All is not well in Middle Earth. After an ominously rocky, much delayed start to Production, the casting director for The Hobbit, co-written, produced and directed by Lord Of The Rings linchpin Peter Jackson, has been fired after placing a semi-racist casting ad in NZ newspaper, The Bay of Plenty Times.
The offending ad called for actors with “light skin tones” and at the audition itself, a prospective extra of Pakistani descent was rejected and deemed to dark for the role after she had queued for three hours. Unsurprisingly, the casting director has since been fired with a spokesman for Jackson’s production company Wingnut Films explaining to the Agence France-Presse: “No such instructions were given, the crew member in question took it upon themselves to do that and it’s not something we instructed or condoned,“. You’d think ideals like tolerance would be paramount for a land where dragons co-exist with orcs and Orlando Bloom. Either way, we’re glad that fictional races of all kinds will be represented in The Hobbit.
