Girl of Colour Auditioned as Peter for Joe Wright's 'Pan'
Cross-posted here to DeviantArt
Mya-Lecia Naylor circa 2015, courtesy of A&J Management
True, we can all agree that Joe Wright’s new addition to the Peter Pan verse is an utter, miserable, joyless flop-a movie that’s so chaotically confused that it doesn’t quite know what the honest hell it wants to be. Rotten Tomatoes may not always be the golden way to go, but a rating as low as this speaks volumes on its own:
The only somewhat ‘’redeemable’’ aspect (well, not really since it lasts for merely two minutes out of the entire two hour film)? The badass rendition of Nirvana’s ‘’Smells Like Teen Spirit’’ (1991) that feels so incredibly out of place, over the top, high as fuck, extremely ridiculous and is so obviously an attempt to pull off a Baz Luhrman, I kid you not, though in the end, one can’t really balk as its inclusion. Why? Because the cast is actually fairly good.
© 2015 WaterTower Music
Everything before or after this sequence goes womp womp real hard and fast. Once Hook shows up as a poor Indiana Jones rendition, I swear, I thought, ‘’Fuck this movie; I’m done.’’ Although, this film’s quality, or lack thereof, is beside the point of this blog.
Within an industry that’s severely exclusive of people of colour, notably fantasy films where the currently in-production Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) is hardly exempt from the criticisms, it’s refreshing if and when an aspiring actor of colour, male or female, can secure a well-written part at all that doesn’t restrict them in traditional servant roles, as side-kicks, comic relief or as background characters that are lucky if they even get lines. ‘’The [Harry Potter] film series,’’ writes The Mary Sue blog, ‘’as a whole only features 0.47% of lines spoken by people of color, according to Every Single Word video series.’’
While this up-and-coming British actress-who is admittedly not very well known but has been building up her résumé with such titles as Absolutely Fabulous (2004), a lead part in Tati’s Hotel (2011), Cloud Atlas (2012), is currently co-starring in Millie Inbetween (2014) and is a member of the kid music band Angels N’ Bandits-didn’t win a part in Pan, she did audition. For none other than the title role of Peter (the video can be seen here since, due to privacy settings it won’t play in the embed).
Her name is Mya-Lecia Naylor who simply goes by Mya plenty of the time, aged 13 though was just 11 at the time of her audition. As a film major at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, since I pitched a script for Professor David Schmoeller’s Production I course, Fall 2013 in my sophomore year, titled Oasis’ Requiem, and have just completed the first rough draft this past Thursday, 5 Nov. for Laurene DeBord-Foulk’s Screenwriting I class, Fall 2015 of my senior year, I’ve been using Mya as a sort of ‘’reference’’ or visual aid for one of the main characters. (Well, I have a lot of visual aids, both girls and boys, but Mya is amongst them.) She is a 10 to 11-year-old trans girl of colour named (can you guess it?) Oasis, recently orphaned along with her older brother after having murdered their father following years of severe verbal, physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse, which can be seen here in the original script treatment.
By visual aid, I don’t mean dream casting. Since the character is a trans girl, if and when the script is potentially produced (not saying that it definitely will be), I would ideally prefer that an actual (unknown) trans actress of colour can play her (good lord if anyone makes the same mistake of casting a cis woman as a trans woman like Transamerica, 2005 illogically did which not only erases their invisibility and struggles entirely but reinforces the transphobic attitudes of cis people that trans women aren’t ‘’valid enough’’ as women-and here I speak in third person since I identify as a non-binary boy/man, not as a trans girl/woman). Not only considering that Mya is cisgender, she would also be too old to play a 10 to 11-year-old girl regardless by the time it may go into production, although she was visually perfect around the time that I discovered her (and in many ways, still is). Visual aids merely add to the ‘’look book’’ of the script and in my case, guide me in creating personal artwork of the characters later on after the writing process. Frankly, I see a lot of the character in Mya and vice versa and clearly, I’ve been following her since around 2013, silently supporting her along the way, and just by chance, happened to find her audition video when I was searching for more updated photos of her.
