While Natalie Portman’s new film, Annihilation, does have a diverse cast—including actors Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Benedict Wong—it’s still being accused of whitewashing two of the characters, played by Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. E! reports that Portman’s and Leigh’s characters in the book trilogy Annihilation is based on (Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach) are of Asian and half–Native American descent, respectively—but the actresses themselves are both white. This casting move has outraged several organizations, including Media Action Network for Asian Americans and American Indians in Film and Television, who called out Annihilation earlier this week.
Though Portman heard about this controversy for the first time in a new interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, she admitted that it does, in fact, sound problematic.
“I’m hearing that for the first time. That does sound problematic, but I’m hearing it here first,” she said. “We need more representation of Asians on film, of Hispanics on film, of blacks on film, women—and particularly women of color—Native Americans…. I mean, we just don’t have enough representation. And also these categories like ‘white’ and ‘nonwhite’—they’re imagined classifications but have real-life consequences. I hope that begins to change, because I think everyone is becoming more conscious of it, which hopefully will make change.”
Alex Garland, the film’s director, expressed his thoughts on the matter in an interview with Deadline, contending Portman’s and Leigh’s characters did not have names or ethnicities in the book he adapted. (For context: The ethnicities of Portman’s and Leigh’s characters aren’t revealed in the first Southern Reach book, but they are in the second.)
“This is an awkward problem for me, because I think whitewashing is a serious and real issue, and I fully support the groups drawing attention to it,” Garland said. “But the characters in the novel I read and adapted were not given names or ethnicities. I cast the film reacting only to the actors I met in the casting process, or actors I had worked with before. There was no studio pressure to cast white. The casting choices were entirely mine. As a middle-aged white man, I can believe I might at times be guilty of unconscious racism, in the way that potentially we all are. But there was nothing cynical or conspiratorial about the way I cast this movie.”
