Angela Bassett wants to know why Woody Allen doesn't use many black cast members:
“I mean, to have one black cast member for the whole film seems rather strange, and, oh yes, she’s a prostitute, of course,” said the actress who portrayed Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With it? “Don’t get me wrong, I love Spain and it looked beautiful, but that part of the world is so diverse and, really, what is that about?”
Although Allen has succeeded in signing up Sir Anthony Hopkins and Josh Brolin to appear in his next film, which is set in London, the 50-year-old American actress added that she had herself no desire to work for him. “I wouldn’t want to,” she told Mandrake at the premiere of Notorious, a film about the late rap singer the Notorious B.I.G. “He’s a little weird.”
Miss Bassett is not the first person to point out the prevalence of white faces in Allen’s films. When Spike Lee, the black director, was criticised for allegedly not featuring many white characters in his films, he was quick to point out that Allen had very few blacks in his.
Allen robustly disputes that he is a racist. His wife is Soon-Yi Previn, whom he married in 1997. She is the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow, his former wife. When they married, Allen was 56 and Miss Previn 22.
