When it comes to diversity, Hollywood's lost in the 'Woods'

Arienne Thompson | USA TODAY

It's not until about a third of the way through Disney's Into the Woods — when Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) is running away from her prince (Chris Pine) at the royal ball — that we glimpse a person of color.

Even then, the actor in question is an extra. Later, when (spoiler alert) Cinderella and the prince get married, we see a few more non-white extras, in the form of peasant children, cheering on the newlyweds.

And then, that's it. The rest of the fairy tale, which is up for three Golden Globes Sunday night, is lily-white.

So why would a film, unbound by any historical or factual requirements, portray an imaginary world in which everyone — save for a partygoer and a few dirty kids — is white?

"I don't know if it comes down to the casting director or if it comes down to the filmmaker — it's hard to know who is making those final decisions," says casting director Linda Lowy, who is responsible for the diversity seen on Shonda Rhimes' ABC dramas Grey's Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder .

USA TODAY's requests to speak to Into the Woods director Rob Marshall or others associated with the production were declined.

"Somebody high up in the chain needs to be demanding diversity and inclusion (and saying), 'We have to have this feel like reality,' " Lowy says. "Even if it's a fairy tale."

But the Broadway musical-turned-movie isn't the only film project with a diversity problem.

When news broke earlier this week that Scarlett Johansson was cast as the Japanese lead in Dreamworks' upcoming anime flick Ghost In the Shell, Twitter erupted with accusations of whitewashing. BuzzFeed's Ryan Broderick tweeted, "Ah yes, when I think of Ghost In the Shell's Major Matoko Kusanagi I definitely think 'white lady.' "

The Christian Bale-led Exodus: Gods and Kings faced similar backlash last month for using white actors exclusively in leading roles in the story about Egyptians. Director Ridley Scott and Fox head Rupert Murdoch responded to the criticism defensively.

"Since when are Egyptians not white? All I know are," Murdoch tweeted. "Of course Egyptians are Middle Eastern, but far from black. They treated blacks as slaves."

Scott said the casting came down to money. "I can't mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such," the director told Variety. "I'm just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn't even come up."

Mitchell W. Block, an Academy Award-nominated producer and film professor, says Scott's justification reflects the reality of the business.

"The studios are a business. Hollywood has had a long history of making films for the masses and the big shift in the last decade is now they're making films for global markets," he says. "But that doesn't mean that because China is the largest market, Chinese actors are being cast. They won't pull big audiences in America and Europe."



For investors and producers, there's no benefit in deviating from casting norms, Block says.

"Hollywood doesn't give you points for being innovative, they just give you points for making money. If you can't deliver the global audience, your career will be shortened," he says. "If you're a shareholder in Warner, you don't want to see innovation at the $150 million level."

Taking a chance on non-white talent has paid off for a few new films. Annie, starring Oscar-nominated child actor Quvenzhané Wallis in the title role, and Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay, have both scooped up Golden Globe nominations, including best picture and best director nods for the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic. And Annie has made $74 million against its $65 million budget since its release Dec. 19.

Unconventional casting might have helped Exodus, which cost $140 million to make but has only pulled in $62 million at the box office. Woods, with its all-white cast, has soared, nearly doubling the $50 million it cost to make, a success story that may explain Hollywood's longstanding aversion to risk when it comes to race.

From Mickey Rooney as a Japanese man in 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's to Angelina Jolie as mixed-race journalist Mariane Pearl in 2007's A Mighty Heart, white actors continue to be top of mind for plum roles, despite the underrepresentation of people of color at the acting, directing and producing levels.

When white actress Rooney Mara was cast last year as Tiger Lily in Warner Bros.' upcoming Pan, a retelling of Peter Pan,critics objected to the choice, saying the role should have gone to a Native American, staying true to J.M. Barrie's literary classic.

By casting Mara, the studio is "now free to offer up a hot mess of cultural appropriations and the typical mainstream caricaturizations (sic) of indigenous people being played off as 'entertainment,' " wrote Johnnie Jae in Native Max magazine.

A study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found that of the 100 highest-grossing films of 2013, only about a quarter of speaking roles featured non-white actors. The study found no appreciable change in these numbers since 2007 and that they don't jibe with the current racial makeup of the USA, which is nearly 30% non-white.

So why does Hollywood have such a blind spot when it comes to being inclusive and, more importantly, realistic?

Lowy says it's a top-down problem characterized by a lack of opportunity at every strata within the Hollywood machine.

"If you have a black showrunner like Shonda Rhimes or a black director like Steve McQueen, or even a producer who is non-Caucasian, you have a better chance of filling roles (with diverse actors), (but) the percentage of those people is so small," she says.

Black filmmakers represented only 6.5% of Hollywood directors in 2013, the USC study found.

