Latest news with #Jewface
Metro
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
US comedian feels 'ignorant' after wearing blackface on TV
Sarah Silverman said sketches on her Comedy Central series were 'ignorant' (Picture:for Tribeca Film Festival) US comedian Sarah Silverman has expressed her profound regret over wearing blackface in her TV show. The 54-year-old said her usage of racial slurs and blackface in Comedy Central series The Sarah Silverman Program, which ran from 2007 until 2010, was 'f**king ignorant.' Silverman told Rolling Stone magazine: 'I felt like the temperature of the world around me at the time was, 'We are all liberal so we can say [a racial slur]. We aren't racist, so we can say this derogatory stuff.' 'I was playing a character that was arrogant and ignorant, so I thought it was OK. Looking back, my intentions were always good, but they were f***ing ignorant.' In 2019, Silverman said she was fired from a movie after an old scene of her performing in blackface resurfaced. The offensive sketch saw Silverman say 'I look like the beautiful Queen Latifah' before entering a Baptist church and proclaiming: 'I'm black today.' Silverman has previously expressed regret over wearing blackface in her show (Picture: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic) Speaking on The Bill Simmons Podcast, the former Saturday Night Live writer said: She said: 'I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part, then at 11 p.m. the night before they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode. I didn't fight it.' Silverman added that while she understood the decision, it made her 'sad' as she's not 'that person' anymore. The School Of Rock actress said: 'They hired someone else who is wonderful but who has never stuck their neck out. It was so disheartening. It just made me real real sad, because I really kind of devoted my life to making it right.' She revealed she was previously fired from a film after the sketch resurfaced (Picture:) The comedian also said she was 'horrified' by her usage of blackface (Picture: David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images) The previous year, Silverman admitted she was 'horrified' by the blackface sketch, telling GQ: 'I don't stand by the blackface sketch. I'm horrified by it, and I can't erase it. I can only be changed by it and move on. 'That was such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actually thought it was dealing with racism by using racism. I don't get joy in that anymore. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I'm not that person anymore.' In 2021, Silverman called out the casting of Kathryn Hahn as Joan Rivers in TV series The Comeback Girl, which was cancelled before broadcast. She said on her podcast: 'There's this long tradition of non-Jews playing Jews, and not just playing people who happen to be Jewish but people whose Jewishness is their whole being. Silverman has called out Hollywood for using Jewface (Picture:) 'One could argue, for instance, that a Gentile playing Joan Rivers, correctly, would be doing what is actually called 'Jewface'.' However, Silverman said Hahn 'did nothing wrong' and is a 'brilliant actor' and insisted that 'singularly I have no problem with it.' Silverman also listed off an extensive list of non-Jewish stars who have portrayed Jewish women, including Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug and Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan in Mrs America, adding: 'None of these actresses are doing anything wrong, but collectively it's f**ked up, little bit.' Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. Arrow MORE: This 'disgusting' TV episode had fans boycotting global smash series 10 years ago Arrow MORE: Ex WWE star wraps first film role after shock exit and Invicta move Arrow MORE: 'Perfect' Netflix show renewed for season 2 but fans worry it won't be the same
USA Today
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Adrien Brody addresses 'Brutalist' AI controversy, jokes about prosthetic nose
Hear this story Adrien Brody's most recent film "The Brutalist" is about as far from a comedy as a film can get. Chronicling the journey of László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant, over several decades, Brody's performance touches on poverty, exploitation and antisemitism. Filming was not without moments of levity, however, Brody revealed in a recent interview on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon." Since the movie spans decades, special effects makeup artists were tasked with aging Brody − only some artists couldn't tell where his face began and the prosthetics ended. "Everyone's very busy. It's a movie with a lot of moving pieces and so I had a new team of people who I had never met, and they were removing this apparatus all over me," the Oscar-nominated actor recounted. "This woman was busily working away with a solvent on my nose, she's just working away, and I said, 'Are you trying to remove that?' and she said, 'Yes' and I said, 'That doesn't come off.'" Adrien Brody is back with The BrutalistThis time, he's left the 'torment' behind. