beating

Just my opinion: Charlie Hunnam fans have a reason to be worried about his post-Sons of Anarchy career. Hunnam’s career jumpoff was supposed to be Crimson Peak and Fifty Shades of Grey. But Crimson Peak sort of bombed and he dropped out of FSOG after a lot of breast-beating and dramatics. Then his next big career move was supposed to be King Arthur, and it was supposed to be Hunnam’s big summer offering this year… only the release date got pushed back from July 2016 to February 2017, which is not good. So what is Charlie’s next big career move? Playing a Mexican-American cartel drug-lord. Seriously. Before everyone completely loses it, Charlie has been cast as Edgar Valdez in what is a true story in the film American Drug Lord. Valdez was an American citizen, a high school football star in Texas, and he became the only American citizen to “rise to the level of cartel leader in Mexico.” Valdez was also light-skinned and blue-eyed, apparently, and he had the football and cartel-nickname of La Barbie. While Hunnam might “look the part,” this is still an example of Hollywood whitewashing. Even when Hollywood decides to make a movie about a Hispanic figure, they cast someone white (and English). Even when the casting could go any way – as in, they could have cast a Latino actor or a mixed-race actor – producers always go for the default white actor. As Vanity Fair points out, the industry press is already calling out this casting choice as whitewashing. I think the announcement came at a bad time too, when we’re in the middle of a discussion about representation and diversity and #OscarsSoWhite. This also comes on the heels of some particularly egregious whitewashing examples in film, whether it’s Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in Pan, or Emma Stone playing an Asian-American woman in Aloha or everyone in Ridley Scott’s Exodus. Ugh. Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.