"That trickles down to theater schools and what people decide they want to do for a living," Lowy says. "If you're a black actress — any actress — has to think about, 'How am I going to support myself?' So we need to fatten up the list. We need to fatten up the Asian actor category. That will only come with opportunity."

Actress Lorraine Toussaint says the lack of opportunity for non-whites in Hollywood breeds feelings of unfulfilled potential and a sense of invisibility.

"We are left out often by virtue of benign neglect and an appalling lack of imagination. Where are actors like myself? We can only make so much lemonade out of lemons," says Toussaint. "That wealth of who I am is screaming to be re-qualified into the work, of finding work that is worthy of my talent. There is nothing sadder than the idea of dying with songs unsung. "

Toussaint, who stars on Netflix's Orange is the New Black and in Selma, nominated for four Golden Globes, says the absence of color is egregiously noticeable in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, where characters can be any ethnicity.

"Sci-fi is my favorite genre. I am steeped in fantasy and horror and sci-fi, but, my God, I have yet to be cast in anything resembling what's going on in Into the Woods, " she says. "I don't take anything from those actors or from the work or the creative vision, I just think the dominate culture doesn't even think about it" — or think it applies to them.

Director Peter Jackson faced backlash in 2010 when a casting director working on the first Hobbit film specified that potential extras should have "light skin tones." That casting director was subsequently fired, Salon.com reported, and Jackson's representatives released a statement saying the specification was "not something we instructed or condoned." Yet the final Hobbit movie, which has made $226 million at the box office since its release last month, is still a mostly white affair.

Jackson says he's simply staying true to author J.R.R. Tolkein's vision.

"We only cast because of the story we're telling. We don't have a philosophy of the people we're casting," Jackson says. "We cast once we've written the scripts. We look for the best actors to play those roles. The roles are well-defined because of Tolkien."

Actress Gabrielle Union says Hollywood's standard response about using the "best actors for the job" is an excuse to ignore diversity.

"It's frustrating in the sense that you want a chance to fail. That's all Hollywood is. The casting process is giving people opportunities to fail," says Union, now starring opposite Chris Rock in Top Five. "So when you're saying, 'We just went with the best person,' that's all good and well if every person was considered. But every person isn't considered, so this idea of the best person is sort of a random, made-up thing to make up for a lack of inclusion in the audition process."

Some attitudes from the top about race were revealed in the recent Sony e-mail hack. But those messages, including exchanges about President Obama being exclusively interested in black films and Denzel Washington's overseas appeal, were more illuminating than alarming, says Union.

"You would have to be really naive to be surprised," she says. "I would love to say Hollywood has cornered the market on damaging e-mails, but I would venture to say those are across the country and at every studio and in every sector of business."

Hollywood hasn't completely turned its back on diversity though.

The highly anticipated J.J. Abrams-helmed Star Wars film, expected at the end of the year, is being praised for its creative and inclusive cast, which includes Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o, Oscar Isaac and British newcomer John Boyega, who is featured prominently in a recent teaser trailer. And in one of the hacked Sony e-mails, the studio's co-chairman Amy Pascal put her support behind British hunk Idris Elba to play the next James Bond.

Still, there's plenty of work to be done, says screenwriter Jason Hall, whose Clint Eastwood-directed film American Sniper, based on a true story, is in limited release and opens nationwide Jan. 16.

"I don't see people casting for (diversity)," says Hall, adding that Sniper took care to accurately portray characters' races, including the role of a black Navy SEAL (played by Cory Hardrict). "They're marketing stuff to certain people and I don't know why. There's a huge Latino audience and you'd think there would be more films targeted at that audience, and you'd think white audiences would enjoy those films. For me, it's about going back to the truth. That's what's going to resonate more than anything I can make up."

Lowy says one of the bright spots in the fight for better ethnic inclusion in Hollywood is television, with new shows like Empire, Black-ish, How to Get Away With Murder and Jane the Virgin reflecting the country's demography in a more realistic way.

"It feels like television is ahead of film, with Shonda Rhimes leading the pack. When you're trying to get actors approved by the studio for a pilot, they want a diverse cast. They will demand it, and they will reject anything less. So, I think it comes down to the people who greenlight the projects."

Toussaint is convinced that getting more of those people who truly believe in diversity, and not just tokenism or political correctness, into real positions of power, decision-making and green-lighting is the solution.

"We've got to have more Oprahs in the room and Avas (DuVernay) and Brads (Pitt) and (Steve) McQueens — the people who are walking the talk," she says. "You know Brad Pitt is walking the talk because it is evident (in) the people in front of and behind the camera.

"It makes me grateful to the people in this town who are supportive, because they're smart and they know the world is very, very small. People ultimately want to see themselves on the screen. That's why we do it. (Film) is meant to reveal."

Contributing: Donna Freydkin