Casting Saldana as Simone inflames ideas of race, beauty

Casting Saldana as Simone inflames ideas of race, beauty, If there was any agnosticism about how Nina Simone's ancestors and admirers feel about the accessible biopic starring Zoe Saldana, contempo amusing media posts accomplish it bright they are not pleased.

A beginning annular of criticism for the blur erupted afterwards the bivouac and affiche for "Nina" were apparent Wednesday.

Saldana acquaint a adduce from the accompanist and civilian rights activist on Twitter, and Simone's acreage responded with: "Cool adventure but amuse yield Nina's name out your mouth. For the blow of your life."

Simone's babe and others accept decried the best to casting a lighter-skinned extra as the African-American activist back Saldana took the allotment in 2012. Her derma was allegedly blurred for the role, and she wears a prosthetic nose.

At the time, Simone's daughter, Simone Kelly, said: "Appearance-wise this is not the best choice."

"My mother was aloft at a time if she was told her adenoids was too wide, her derma was too dark," Kelly told the New York Times in a 2012 interview.

Simone's aphotic actualization and commonly African actualization were axial to her character and abstraction of atramentous beauty, so casting anyone with Saldana's added European actualization is galling, said Miriam J. Petty, an abettor assistant in the radio-television-film administration at Northwestern University.

"It's aweless and demonstrates the abyss of the benightedness of the being authoritative the blur of the actual accountable of the film," she said.

The Simone acreage tweeted Wednesday: "Hopefully humans activate to accept this is painful. Gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, nauseating, soul-crushing."

The acreage is advancement admirers to authority alert parties on the film's absolution date rather than watching "Nina."

Petty, aswell a adherent Simone fan, aswell encourages admirers to break away.

"I anticipate it's important not to abutment this blur financially, because the botheration with biopics is they become the endure word," she said. "Whatever can be done to discredit this blur as not the absolute one, by advantage of the abstract problem, the actual arrant abstract botheration of this casting."

The singer's acreage cooperated with producers of the Netflix documentary "What Happened, Miss Simone?" which was nominated for an Oscar this year.

BET Architect Robert L. Johnson, architect and administrator of the flat absolution "Nina," describes Saldana's achievement as "an aberrant and anesthetic tribute."

"She gave her affection and body to the role and displayed her amazing talent," he said in a account Thursday. "The a lot of important affair is that adroitness or superior of achievement should never be advised on the base of color, or ethnicity, or concrete likeness."

Petty asked: "Then why put Zoe Saldana in brown-face makeup?"

The casting best follows a Hollywood attitude of hiring lighter-skinned actors to play humans who would by itself accept amber skin. Filmmakers apologized months afore "Gods of Egypt" was appear for casting Scottish amateur Gerard Butler and Danish amateur Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as allegorical Egyptian gods.

Representatives for Saldana and the Simone acreage did not acknowledge to requests for animadversion Thursday from The Associated Press.

RLJ Entertainment will absolution "Nina" in theaters, agenda HD and video on appeal on April 22.
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