Carol star Rooney Mara appeared in last year’s live-action Peter Pan reboot — and admits that she now regrets taking the role.
As Mara tells The Telegraph, she feels that playing Tiger Lily in Pan has contributed to Hollywood’s “whitewashing”; by portraying a Native American character that really should have been played by a Native American actress.
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“[It’s a] tricky thing to deal with,”; says Mara. “There were two different periods; right after I was initially cast, and the reaction to that, and then the reaction again when the film came out.”;
The 30-year-old was so heavily criticized for playing a Native American character that it garnered 96,000 signatures on a petition to Warner Bros. objecting her casting.
“I really hate, hate, hate that I am on that side of the whitewashing conversation,”; Mara adds. “I really do. I don’t ever want to be on that side of it again. I can understand why people were upset and frustrated.”;
Hollywood has been under fire in the last few months for the lack of diversity in films and not acknowledging ethnic actors that have delivered a high performance — such as the 2016 Oscar nominations, which spawned the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.
In hindsight, Rooney admits “there should have been some diversity”; in the film, which starred Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, Cara Delevigne and Garrett Hedlund.
