(New York) “There are not only white people in Middle-earth”: the Amazon group has defended the distribution of its big-budget series inspired by the Lord of the Ringsin the face of criticism on the choice of actors from diversity, who according to them would distort Tolkien’s work.
Posted at 12:28 p.m.
Since the broadcast of the first two episodes of this series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), on which Amazon has bet more than a billion dollars for at least five seasons, social networks are teeming with protests from Internet users and JRR Tolkien fans about a supposed “forced diversity” in the choice of characters and a betrayal of the original work, because several roles are entrusted to black or Hispanic people.
This is the case of the dwarf princess Disa, played by Sophia Nomvete.
Other Internet users see it as a welcome development.
The choice was also defended by Amazon via a tweet from the official account of the series broadcast on the group’s Prime Video platform.
“JRR Tokien has created a world which, by definition, is multicultural. A world in which free people of different races and cultures unite in brotherhood to defeat the forces of evil. This is reflected The Rings of Power “, commented the actors Wednesday evening on the Twitter account of the series.
“There are not only white people in our world, there are not only white people in the”fantasy‘, it’s not just white people in Middle-earth’, the medieval-inspired world in which Tolkien’s story takes place, in which the characters are hobbits, elves or dwarves.
This is not the first time that a production has had to justify itself after making room for roles from diversity. In June, actor Ewan McGregor defended the presence of Moses Ingram, a black actress, in the distribution of the series Obi-Wan Kenobi from the Star Wars franchise on Disney+.
Since 2016, the musical hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda met with great success on Broadway and throughout the United States, staging the American Revolution of the 18e century with hip-hop tracks and diverse actors to embody the country’s founding fathers, like George Washington.