Thandie Newton Says She Turned Down ‘Charlie’s Angels’ Due to Amy Pascal’s Racist Stereotyping
Thandie Newton revealed that she turned down a role in Charlie’s Angels after Amy Pascal used racist stereotypes during a meeting.
Pascal says she has “no recollection of the events [Thandie] describes,” which…convenient.
Thandie Newton is opening up about why she turned down a part in 2000’s Charlie’s Angels movie—telling Vulture that Amy Pascal used “stereotypes of how to be more convincing as a Black character” during a meeting. (FYI, Pascal is the former head of Sony Pictures who was ousted after her racist emails leaked in the Sony hack.)
“Then the head of the studio—I had a meeting with her, and she said, ‘Look, I don’t mean to be politically incorrect, but the character as written and you playing the role, I just feel like we’ve got to make sure that it’s believable.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean? What changes would you have to make?’ She’s like, ‘Well, you know, the character, as written, she’s been to university and is educated.’ I’m like, ‘I’ve been to university. I went to Cambridge.’ She went, ‘Yeah, but you’re different.’ She’s like, ‘Maybe there could be a scene where you’re in a bar and she gets up on a table and starts shaking her booty.’ She’s basically reeling off these stereotypes of how to be more convincing as a Black character. Everything she said, I was like, ‘Nah, I wouldn’t do that.’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, but you’re different. You’re different.’ That was Amy Pascal.”
Pascal offered an “apology” in a statement to Vulture, saying she was “horrified” to hear Thandie’s recollection of the meeting and that “while I take her words seriously, I have no recollection of the events she describes nor do any of her representatives who were present at that casting session. I’ve long considered Thandie a friend; I’m thankful that I’ve had the chance to make movies with her, and I hope to work with her again in the future.”
FYI, in the same interview, Thandie talked about her meeting with Charlie’s Angels director Joseph McGinty, who literally said this to her: “I can’t wait for this. The first shot is going to be…you’re going to think it’s, like, yellow lines down a road, and you pull back and you realize it’s the stitching because the denim is so tight on your ass it’s going to look like tarmac.”
Literally WTF.
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