So you’ve probably heard about it by now. Back on Friday, Deadline reported that James Franco was set to play Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Alina of Cuba, a film by director Miguel Bardem. When I saw the news just as I was wrapping up for the day, my first thought was…“Well, let’s see where this goes. Maybe nobody will notice how bad this looks because the film seems pretty small. Probably nobody will see it anyway.”
Boy, was I wrong.
Latino actors spoke out big time over the weekend, rightfully denouncing Franco’s casting as he lacks any Latino roots. The most vocal critic was actually another actor, John Leguizamo, who expressed his rage in an Instagram post…
“How is this still going on? How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well? No more appropriation Hollywood and streamers! Boycott! This F’d up! Plus seriously difficult story to tell without aggrandizement, which would be wrong! I don’t got a [problem] with Franco but he ain’t Latino!”
Leguizamo has made it a driving force of his career that the Latino community get to tell their stories in Hollywood, whether that’s by hiring more Latino filmmakers or having Latino actors play Latino roles. So this really speaks to his core issue.Leguizamo continued to speak on the issue in further postings.
The film’s producer, John Martinez O’Felan, came to Franco’s defense, stating that Franco is of Latin-Portuguese heritage and slamming Leguizamo’s comments as ignorant…
“I want to point out that his odd comments, if you base them on genealogy, are a blind attack and lack any factual substance,” O’Felan said.
Franco’s father is of Portuguese and Swiss descent (his mother is Jewish), but to say he’s Latino is a stretch.
The casting of Franco was actually approved by Alina Fernandez, the actual subject of Alina of Cuba and the illegitimate daughter of Castro from a tryst he had with socialite Natalia “Naty” Revuelta. The role of Fernandez is being played by Ana Villafañe, while Revuelta is portrayed by Mia Maestro.
O’Felan adds, “Finding and convincing James Franco to play Castro, was a fun and challenging process and has been the collaborative work of the universe, because our director’s original order was to find an actor who holds a close physical resemblance to the real Castro to build from, along with finding someone Alina Fernandez would strongly endorse. To get there on such a tough look to cast, we used Fidel Castro’s ancient Galician heraldry as our focal compass, and then combed through the entire ranks of actors with Latin roots in Hollywood to find someone who has a similar facial structure. In executing a close search into our hopefuls through the eye of Spanish and Portuguese genealogy which the Galicians held, we found that James, by far, had the closest facial likeness of our Industry’s leading actors, meaning that the focus would be to build out his character accent and we’d have a stunning on-screen match to intrigue audiences and bring the story to life with true visual integrity. Altogether, working with such a supportive and exciting cast has been a true blessing to our team and project.”
Alina Fernandez herself also gave her support to Franco, telling Deadline…
“James Franco has an obvious physical resemblance with Fidel Castro, besides his skills and charisma.”
Last week was not great for Latinx representation in Hollywood. First, Batgirl gets canceled, and with it the portrayal of Barbara Gordon by Dominican-American actress Leslie Grace. And now the casting of Franco as Fidel Castro is at the very least questionable, indicative of Hollywood’s continued problems with cultural appropriation at worst.
All this said, Alina of Cuba has a lot more attention now than it EVER would’ve received otherwise. I still don’t think anybody is going to see this movie, whether Franco is in it or not.