Nina Simone was a dark skinned black woman. Zoe Saldana, the actress who was cast to play her, doesn’t remotely look like Nina Simone. The producers put dark makeup on her and a prosthetic nose to play the role. Why didn’t they hire a woman closer to her in skin tone and features? Saldana says no one else would accept the role.
But at the heart of the controversy is the way that black women are viewed by the world. The classic and white-centric view of what kind of women is beautiful doesn’t leave room for women with dark skin, broad noses or kinky hair. Black women fail to meet a standard they were never meant to live up to and Hollywood continues to perpetuate and harm women of color by asking them to reflect a beauty that demands that they be who they are not. If they couldn’t find an actress to do justice to Nina Simone, then they didn’t look hard enough, unless of course they wanted a bankable actress…
