The director of the first Twilight movie has opened up about her difficulty convincing the book’s author to accept a more diverse cast of actors to play key characters.
Catherine Hardwicke detailed her discussions with best-selling novelist Stephanie Meyer, who reportedly did not want to cast Japanese or black actors to portray the vampires that she had written as being ‘pale and glistening.’
Hardwicke said she had plans to make the Cullens – the protagonist vampire family – diverse, including having one of the key characters, Alice, played by a Japanese actor, but Meyer refused because she had already ‘really seen them in her mind.’
Catherine Hardwicke (pictured left) detailed her discussions with best selling novelist Stephanie Meyer (pictured right), who reportedly did not want to cast Japanese or black actors to portray the vampires that she had written as being ‘pale and glistening’
Such was Meyer’s reported reluctance to veer from the characters she had formed in her head that Hardwicke was only able to cast the Kenyan-born actor, Edi Gathegi, to play Laurent, described in the books as having olive skin, by telling the author that ‘there are black olives out there!’
Discussing the casting issues with the Daily Beast, Hardwick, said: ‘I was like, “oh my God, I want the vampires, I want them all — Alice, I wanted her to be Japanese!”, I had all these ideas. And she just could not accept the Cullens to be more diverse, because she had really seen them in her mind.’
‘She knew who each character was representing in a way, a personal friend or a relative or something. She said, “I wrote that they had this pale glistening skin!”‘
Hardwicke added: ‘[Meyer] had not really written it [the books] that way. So she probably just didn’t see the world that way.’
The interview came on the 10-year anniversary of the blockbuster film franchise, which grossed more than $3 billion worldwide, and which has sparked a retrospective discussion about the overwhelmingly whiteness of the cast.
Such was Meyer’s reported reluctance to veer from the characters she had formed in her head that Hardwicke was only able to cast the Kenyan-born actor, Edi Gathegi, to play Laurent, written as having olive skin, by telling the author that ‘there are black olives out there’
Discussing the casting of Laurent, whom the director describes as ‘one of the scary antagonistic vampires,’ Hardwicke said she convinced Meyer that olive skin didn’t necessarily mean Caucasian.
‘Then she was open to the students in (Bella’s) peer group being other ethnicities, so we got Christian Serratos and Justin Chon, so we were able to open it up a little bit.’
Elsewhere in the interview, Hardwicke also discussed the difficulties being a woman in Hollywood, and admitted it was likely she only received the nod to direct the role because studio execs did not expect the franchise to be so successful.
‘Nobody thought this is a big, blockbuster franchise,’ BET reported.
‘There were very low expectations for Twilight, because every other studio had turned it down. They said, OK, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was a very popular book for girls, and it made $39 million. That’s it.’
Hardwicke also discussed the difficulties being a woman in Hollywood, and admitted it was likely she only received the nod to direct the role because studio execs did not expect the franchise to be so successful (some of the cast are pictured)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Hardwicke did not direct later installments)
‘We don’t know if this could ever make us any more than that, so we don’t really want to spend more than that. The expectations were low literally up to opening weekend.
‘Why do you think I got the job?’ she laughed while contemplating. ‘Why do you think they hired a female director?
‘If they thought it was going to be a big blockbuster, they wouldn’t have ever even hired me, because no woman had ever been hired to do something in the blockbuster category.’
The DailyMail.com has contacted Meyer’s representatives for comment.