Actor John Leguizamo doesn’t want to hear any excuses about why anyone thinks it’s OK that James Franco was cast to play Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in the upcoming movie Alina of Cuba. The film is set to tell the story of El Comandante’s daughter Alina Fernández, who became one of her father’s most outspoken critics.
Once the news was released about the casting, Leguizamo didn’t hold back his opinion about Franco, a non-Latine, portraying a Latine person and asked his social media followers to boycott the movie.
“How is this still going on?” Leguizamo asked on Instagram. “How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well? No more appropriation Hollywood and streamers! Boycott! This F’d up! Plus seriously difficult story to tell without aggrandizement which would be wrong! I don’t got a prob with Franco but he ain’t Latino!”
John Martinez O’Felan, the producer of Alina of Cuba, responded to Leguizamo by saying his “comments are culturally uneducated and a blind attack with zero substance related to this project” and that “a land mass or living area does not determine a person’s blood history or genetics.”
The real Fernández also defended Franco being cast to portray her father. “James Franco has an obvious physical resemblance with Fidel Castro, besides his skills and charisma,” she said. “I find the selection of the cast amazing.”
Leguizamo continued to voice his opinion on Sunday (August 8) with two separate videos he posted on Instagram. In the first, he explains that he has “no problems with James Franco” but that he was “done” with Hollywood “appropriating our stories.”
In the second, he defended critics going after him because he played an Italian in the 1999 film Summer of Sam. “You think that was the rule? I was the exception,” he said. “You think thousands of Latinos were getting Italian roles? [Latinos] are 30 percent of the box office, I want 30 percent of the roles.”