Adam Sandler is currently filming his Magnificent Seven parody Ridiculous 6, and according to Indian Country Today, around a dozen Native American actors, as well as the film’s “Native cultural advisor,” just walked off the set of the film today due to its racist and sexist jokes and disrespectful portrayal of the Native characters. According to the report, the primarily Navajo actors took issue with the film giving Native women names like “Beaver’s Breath” and “No Bra” as well as “an actress portraying an Apache woman squatting and urinating while smoking a peace pipe, and feathers inappropriately positioned on a teepee.” Here’s what one of the actors, Loren Anthony, told Indian Country Today:
“There were about a dozen of us who walked off the set,” said Anthony, who told ICTMN he had initially refused to do the movie. He then agreed to take the job when producers informed him they had hired a cultural consultant and efforts would be made for tasteful representation of Natives.“I was asked a long time ago to do some work on this and I wasn’t down for it. Then they told me it was going to be a comedy, but it would not be racist. So I agreed to it but on Monday things started getting weird on the set,” he said.Anthony says he was first insulted that the movie costumes that were supposed to portray Apache were significantly incorrect and that the jokes seemed to get progressively worse.“They just treated us as if we should just be on the side. When we did speak with the main director, he was trying to say the disrespect was not intentional and this was a comedy.”
A Navajo actor named Allison Young added:
“When I began doing this film, I had an uneasy feeling inside of me and I felt so conflicted,” she said. “I talked to a former instructor at Dartmouth and he told me to take this as finally experiencing stereotyping first hand. We talked to the producers about our concerns. They just told us, ‘If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave.’ I was just standing there and got emotional and teary-eyed. I didn’t want to cry but the feeling just came over me. This is supposed to be a comedy that makes you laugh. A film like this should not make someone feel this way.”
David Hill, a 74-year-old Choctaw and member of the American Indian Movement, also walked off set and told ICTMN that the producers called back the consultant and a few actors, so there’s still hope for some kind of solution:
“I hope they will listen to us,” Hill said. “We understand this is a comedy, we understand this is humor, but we won’t tolerate disrespect. I told the director if he had talked to a native woman the way they were talked to in this movie—I said I would knock his ass out.”“This isn’t my first rodeo, if someone doesn’t speak up, no one will.”
UPDATE: Here’s a video of the confrontation between the actors and producers via Defamer:
