Actress Zoe Saldana has had a meteoric rise in Hollywood in recent years and has enjoyed billion-dollar successes on the screen with film series such as Avatar. However, there was a film project in 2016, which the actress deeply regrets in retrospect.
Saldana’s performance in the biopic Nina came under heavy criticism even before its release date
Zoe Saldana’s artistic career began in ballet and switched to acting at the end of the 90s – and with great success. She appeared in James Cameron’s Avatar films, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy series and two Avengers films and can currently be seen in the series Special Ops: Lioness. She has been since the release of Avatar: The Way of Water
officially involved in four of the six most commercially successful films ever.
But as BBC News explained in 2020, there is one project within this impressive filmography that the actress now openly regrets. This is the biopic Nina from 2016.
Zoe Saldana, who is of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent, played singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone. In this role, Saldana wore a prosthetic nose and makeup that made her skin appear darker. The film was then accused of blackfacing, as CNN reported at the time.
The project had already taken place in advance
The casting of Zoe Saldana caused massive criticism. Nina Simone’s daughter Simone Kelly said this on her mother’s official homepage in 2012 and pointed out that “not every project is suitable for everyone” be.
When the film finally appeared, Nina Simone’s relatives reacted more clearly:
Please take Nina’s name out of your mouth. For the rest of your life. Hopefully people start to understand that this is painful. Painful, heartbreaking, nauseating, heartbreaking.
Saldana herself initially appeared self-confident and defended her performance as Nina Simone by pointing out that she was also a black woman.
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Zoe Saldana has now publicly distanced herself from the biopic
Almost ten years later, in 2020, The actress resigned from this position in an interview with Pose with clear words:
I should never have played Nina. […] I should have done everything in my power to cast a black woman to play an extraordinarily perfect black woman.
As the interview continued, she stated:
At the time I thought I had permission [sie zu spielen]because I am a black woman. And that’s me too. But it was Nina Simone. And Nina had a life and a journey that should be honored in every detail, […] because she was a very special individual.
She then apologized again and showed understanding for the criticism she had received at the time:
With these words: I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I know better today and I will never do that again. She is one of our giants and someone else should take her place. Someone else should tell her story.
It wasn’t just Nina Simone’s estate community that was less than enthusiastic about the film. The biopic was negatively received by critics and received a rating of two percent on the well-known review site Rotten Tomatoes, for example.