Dwayne “The Rock” Johnsonis coming under fire from a Paralympian for playing a former FBI agent with a prosthetic leg in his new movie,Skyscraper.
“Performers with disabilities [are] being sidelined so that able-bodied actors can ‘play at’ what it’s like to live life with a disability,” she said. “What we lose in that is the genuine, authentic perspective.”
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Johnson promoted the movie alongside Glasbrenner onGood Morning Americalast week and shared a photo from them backstage on Instagram with the caption, “What a man.”
Reps for Johnson did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Johnson wrote thatSkyscraper‘s casting “perpetuates the fact that we’re not given the agency to tell our own stories,” she wrote.
“This community of ours contains some of the strongest, most capable and tough individuals imaginable,” she wrote. “And the amount of determination they need to just deal with a world that wasn’t made with them in mind is staggering. Try navigating New York City in a wheelchair. Believe me, a movie set is a dream.”
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After comparing her cause to the outrage transgender actors felt over the casting of Scarlett Johansson as a trans character inRug and Tug(which she has since dropped out of), Sullivan went on to say she had brought her cause up with high-level development executives, who told her that ‘a movie won’t get made without a name above the title.’ ”
Sullivan understood that, but suggested that actors with disabilities need to be given the opportunity to “get on that path in the first place.”
She pointed to how movies likeStronger,Me Before Youand evenForrest Gumpleft her feeling “erased” and “Photoshopped out of existence.”
“I’m not only picking on you specifically. This is a much larger problem than just The Rock andSkyscraper,” Sullivan wrote. “It’s when we all band together to do the right thing for TRUE inclusion and diversity that we start to change not only the landscape of our entertainment, but through that, we change the perception of what individuals with disabilities are capable of doing (in general).”
Skyscraperis now in theaters.
source: people.com
