At the Los Angeles Review of Books, screenwriter Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn makes a strong and timely case for Hollywood to quit casting big-name white actors no matter the role. Particularly egregious, and absurd, is the idea of Leonardo DiCaprio as the 13th century Persian poet Rumi. Armed with suggestions for brown actors, she points out wryly, “[m]isappropriating the identity of an iconic character like Rumi does not challenge stereotypes, it reinforces them.”
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