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. Brody confirmed that the makeup artist had apologized for mistaking his real nose for a prosthetic and that she had mentioned plans to write about the moment in her diary. The anecdote comes as Hollywood faces a growing debate over the use of prosthetics to mimic ethnic features. In 2023's "Maestro," a Leonard Bernstein biopic, Bradley Cooper wore a prosthetic nose − a choice that outraged some viewers who felt it fell into a well-worn trope mocking or exaggerating the size of Jewish peoples' noses. At the time, Bernstein's children responded with a statement, writing, "It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we're perfectly fine with that." Others, like actress Sarah Silverman, have chided the move, calling it "Jewface" and criticizing Hollywood for failing to cast Jewish actors in roles portraying them. Should only Jewish actresses playJewish roles? Some say Hollywood has a 'Jewface' problem. Adrien Brody addresses 'Brutalist' AI controversy Brody's appearance on Fallon is just one part of a larger press tour he is doing to promote the film. The actor also sat down with Variety for an interview published Tuesday in which he tackled some of the controversy surrounding the film's employment of artificial intelligence technology. Earlier this month, the film's writer-director Brady Corbet revealed that the Ukrainian AI software company Respeecher had been used to augment Brody and co-star Felicity Jones' brief Hungarian dialogue in the movie. "It's an extremely unique language. We coached (Brody and Jones) and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference," Corbet told the tech publication Redshark. The article quickly went viral, with some expressing outrage over the use of a technology that sectors of the art world feel is mildly dangerous at best and livelihood-threatening at worst. Corbet later backtracked, saying in a statement: "Adrien and Felicity's performances are completely their own," and arguing the use of the technology was merely to speed up post-production on a lower-budget film. In his interview with Vanity Fair, Brody pushed back against the outcry, saying he was glad Corbet had clarified his comments and that the whole thing had been blown out of proportion. "I understand that we live in a time where even just the mention of AI is a bit triggering," he told the outlet, "I just wish people had more understanding of the context and facts of the circumstances." Brody also stood by his performance and reaffirmed the hard work that had gone into making it authentic. "First of all, I'm the son of Hungarians and grew up with that language spoken in my home. I actually even integrated, within the Hungarian dialogue, curse words that weren't in the script," he said. Contributing: Patrick Ryan
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ben Stiller: Tom Cruise Insisted on Being Jewish in ‘Tropic Thunder'
Ben Stiller may have inadvertently fanned the flames of Tropic Thunder's several controversies in a Monday episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, revealing that Tom Cruise insisted that his character 'be Jewish' if he joined the 2008 comedy-action film. Cruise 'had two requests,' Stiller told O'Brien of Thunder's movie studio character, Les Grossman. 'He wanted to have big, thick forearms that were hairy and he wanted to be Jewish,' he continued, 'I mean it's never really stated, but that's kind of implied.' Cruise shared his two requests for playing in the film himself in an interview with BBC Radio One in 2018, telling his interviewer that he told Stiller after reading the Thunder script, 'I want fat hands and I want to dance.' Stiller has long held that the Grossman character was Cruise's idea, but even given the backlash following Cruise's portrayal of the obviously Jewish character—a foul-mouthed studio executive who acts as the 2008 film's antagonist—Stiller didn't shy away from pinning the character's ethnicity onto Cruise. He did, however, sidestep the controversy over the actor's use of 'Jewface.' 'He had this idea of playing a studio exec, and so we went back and came up with Les Grossman, and it changed the whole plot of the movie, but made it so much better,' Stiller explained. Grossman's character was just one of many things some viewers found offensive in the film—including Robert Downey, Jr.'s donning blackface donning blackface or his and Stiller's character discussion of going 'full retard' leading to a nationwide boycott campaign at the time. Meanwhile, Stiller's co-writer on the film Justin Theroux has said that he did have a specific person in mind as he crafted the character. 'I had just had a really bad experience working for Harvey Weinstein on a movie that I'd directed and I just wanted to somehow memorialize that bad experience,' he said in a 2023 interview. 'And so that's how I got that character.'