To the best of my knowledge, the audition requirements specifically requested boys, of all ethnicities, aged between 11 and 13 from the UK, Ireland and Common Wealth regions so there was a slim chance that the casting directors and Wright would have even chosen her for a call back, however I have to strongly congratulate Mya here; it takes a lot of guts for a girl of colour to put herself out there in this competitive industry (it’s much harder for girls with darker skin, for instance that are similar in appearance to Quvenzhané Wallis or Lupita Nyong’o to name a couple-and people really should known how to say Wallis’ name by now, but just in case you don’t, it’s KWUH-VEN-JA-NAY-so Mya is somewhat luckier in this respect), especially for a role that will undoubtedly be given to a white boy in the end despite the fact that other ethnicities were welcomed in the audition process.
‘’Someone once told me that it’s a small revolution in itself just to be a person of color and be a woman and be yourself.’’
-Amandla Stenberg, courtesy of her Official Facebook
The casting of Pan is so sickeningly white as it is (do I even need to mention the whole infamous Tiger Lily casting controversy?) that it’s no surprise in the tradition of Hollywood that potential white actors would have been narrowed down for the final choice of Peter no matter what. Don’t get me wrong; Levi Miller is adorable and charming and I’m digging the Aussie influx in the industry lately, but I have to wonder what a Peter Pan film or any other medium of the culturally-ingrained fantasy with Peter cast as a kid of colour would be like, if not as a girl of colour like Mya (who would of had to cut her hair for the part if she won it, of course, and would have pulled it off beautifully) than at least a boy of colour.
Levi Miller, courtesy News.com.au
There’s probably only one other blog post I’ve come across that proposes the same idea of Peter being anything other than white, specifically in response to the announcement of NBC’s Peter Pan Live in 2014. ‘’I never saw a single suggestion of a performer [for Peter] who was not white,’’ writes Howard Sherman of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.
It’s interesting that no one felt bound by gender in their musings, even though the slightly pre-adolescent Peter is typically played by an adult woman. That sense of traditionalism went right out the window (though hardly for the first time, since men have played the role before, mostly in the non-musical version). But if the Mary Martin-Sandy Duncan-Cathy Rigby dynasty was certainly up for reinvention... why didn’t racial diversity come to anyone’s mind? [...] Perhaps the Darling family and Captain Hook need not be staunchly Victorian white. I have no doubt that the corps of Lost Boys and pirates will be cast multiculturally (the Spielberg film Hook helped set that standard more than 20 years ago), since that’s the ‘’easy’’ route, but it’s the leads that must show the wider world. Yet the reflex of those around me, one of which I quickly endorsed, were all monochromatic suggestions, and that’s where my concerns lie... we revert to the dominant race in England from the era when the play was first written, rather than flying towards a spectrum of color on our way towards the third star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.
About that:
Apparently, this is the number one excuse producers make in their lack of a diverse cast in period pieces, or worse, fantasy period pieces: the time frame, not unlike David Heyman’s ‘’justification’’ in regards to the lack of diversity present in Fantastic Beasts. Naturally, Wright’s film falls into the same pitfalls. Despite claiming that he aimed at creating an internationally appealing, multi-cultural, multi-racial world, all of the leads are none other than white. So why not extend that multi-culturalism from the background to the leads? Representation matters, markedly in 2015 where more and more audiences who aren’t default white like the majority of actors that grace the screens want to see themselves in these characters. We’re heading straight on ‘til morning into 2016, folks. Hollywood needs to let tradition go and shape up their shit. Sadly, progressive attitudes take years to raise appropriate awareness on and continually reinforce and cynically, such traditions may never change. At this point in time, I guess all we can do is bitch about it and sign petitions.
