Jamie Foxx said the “sensitive” nature around comedy is preventing the release of his directorial feature debut — All-Star Weekend, a basketball comedy that stars Robert Downey, Jr., as a Mexican man.
Foxx spoke about his movie in a recent interview with Cinemablend.
“It’s been tough with the lay of the land when it comes to comedy,” he said when asked when All-Star Weekend will be released.
“We’re trying to break open the sensitive corners where people go back to laughing again… We hope to keep them laughing and run them right into All-Star Weekend because we were definitely going for it.”
All-Star Weekend stars Foxx and Jeremy Piven as buddies who win tickets to the annual NBA event. On their road trip to Los Angeles, they encounter all sorts of mishaps, including a run-in with Downey, Jr.’s Mexican character. Foxx reportedly plays multiple roles, including a white police officer.
Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey and Jr. attend LOS ANGELES PREMIERE OF “THE SOLOIST” at PARAMOUNT THEATRE on April 20, 2009 in HOLLYWOOD, CA. (DAVID CROTTY/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
The casting of white actors as characters of other ethnicities has become taboo among the woke left and their allies in the entertainment media.
Last year, the casting of Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz in the movie Being the Ricardos was criticized for its lack of “Latinx” authenticity, with activists complaining on social media that a Cuban actor should play the role of Arnaz. (Bardem is from Spain.)
The backlash was part of a larger trend among left-wing activists to pressure Hollywood to embrace so-called woke casting, which would prevent white actors from playing Latino roles and heterosexual actors from playing gay roles.
Tom Hanks recently said a heterosexual actor couldn’t play his Oscar-winning Philadelphia role if the movie had been made today, claiming modern audiences wouldn’t accept the “inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy.”
“No, and rightly so,” he said.
Actor Eddie Redmayne recently disowned his Oscar-nominated performance in The Danish Girl, in which he played a male-to-female transgender person.
No distributor has been announced for All-Star Weekend.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com.
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