Casting fail incident in The Hobbit.

[mijan]

This is relevant to our interests:

(Taken directly from THIS article in Entertainment Weekly)
"A casting agent working on director Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was fired from the production after placing ads in a regional New Zealand newspaper seeking extras with “light skin tones,” according to Agence France-Presse."

The issue was brought to light when a woman of Pakistani heritage wanted to become a background extra as a Hobbit, and was told succinctly that they were only looking for (quote) "light-skinned people."

"...video footage shows the casting agent telling people at an audition, 'We are looking for light-skinned people. I’m not trying to be … whatever. It’s just the brief. You’ve got to look like a Hobbit.'"  (So, the casting guy was caught directly on tape saying this.  His words.)

And a more detailed article on Google news.

And on the Atlantic Wire.

This... shall be interesting.  They're saying the casting agent was NOT told to discriminate by race, and he's been fired.  I wonder - was he really acting on his own?  Was he sacrificed for the PR?  What were his instructions for casting?  What does a Hobbit look like anyway?  (Yes, we have the description from the books, which describes short folks with big feet and curly brown hair, but no specific racial indicators beyond that.)  I wonder how fandom will react.  Thoughts, anyone?

(Edited title to avoid misinterpretation.)

Comments

[midnight-birth.livejournal.com]

Not to drive by your conversation, but I think it's important to know whether he was told this or did this of his own accord because he should have gotten fired either way, but the people who told him to do this (which, in my opinion, is very likely in the industry) should get fired too. It's common in the face of scandal to make someone the big sacrificial goat, but that's how a lot of people get away with things like this, since once the person directly responsible is dealt with, people stop asking further.

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

This is a good point, except a production company can't really fire itself from a film project, I don't think. *headscratch*