Michelle Rodriguez admits that she may have had another food in mouth moment when she made a comment about minority actors needing to “stop stealing all the white people’s superheroes” and to instead “make up your own!”
She was caught on camera answering if the rumors that she was going to star in the upcoming Green Lantern were true, laughing as she said, “Because of this whole ‘minorities in Hollywood’ thing…it’s so stupid.”
However, shortly after TMZ posted the video, the 36-year-old explained her comments in a video posted to Facebook.
First she admitted, “I have a tendency to speak without a filter. So I’m sorry about that.”
She explained,
What I really meant was that, ultimately at the end of the day there’s a language. And the language that you speak in Hollywood is ‘successful franchise’. I think there are many cultures in Hollywood that are not white and that can come up with their own mythology…
It doesn’t matter what culture you come from. I’m just saying that instead of trying to turn a girl character into a guy or instead of trying to turn a white character into a black character or a Latin character, I think that people should stop being lazy and people should actually make an effort in Hollywood to develop their own mythology.
If being American if your mythology, and the American culture is deep embedded into who you are, and what makes you or the archetype that you’re trying to portray, in a Hollywood feature, or in a comic book, so be that!
Time noted that African-American actor Michael B. Jordan will be playing the Human Torch in the upcoming Fantastic Four, and Donald Glover is perhaps a contender to play Spider-Man.
As for minority writers in Hollywood, she added,
The different cultures from around the world that are in Hollywood – Latin, black, Asian, so on and so forth – considered ‘minorities’ because there aren’t a lot of writers representing them, they should start focusing on making that a serious priority.
It’s not about taking Catwoman or Superman or Green Lantern or whatever these characters are and trying to make them fit to whatever cultural background you are. It should be more creative than that and I think people need to stop being lazy and that’s what I meant by my comment.
She concluded by asking of Hollywood, “It’s time to stop, stop trying to take whats already there and try to fit a culture into it. I think it’s time for us to write our own mythology, and our own story. Every culture.”
Rodriguez also added that she is working harder to do the same in her own projects.
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