that Disney is ‘out of touch’. The film has been criticized by many in the industry for not recruiting people with Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi or Arab heritage.

Kaushal said:

‘Aladdin was the perfect time to show diversity but also be accurate. They’re being out of touch with what’s going on around them.’

Actor Kal Penn responded on Twitter stating:

A Disney spokesperson said that they had taken ‘great care’ to ‘put together one of the largest, most diverse casts ever seen on screen’. They claimed that the only reason they were using white extras was for speciality roles like animal handling, specific rigs and stunt performers.

Kaushal responded saying: ‘I can understand it if it comes to stunt people and animal handling, but I think they did have a choice.’

This isn’t the first time the reboot has made headlines. Earlier in 2017, the film was under fire due to a decision to cast Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine. She recently starred in Power Rangers and the criticism came from her being non-Arab.

Scott, who is of British and Indian heritage, will star alongside Egyptian-Canadian actor Mena Massoud as Aladdin.

It faced further criticism in September of 2017, when they cast a white actor as a new character called Prince Anders. He’ll be played by Billy Magnussen. There are no white characters in the original tale.

Not a good look Disney. Not a good look at all.

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