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The one thing I can’t forgive OUAT for is how they presented a character last season who was very clearly not white, who is being played in adult form by a very white actress.
I just can’t think of any defence for this. Maybe they didn’t have it planned that Lily was Maleficent’s daughter last season, and they had an idea for who the father was, but if it’s true they hadn’t written that plot they could have just changed who her father was.
Whitewashing at the best of times is extremely racist. We live in a world were PoC are under-represented and often reduced to racist stereotypes, and are rarely seen in sci-fi or fantasy shows like OUAT. When a character is whitewashed, it takes away from what little representation PoC get. In OUAT, there is an overwhelmingly white(and heternormative let’s not forgive it for that either) cast.
We’ve seen a PoC character, albeit a villain introduced this season only to exit the show 4 episodes in. We’ve seen any number of white characters introduced this season – the Frozen cast, the sorcerer’s apprentice, the author, etc… it just keeps adding up without any PoC to balance it out. In that context, taking a character that was so important to Emma’s development and rendering her white is unforgiveable.
I just don’t understand how showrunners and casting departments can continue to do such blatantly racist things. A month from now we’ll be seeing two of the few relatively positively depicted characters of Romani heritage go on the big screen(Wanda & Pietro Maximoff) played by white actors. We’re seeing an adaption of Ghost in the Shell with a white american woman playing a woman with a very distinctly japanese name. It seems like we’re often convinced we’re living in a post-racial world, but yet we’re still so afraid of showing non-white people on TV?
I’m just so angry about this. Nothing against Agnes Bruckner personally, but she should not in a million years have been casted in the role of Lily.
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The fact that Nicole is Latin doesn’t mean that she can’t play White Characters and it does not mean that Lily is Latin. Nicole seems white with a slightly darker skin tone (kind of like Lana – which is what they were going for at that time since Lily was supposed to be a “basically young Regina”).
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I’m just so angry about this. Nothing against Agnes Bruckner personally, but she should not in a million years have been casted in the role of Lily.
Several of us on here were pretty disgusted back when it first became apparent that they’ve whitewashed a character. Would they get a non-Asian actress to play a different aged version of Mulan? Let’s assume the answer to that is no. So why were non-Latina actresses even considered for the different aged version of a character that’s been previously cast as Latina? It’s mind boggling how thoughtless they were with this casting.
. Nicole seems white with a slightly darker skin tone (kind of like Lana
Isn’t Lana a latina?
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I have avoided this topic on the forum but I really don’t feel I can continue to remain quiet. I would like to start of with a basic fact – I am a latina (I also happen to be paler than Casper the ghost and blonde) and would like to clarify that it is a misassumption to generalize all latinos as being non-white and falling into 1 category. Hispanic countries just like the good old USA are home to many people of different races and ethnic backgrounds, not just one big lump sum. There are black, white, native american, asian, bi-racial, multi-racial etc. persons in Hispanic Counties. Generalizing that all latinos are olive skinned aka non-white persons with dark hair is just (forgive me) a tad ignorant. Being latino or hispanic is a more a cultural background not so much a race one especially due to all the different counties the term encompasses. A person of latin decent should be able to play any role just like any person or any other ethnicticity should be able to. For heaven sake, just look at Broadway where Lin-Manuel Miranda (a latino) plays Alexander Hamilton and Christopher Jackson (an African American) plays George Washington in the musical Hamilton. Let’s stop getting stuck on race and focus on if the person playing the role is doing the role justice. Particularly when in this case we haven’t even seen the actor’s protrayal of the role. Yes, the casting director should have taken into consideration that the young actor personally was hispanic, but nevertheless, does that totally negate the selection of Agnes Bruckner to be able to play the role? Let’s stop focusing on race and sterotypes, and focus more on abilities of an actor to bring life to the characters we all love on OUAT …. ok leaving my soapbox now 🙂
I’m well aware that “Latina” and “Hispanic” aren’t one race, but the point is that is that Lily was clearly played by a non-white or at least racially ambiguous actress and is now being played by a white woman. It’s taking roles away from women of colour.
I think we should be critical of yet more white women being cast in this show, anyway. It’s gotten crazy at this point – OUAT had a race problem going into this season and did nothing but add more white characters, with the exception of Ursula who got written off after 4 episodes. It’s crazy.
The truth is when it comes to racism is that it’s white people, and the wider institution they represent that are “stuck on race”. It’s very victim blamey to throw the buck back at other PoC or people advocating for this case and not those who continually undercast PoC in everything. Focusing on race when there is a race problem is a good thing. Problems don’t get better by not talking about them.
I don't cause commotions, I am one.
Character descriptions aside, it’s pretty clear that Lily was indeed Latina. I’m not sure if Adam and Eddy had the idea to make her Mal’s daughter in 4A. It could have been towards the ends of the Frozen arc when things were wrapping up.
It did bother me a great deal when there was speculation that Agnes is Lily. Then I read filming updates that she had to wear eye contacts to change her eye color, dye her hair, make-up to make us believe that she was Lily. All I could think of doing was cry in a corner because you wouldn’t have to do all this stuff if you hired a Latina actress to fill the role.
It will be interesting when SDCC rolls around and someone inevitably asks them this specific question in regard to Lily and see how they respond to it.
I do hope that this doesn’t become a trend in casting when it comes to this show. Of course, I want them to hire who is right for the role, but not another repeat of what they’re doing with Lily.
Whitewashing versus affirmative action is a lose-lose debate:
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I actually think Lily being Mal’s child was their plan all along. I brought this up in another thread, but I have a feeling this biblical quote is where they got the name: “Like a lily among the thorns, So is my darling among the maidens.”
Source: http://biblehub.com/songs/2-2.htm
Cmon, lily among the “thorns”? An obvious connection to Maleficent. As for why they cast a latina as young Lily in the first place, they probably wanted a dark haired girl to parallel Regina during “Breaking Glass”, rather than casting her because Nicole Munoz is latina. But it doesn’t make sense when Maleficent is clearly not latina. Nicole Munoz appears to be a white latina, so the race thing might not have been accounted for when casting the adult Lily. I could buy Agnes Bruckner playing Maleficent’s daughter, but it’s harder to swallow that Nicole Munoz grew up to look like Agnes Bruckner. In the end, it was probably an oversight rather than blatant whitewashing. Doesn’t excuse it by any means, but sigh.
@Crystal Princess i totally respect your opinion and your right to voice it, as i hope you respect mine to express and view a different aspect. I also see that OUAT/OUATW has broken barriers as to typical princesses, heroes and who plays them offerring more that other shows the opportunity for POC, cultural & ethnic backgrounds to play roles they usually do not protray (i.e. Ursula, Rapunzel, Lancelot, Poseidon, etc.). Neither you nor I are the casting directors, producers, writers, etc. and therefore, we cannot fully judge why this or that actor was ultimately given a role; to flatly assume it was racial based I believe is unfair. It is quite possible that the decision was made because they wanted adult Lily to more closely resemble Mal, while young Lily could have been played by a more wide net of actors. I truly don’t believe “race” was a factor nor that they are “whitewashing” the character. Let’s just agree to disagree 🙂
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