In any case, my mother hates you, my father hates you, my sister hates you, and I hate you.
Mya-Lecia Naylor circa 2015, courtesy of A&J Management
True, we can all agree that Joe Wright’s new addition to the Peter Pan verse is an utter, miserable, joyless flop-a movie that’s so chaotically confused that it doesn’t quite know what the honest hell it wants to be. Rotten Tomatoes may not always be the golden way to go, but a rating as low as this speaks volumes on its own:
The only somewhat ‘’redeemable’’ aspect (well, not really since it lasts for merely two minutes out of the entire two hour film)? The badass rendition of Nirvana’s ‘’Smells Like Teen Spirit’’ (1991) that feels so incredibly out of place, over the top, high as fuck, extremely ridiculous and is so obviously an attempt to pull off a Baz Luhrman, I kid you not, though in the end, one can’t really balk as its inclusion. Why? Because the cast is actually fairly good.
Click to view© 2015 WaterTower Music
Everything before or after this sequence goes womp womp real hard and fast. Once Hook shows up as a poor Indiana Jones rendition, I swear, I thought, ‘’Fuck this movie; I’m done.’’ Although, this film’s quality, or lack thereof, is beside the point of this blog.
Within an industry that’s severely exclusive of people of colour, notably fantasy films where the currently in-production Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) is hardly exempt from the criticisms, it’s refreshing if and when an aspiring actor of colour, male or female, can secure a well-written part at all that doesn’t restrict them in traditional servant roles, as side-kicks, comic relief or as background characters that are lucky if they even get lines. ‘’The [Harry Potter] film series,’’ writes The Mary Sue blog, ‘’as a whole only features 0.47% of lines spoken by people of color, according to Every Single Word video series.’’
While this up-and-coming British actress-who is admittedly not very well known but has been building up her résumé with such titles as Absolutely Fabulous (2004), a lead part in Tati’s Hotel (2011), Cloud Atlas (2012), is currently co-starring in Millie Inbetween (2014) and is a member of the kid music band Angels N’ Bandits-didn’t win a part in Pan, she did audition. For none other than the title role of Peter (the video can be seen here since, due to privacy settings it won’t play in the embed).
Her name is Mya-Lecia Naylor who simply goes by Mya plenty of the time, aged 13 though was just 11 at the time of her audition. As a film major at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, since I pitched a script for Professor David Schmoeller’s Production I course, Fall 2013 in my sophomore year, titled Oasis’ Requiem, and have just completed the first rough draft this past Thursday, 5 Nov. for Laurene DeBord-Foulk’s Screenwriting I class, Fall 2015 of my senior year, I’ve been using Mya as a sort of ‘’reference’’ or visual aid for one of the main characters. (Well, I have a lot of visual aids, both girls and boys, but Mya is amongst them.) She is a 10 to 11-year-old trans girl of colour named (can you guess it?) Oasis, recently orphaned along with her older brother after having murdered their father following years of severe verbal, physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse, which can be seen here in the original script treatment.
By visual aid, I don’t mean dream casting. Since the character is a trans girl, if and when the script is potentially produced (not saying that it definitely will be), I would ideally prefer that an actual (unknown) trans actress of colour can play her (good lord if anyone makes the same mistake of casting a cis woman as a trans woman like Transamerica, 2005 illogically did which not only erases their invisibility and struggles entirely but reinforces the transphobic attitudes of cis people that trans women aren’t ‘’valid enough’’ as women-and here I speak in third person since I identify as a non-binary boy/man, not as a trans girl/woman). Not only considering that Mya is cisgender, she would also be too old to play a 10 to 11-year-old girl regardless by the time it may go into production, although she was visually perfect around the time that I discovered her (and in many ways, still is). Visual aids merely add to the ‘’look book’’ of the script and in my case, guide me in creating personal artwork of the characters later on after the writing process. Frankly, I see a lot of the character in Mya and vice versa and clearly, I’ve been following her since around 2013, silently supporting her along the way, and just by chance, happened to find her audition video when I was searching for more updated photos of her.
