Entertainment

Little people plan big protest over ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’

Sally Nelson Contributor
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Universal Pictures has a small problem. Small in stature, that is.

One hundred “little people” — the preferred term for people born with dwarfism — are planning to march in protest against Universal Pictures for casting regular-sized actors in “Snow White and the Huntsman,” TMZ reports. Rather than hiring little people to act out the roles of the dwarves, the film’s producers cast normal-sized actors and either digitally shrunk their bodies or transplanted their faces onto the bodies of little people.

Matt McCarthy, a 4’1” self-described “midget,” announced the protest to Universal Chairman Adam Fogelson with an angry letter. McCarthy acts with Beacher’s Madhouse at the Roosevelt Hotel, a theater troupe that employs more than 20 little people.

“In response to and in protest of this incredible injustice and prejudice, the Beacher’s Madhouse midgets and I are coordinating a 100-midget march to Universal’s offices,” McCarthy wrote.

McCarthy said that casting tall actors as the dwarves “is the equivalent of Universal casting a white actor to play a role written for an African-American person and digitally changing the color of their skin.”

Likewise, Little People of America told TMZ that the production companies should cast little people when possible.

“This means both casting people with dwarfism as characters that were specifically written to be played by little people…and other roles that would be open to people of short stature,” a spokesman said.

Universal has not yet responded to the planned protest.

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Sally Nelson