Every so often in the magical land of Hollywood, a person who has every opportunity to just keep living their nice little life goes ahead and shows their whole ass. Today, cultural darling and actor Julia Fox treated us to a harrowing tale of being shown such an ass, in the form of a white director openly disparaging her desire to cast people of color. In a video posted to TikTok, Fox says she had an initial call with the director when he joined an unnamed project she’d been attached to for five years. During the call, Fox says she frankly expressed her desire to have diversity in their lead cast, eager to finally get the project off the ground. While she thought this initial conversation went well, “I guess it didn’t go well for him,” Fox says, as the director allegedly began trying to kick her off the project entirely. So a second call was had, but this time, Fox took notes.
Based on Fox’s recounting of the meeting —where she reads directly from said notes — the director offered the kind of social analysis you’d expect from someone whose only education came from episodes of Tucker Carlson Tonight: “White people have it really hard too, and plus diversity casting is like using Black people as puppets.” (To which Julia responds, “We’re actors, we’re all fucking puppets!”) “White people don’t have a duty to cast Black people because so many Black projects happen — and Asian projects — and nobody gets mad that there’s no white people in the cast.” “Turn on Netflix, turn on any streamer, it’s all Black projects.” “Go to India, all the movies in India have all Indian people, nobody gets mad that they don’t have diversity.” “What are you talking about? Wake up, we’re in 2024, this isn’t 2005 or something.”
While Fox does not name the director, she does offer several clues to his identity:
While it would be libelous for us to throw out guesses as to who exactly could fit this bill, this is the kind of sentiment that could unfortunately be lurking in the minds of any number of mediocre white guys with dreams of recolonizing India. Director and actress Natalie Morales even hopped into the comments to confirm the sentiment isn’t rare: “Unfortunately this has been a very familiar situation for me too, but under the surface,” she wrote. “They usually don’t have the guts to say it out loud in a meeting.” So, until Fox decides to drop a name: Every man is a suspect! (Except Sam Levinson.)
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