Jackass star Jason “Wee Man” Acuña is the latest actor with dwarfism to speak out against Hollywood’s latest woke trend of eliminating roles for actors like him in its latest effort to be more “sensitive.”
Early last year, Disney came under fire for its planned live-action remake of the classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story when famed actor Peter Dinklage — who is himself a dwarf — insisted that the whole milieu of having dwarfish characters was a “fucking backwards story” and that Disney should rewrite the story to eliminate the dwarf characters.
Consequently, Disney announced it was “consulting with members of the dwarfism community” to reassess how it should go forward with the remake.
Flash forward to this year and it was revealed that Disney did reassess its plans and did, indeed, eliminate all the dwarf characters but one. Photos showed that Disney went “diverse” with its new “seven dwarfs,” giving the roles to six full-sized actors of various ethnicities and genders and having only one dwarf actor in the cast.
While some dwarf actors, including Dylan Postl, openly disagreed with Dinklage last year, when photos of the new cast were leaked, many actors with dwarfism attacked Disney anew for taking roles away from them and giving them to full-sized actors.
Now, the Jackass stuntman is joining with his fellows in blasting Disney for deleting the dwarfs, according to his recent interview with entertainment site TMZ.
Acuña roasted the upcoming film featuring Rachel Zegler as Snow White, saying, “You’re replacing jobs that people could have as little people. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it’s for dwarfs. Why are you hiring Snow White and the Seven ‘average people’?”
The Elf-Man actor added that Disney should scrap whatever they have and go back to the drawing board.
“They need to redo the movie; recast. Sometimes you have to lose. They lost today. And now they ‘gotta come back better. Make it better, Disney,” he said.
Disney’s new Snow White remake is not the only movie taking flack for excluding little people from roles that have always been cast with actors with dwarfism.
British actor George Coppen voiced his criticism of the upcoming Warner Bros. film Wonka, which has replaced actors with dwarfism with computer-altered images of actor Hugh Grant, who was cast to portray one of the magical Oompa-Loompa characters who toil in chocolatier Willy Wonka’s fantastic candy factory.
Coppen said that actors with dwarfism are afraid that they are being “pushed out” of the film industry as studios go so woke that they become fearful of putting dwarves on the screen.
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