The Jamie Lloyd Company has hit back after its production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” has been the subject of what they call a “barrage of deplorable racial abuse” aimed at an unnamed cast member.

The play, directed by Jamie Lloyd (“Sunset Boulevard”), stars “Spider-Man: No Way Home” star Tom Holland as Romeo and Francesca Amewaduh-Rivers (“Sex Education”) as Juliet.

On Friday, the Jamie Lloyd Company issued a statement, saying: “Following the announcement of our ‘Romeo & Juliet’ cast, there has been a barrage of deplorable racial abuse online directed towards a member of our company. This must stop.”

    • snooggums@midwest.social
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      7 months ago

      Tom Cruise wasn’t the last Samurai.

      Ken Watanabe was the last Samurai. Or maybe the group of Samurai, since it can be singular or plural. Either way it wasn’t Middle Tooth Cruise.

      • Railcar8095@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        The official translation to Spanish made it clear it’s singular (El último samurái)

        Similar thing happened with “the last Jedi”, some even freaked out that out counted as a spoiler.

    • dudinax@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      He’s not a samurai, but Japan needed a white guy to tell them that samurai were an important part of their historical tradition, otherwise they might have forgotten.

    • ArcoIris@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      Just to clarify to anyone who hasn’t watched it, his character was NOT Japanese, he was an American soldier brought to Japan to train Japanese recruits before being captured by the samurai and slowly learning their ways. I shouldn’t even NEED to say that, but we apparently live in a world where characters having their ethnicities swapped with no explanation or forethought or deeper meaning is just a matter of course now.