262 SHARES Share Tweet

An Olympic opening ceremony being forced to scrap a planned skit due to its racist overtones sounds like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch come to life, but here we are.

According to reports, the world famous Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen was slated to appear in a skit where she would be subsequently robbed by a black boy. The performance would have also included a police chase and while the scene would have ended in a positive manner, detractors believed that it was responsible for perpetuating racist stereotypes and was thus not acceptable.

Fernando Meirelles is the creative director of the ceremony and he believes that the press’ reaction to the proposed skit is unwarranted and shortsighted. His plan was to test a sketch where a street food vendor attempts to have their picture taken with the Brazilian beauty.

From there, security guards were supposed to react in an unkind manner, before Gisele intervenes on behalf of the street vendor. Others say that there was no robbery involved in the sketch and attribute the sketch’s uproar to a misunderstanding.

Meirelles says that the sketch was not cut from the show because of any racism backlash, but because it was simply not funny. For their part, the Olympic organizing committee has also denied that a robbery was slated to take place in the scuttled sketch, while declining to provide further details on the matter.

Typically, details involving the Olympic opening ceremony are meant to be kept under wraps, to protect the element of surprise. But in this instance, the Sunday run through before the show provided the press with ample opportunity to learn about the sketch and word quickly spread about its offensive nature.