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Tuesday, December 8, 2009 | 7:50am
Union Backs My Beef, Winnie Mandela Should Be Played By Native, Not J-Hud
The Creative Workers Union of South Africa says her casting in upcoming film undermines countries development in film
Remember a couple weeks ago when I got on my soapbox about the fact that Jennifer Hudson and other actors & actresses have been cast to play African characters in films that are intended to be historically accurate. Well it looks as if The Creative Workers Union of South Africa, the South African equivalent to I guess the Screen Actors guild is up in arms over Hudson’s casting as Winnie Mandela in an upcoming biography about the ex-wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela.
The criticism which is completely justified in my eyes comes as Morgan Freeman hits the big screen as Nelson in the controversial Clint Eastwood‘s film “Invictus.“ The Creative Workers Union of South Africa has issued a statement saying its beef is that using foreign actors undermines the efforts to develop the national film industry.
“It can’t happen that we want to develop our own Hollywood and yet bring in imports,” the union’s president Mabutho Sithole said in The Citizen newspaper.
“This decision must be reversed, it must be stopped now,” union secretary general Oupa Lebogo said in The Times. “If the matter doesn’t come up for discussion, we will push for a moratorium to be placed on the film.”
Unfortunately as many of our Nation citizen so accurately pointed out, the decision is unlikely to be overturned as the union demands. J-Hud is an Academy winning actress and her name carries with it box office buzz. In this time of economic uncertainty, movie producers are even less inclined to entrust the success of their projects to little known actors. And this is nothing against Hudson but I think even she would agree that there is some We’ll see what happens but I do feel justifed that I’m not the only on shouting from the rooftops.
FILED IN Editorials, Honeys, Movies, News
who cares what you or they think, This movie is not being funded by South Africans which means their opinions mean nothing..
And another thing, U better complain the next time an South African comes to the US and plays a US figure..
This is all opinion, bruh… “U better” is an order…WTF are you to tell anyone here “u better” anything? PEACE!
You are obviously new here, so here is some advice, change your attitude or change websites.
Gettem Goons. Hahaha.
The only one I can think of is Charlize Theron. I think when playing a character of a particular origin as impoverished and as downtrodden as South Africa has been since Apartheid its important for those powers that be to give back especially if they’re exploiting the story from that culture to begin with.
I can see it both ways, have African actors & actresses play the parts would make the movie more accurate, but having an Oscar winner in the film would probably cause it to make more $. PEACE!!!
Well this is all normal Hollywood to me. They interchange “nationalities” as long as the RACE matches up. They do that with Asians more than anything. The stars will be big name people or nationals and the EXTRA’S or supporting cast will be the natives. Take Slumdog Millionaire for example.
The “Indian” star is from England not India.
Still Indian though. Just because you’re black doesn’t make you from Africa lol.
SMASH?!
LOL! one-track mind! I was thinking the same thing, tho!!! She looks GOOD in that pic!!!
Unless jennifer is planning to lose a lot of weight it has to be brought up that winnie mandela was slimmer than jennifer when she was younger,
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/2636140/Hulton-Archive
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/91120779/Hulton-Archive
and i assume most of the film will take place during her younger days.The SA industry will never grow if we rely on hollywood actors for recognition,Tsotsi and District 9 did quite well without hollywood actors,and as a result,the south african actors who were in the films have a bigger profile than they did before
She does kind of look like her though. More than I thought.
Question to all…..Is it ok for Freeman and Damon to play South Africans and not Hudson? Just wondering.
It doesn’t matter to me as long as the Race matches up. Now if Matt Damon was playing Mandela
The Nationality isn’t always going to match up. The only recent uproar that I can think of was when Angelina Jolie played a mixed race wife and there defintely was an uproar about it.
This has happened frequently. Denzel played Steve Biko back in the day, (See the movie Freedom Cry if you don’t know who Steve Biko is), Whoopi Goldberg played Mary Masembuko in Sarafina, and Danny Glover played Nelson Mandela in Mandela, and now Morgan Freeman is playing Mandela. Its called adding star power to a film and like gphi said it brings more money into the box office.