To the best of my knowledge, the audition requirements specifically requested boys, of all ethnicities, aged between 11 and 13 from the UK, Ireland and Common Wealth regions so there was a slim chance that the casting directors and Wright would have even chosen her for a call back, however I have to strongly congratulate Mya here; it takes a lot of guts for a girl of colour to put herself out there in this competitive industry (it’s much harder for girls with darker skin, for instance that are similar in appearance to Quvenzhané Wallis or Lupita Nyong’o to name a couple-and people really should known how to say Wallis’ name by now, but just in case you don’t, it’s KWUH-VEN-JA-NAY-so Mya is somewhat luckier in this respect), especially for a role that will undoubtedly be given to a white boy in the end despite the fact that other ethnicities were welcomed in the audition process.
‘’Someone once told me that it’s a small revolution in itself just to be a person of color and be a woman and be yourself.’’
-Amandla Stenberg, courtesy of her Official Facebook
The casting of Pan is so sickeningly white as it is (do I even need to mention the whole infamous Tiger Lily casting controversy?) that it’s no surprise in the tradition of Hollywood that potential white actors would have been narrowed down for the final choice of Peter no matter what. Don’t get me wrong; Levi Miller is adorable and charming and I’m digging the Aussie influx in the industry lately, but I have to wonder what a Peter Pan film or any other medium of the culturally-ingrained fantasy with Peter cast as a kid of colour would be like, if not as a girl of colour like Mya (who would of had to cut her hair for the part if she won it, of course, and would have pulled it off beautifully) than at least a boy of colour.
Levi Miller, courtesy News.com.au
There’s probably only one other blog post I’ve come across that proposes the same idea of Peter being anything other than white, specifically in response to the announcement of NBC’s Peter Pan Live in 2014. ‘’I never saw a single suggestion of a performer [for Peter] who was not white,’’ writes Howard Sherman of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.
It’s interesting that no one felt bound by gender in their musings, even though the slightly pre-adolescent Peter is typically played by an adult woman. That sense of traditionalism went right out the window (though hardly for the first time, since men have played the role before, mostly in the non-musical version). But if the Mary Martin-Sandy Duncan-Cathy Rigby dynasty was certainly up for reinvention... why didn’t racial diversity come to anyone’s mind? [...] Perhaps the Darling family and Captain Hook need not be staunchly Victorian white. I have no doubt that the corps of Lost Boys and pirates will be cast multiculturally (the Spielberg film Hook helped set that standard more than 20 years ago), since that’s the ‘’easy’’ route, but it’s the leads that must show the wider world. Yet the reflex of those around me, one of which I quickly endorsed, were all monochromatic suggestions, and that’s where my concerns lie... we revert to the dominant race in England from the era when the play was first written, rather than flying towards a spectrum of color on our way towards the third star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.
About that:
Apparently, this is the number one excuse producers make in their lack of a diverse cast in period pieces, or worse, fantasy period pieces: the time frame, not unlike David Heyman’s ‘’justification’’ in regards to the lack of diversity present in Fantastic Beasts. Naturally, Wright’s film falls into the same pitfalls. Despite claiming that he aimed at creating an internationally appealing, multi-cultural, multi-racial world, all of the leads are none other than white. So why not extend that multi-culturalism from the background to the leads? Representation matters, markedly in 2015 where more and more audiences who aren’t default white like the majority of actors that grace the screens want to see themselves in these characters. We’re heading straight on ‘til morning into 2016, folks. Hollywood needs to let tradition go and shape up their shit. Sadly, progressive attitudes take years to raise appropriate awareness on and continually reinforce and cynically, such traditions may never change. At this point in time, I guess all we can do is bitch about it and sign petitions.
In any case, my mother hates you, my father hates you, my sister hates you, and I hate you.