The Jamie Lloyd Company has hit back after its production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” has been the subject of what they call a “barrage of deplorable racial abuse” aimed at an unnamed cast member.

The play, directed by Jamie Lloyd (“Sunset Boulevard”), stars “Spider-Man: No Way Home” star Tom Holland as Romeo and Francesca Amewaduh-Rivers (“Sex Education”) as Juliet.

On Friday, the Jamie Lloyd Company issued a statement, saying: “Following the announcement of our ‘Romeo & Juliet’ cast, there has been a barrage of deplorable racial abuse online directed towards a member of our company. This must stop.”

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Following the announcement of our ‘Romeo & Juliet’ cast, there has been a barrage of deplorable racial abuse online directed towards a member of our company. This must stop.”

    I’m guessing the racist jerks complaining about the casting would be really upset if they knew that Juliet was played by a dude named Robert Goffe in the very first performance of the play in 1597. source These bigots are so busy complaining about a replacement in race for the actor playing Juliet that they’re not even consistent asking for Juliet to be played the original gender of the actor in the first performance. Where is your consistency, bigots?

    • hannes3120@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

      Also observe how those “replacement in race” people are completely silent on the 3 body problem show that made pretty much all of the Chinese characters from the book into westerners

        • snooggums@midwest.social
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          8 months ago

          Tom Cruise wasn’t the last Samurai.

          Ken Watanabe was the last Samurai. Or maybe the group of Samurai, since it can be singular or plural. Either way it wasn’t Middle Tooth Cruise.

          • Railcar8095@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            The official translation to Spanish made it clear it’s singular (El último samurái)

            Similar thing happened with “the last Jedi”, some even freaked out that out counted as a spoiler.

        • dudinax@programming.dev
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          8 months ago

          He’s not a samurai, but Japan needed a white guy to tell them that samurai were an important part of their historical tradition, otherwise they might have forgotten.

        • ArcoIris@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          Just to clarify to anyone who hasn’t watched it, his character was NOT Japanese, he was an American soldier brought to Japan to train Japanese recruits before being captured by the samurai and slowly learning their ways. I shouldn’t even NEED to say that, but we apparently live in a world where characters having their ethnicities swapped with no explanation or forethought or deeper meaning is just a matter of course now.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I haven’t watched the Netflix show. Do they actually cast western actors in the roles during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (purge)?

        • hannes3120@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          Ye Wenjie is the only asian main characters that are completely true to the books and casted accordingly.

          Jin Cheng and Da Shi (replaces Cheng Xin) are the other Asian casted main characters. The rest of the main. Cast ist European/American

            • TrejoPhD@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              No. That person is messing with you.

              The China stuff in the past still happens in China.

              The present day stuff is a bunch of diff races now, not just Chinese.

      • LeroyJenkins@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        who said everybody is completely silent? nobody in the states aside from sci Fi nerds knew about 3 body until now. and for all the Chinese people I’ve asked, myself included, who read the book before the show came out are pissed they replaced the Chinese hero characters with not Chinese people and made all the Chinese people the bad guys. it’s fucked and not a correct comparison here…

    • Pronell@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Thanks for the historical context - I knew most of it personally but not the name of the actor who played Juliet first.

      It’s nice to know that kind of information has survived so far. History is weird like that.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      Hey! Robby was white! That’s the most important part. Whatever, the right is fucking stupid.

      Well done with the historical reference.