Approximately a dozen Native American actors walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s latest movie, “The Ridiculous Six,” on Wednesday, claiming that the movie is offensive and racist.
The news outlet Indian Country Today reported that the actors, who were mostly from the Navajo tribe, were upset that the movie made fun of Native women and elders. The script includes characters with names such as “No Bra” and “Beaver’s Breath,” they complained.
Indian Country Today’s publisher is Arthur Halbritter, the CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises. He is one of the leaders in the push to get Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder to change the team’s name.
Sandler’s movie, in which he stars alongside Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Dan Aykroyd, Jon Lovitz and Vanilla Ice, is intended to be a spoof of the classic western film “The Magnificent Seven.” It will air on Netflix and is being directed by Frank Coraci.
One of the actors who quit the film claims that it portrays Natives as “still just Hollywood Indians.”
“Nothing has changed,” Allison Young, a Navajo tribe member and former Dartmouth University film student, told Indian Country.
She said that before she accepted the role she felt conflicted. But after talking to her instructor at Dartmouth, Young said that she talked to the movie’s producers about her concerns.
“They just told us, ‘If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave,'” she told Indian Country Today.
She said she got emotional during that exchange.
“This is supposed to be a comedy that makes you laugh. A film like this should not make someone feel this way.”
Another actor who walked off the set also said that he initially did not want to take part in the movie but decided to do so after producers hired a culture consultant to weed out any overly offensive material.
“There were about a dozen of us who walked off the set,” Loren Anthony told Indian Country Today.
“I was asked a long time ago to do some work on this and I wasn’t down for it. Then they told me it was going to be a comedy, but it would not be racist. So I agreed to it but on Monday things started getting weird on the set,” Anthony added.
He said that the Native actors were supposed to be Apache, “but it was really stereotypical and we did not look Apache at all.”
“We looked more like Comanche,” he said. “One thing that really offended a lot of people was that there was a female character called Beaver’s Breath.”
“They just treated us as if we should just be on the side. When we did speak with the main director, he was trying to say the disrespect was not intentional and this was a comedy,” Anthony said.
An older member of the cast compared Sandler’s script to the NFL’s Redskins.
“They were being disrespectful,” David Hill, a 74-year-old Choctaw, told Indian Country. “They were bringing up those same old arguments that Dan Snyder uses in defending the Redskins. But let me tell you, our dignity is not for sale. It is a real shame because a lot of people probably stay because they need a job.”
“We understand this is a comedy, we understand this is humor, but we won’t tolerate disrespect,” Hill said. “I told the director if he had talked to a native woman the way they were talked to in this movie—I said I would knock his ass out.”