‘Cool Runnings’ Director Battled Disney Over Jamaican Accents, Told Cast He’d ‘Get Fired If You Don’t Sound Like Sebastian the Crab’
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With Disney’s beloved sports comedy “Cool Runnings” celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, director Jon Turteltaub and the cast reunited for an interview with The Independent and revealed their battle against Disney over the film’s Jamaican accents. Loosely based on the debut of the Jamaican national bobsleigh team at the 1988 Winter Olympics, the film got its start outside of Disney with a script that was full of “drugs, racism and the characters were getting laid a lot,” cast member Rawle D. Lewis recalled.
“I saw it morph into the movie that it is now,” he added. “It was something that had never been told before – Jamaicans in tights? People were like, ‘How’s this going to go under the Disney umbrella?’”
Walt Disney Studios executives allegedly tussled with Turteltaub over the cast’s accent work.
“They wanted me to sound like a black Aladdin,” said Just Leon. “They wanted a Disney version. It was tough because if anybody wants to be authentic, it’s me — but I’m a professional and I had to do the job.”
Malik Yoba added, “They’d say, ‘People in Middle America won’t be able to understand you.’ At that time, people had less access to cultural differences and didn’t know how Jamaican really sounded.”
Turteltaub said he eventually received a phone call from then-Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg at 1 a.m.: “He said, ‘If you can’t get these accents to where I can understand them clearly, I’ll find a director who can.'”
“The next day, I told the cast, ‘I’m going to get fired if you don’t sound like Sebastian the Crab. Please don’t get me fired,’” Turteltaub added. “We joked about it but they got it. They understood. ‘We’re not going to do Sebastian the Crab but we’re going to make an Americanized version of the movie that people around the world can understand’.”
Turteltaub expressed uncertainty when asked if the making of “Cool Runnings” would be different if it was shot in 2023.
“Times have changed a lot in 30 years,” he said. “There’s zero chance I’d get this job – and I probably shouldn’t get it. I’m on the side of the people who say I shouldn’t have directed this and yet we ended up with a pretty great movie. It’s tricky.”
“Cool Runnings” is available to rent on Amazon or stream on Disney+. Head over to The Independent’s website to read more from the cast on the film’s 30th anniversary.
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