Hollywood hardly has had a stellar track record when it comes to diversity and inclusion, from its dismal (and continuing) use of yellowface, its past (and present) utilization of blackface or the prevalence of brownface in movies as wide-ranging as "West Side Story," "Argo," "A Beautiful Mind" and "House of the Spirits." However, a recent revelation proves just how absurd its insistence on relying on such tropes really is, and how resistant the industry has been to change.
In a recent interview with Focus Features, Gregory Allen Howard, the screenwriter behind2019's Harriet Tubman biopic "Harriet," dropped a bombshell. Howard, who has been working for more than two decades to get Tubman's story to the big screen, said that, when he first began his journey in 1994, a studio executive suggested that Julia Roberts — then a 27-year-old starring in a summer rom-com with Nick Nolte — should portray the former slave, freedom fighter and abolitionist.
"I was told how one studio head said in a meeting, 'This script is fantastic. Let's get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman,'" Howard remembered. "When someone pointed out that Roberts couldn't be Harriet, the executive responded, 'It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference.'"
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Image: Focus Features.