Disney's Aladdin casts white actors in brown roles

Disney is rebooting “Aladdin” as a live action film, which will open in May 2019. The movie, which is shooting in London, is already causing a row over casting white actors in roles of different ethnicities. Disney admittedly browned up many white extras for crowd scenes, even though over a million people from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab descent live within a 50 mile radius of the shooting location. Disney said it resorted to darkening white people for roles requiring skills that could not be readily found in the Asian community, such as stunt men, dancers and camel handlers. The Guy Ritchie film, which features Will Smith as the genie, introduced a white character, Prince Anders, played by Billy Magnusson (American Crime Story) as a love rival to Aladdin. Disney told The Sunday Times: “This is the most diverse cast ever assembled for a Disney live action production. More than 400 of the 500 background performers were Indian, Middle Eastern, African, Mediterranean and Asian.” Kaushal Odedra, 32, who was used as a stand-in for a lead actor during filming in September last year, said, “I wonder, if the shoe was on the other foot, where brown actors were hired and had their skin lightened to play, for example, the royal family, whether this would be seen as OK.” Riaz Meer, a Bafta-nominated TV director said that it’s “an insult to the whole industry” and to young ethnic actors looking to get a break. “The talent exists and is accessible and there’s no way that Asian extras could not have been hired to meet the needs of the film,” he said Laura Sheppard of Casting Collective, who supplied some extras for Aladdin, said: “If we don’t have enough people of a particular ethnic group on our books, we will source people from the required group.” The studio auditioned 2,000 actors before casting the Egyptian-born Canadian Mena Massoud as Aladdin and the British-Indian Naomi Scott as Jasmine. Finding actors with the right ethnicity has already delayed the production for the film.