Characters who have changed race from book to movie

Cafe Society
1

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman’s novel Anansi Boys (one of his better ones imo). For those not familiar, a very brief intro without spoilers:

Fat Charlie Nancy is a 30 year old English guy (who is not fat- childhood nickname that stuck) who was born in Florida but moved to England with his mother (a Caribbean Islander) when he was 10 (making him, essentially, English). He remembers his estranged father, who remained in Florida, as a constantly joking very good natured old man who was beloved by everyone (especially ladies) but who was also extremely embarassing to his kids/unfaithful to his wife/never took anything seriously; his father was also a ne’er do well who never held a job and didn’t have a fortune, though strangely at the same time never seemed to lack for money. His dad was extraordinarily charismatic- Charlies mom left the country to get away from him, but in some ways was in love with him until her death (he was a total charmer).
When Fat Charlie is about to get married he calls his father’s friend to invite him to the wedding (his father doesn’t have a phone) and learns his father died at a karaoke bar a few nights before. This sets off an odyssey in which Fat Charlie learns, among other things, that he has a brother he strangely enough doesn’t remember, that he can talk to spiders, that his father was Anansi (a “real life” African spider-trickster deity) and the old ladies he knew in his youth (old black ladies from the Caribbean) not only knew about his father’s “secret” identity and his brother but know lots and lots of other things as well.
=-=-=-=-=

So, the reason for mentioning the above: While Anansi stories mutated and transformed to form the basis for many of the Br’er Rabbit tales and some Bugs Bunny/Road Runner cartoons and many other folktales and legends, his origins are very specifically, intrinsically, and unchangeably black (he originated in West Africa and was brought with other folklore and folk magic to the Caribbean by African slaves and passed down orally). To make him not black would be on par with making Captain Kirk a reptilian robot or Pele the Volcano goddess a penguin- it just unravels the whole mythos.

However, when studios approached Gaiman for the rights to the book, it was (per him in interviews) always with the condition that they could change the characters to white (and American). They didn’t feel fantasy would work or make money with a mostly black cast (Charlie, his girlfriend, his brother, his parents, the old ladies, and the vast majority of the supporting characters). Gaiman, to his credit, has refused the offers; while Fat Charlie being black isn’t something that is heavily dealt with in the novel (i.e. there’s no sideplot about racism or any real addressing of his race at any point other than in passing) and while it’s even possible the transition to American would work, it is absolutely essential that he and his family and the old ladies be black. Shia LaBeouf or Matthew McConaughey just wouldn’t work as the sons of a West African trickster god anymore than The Golden Girls would be believable as women who could conjure African deities.

So anyway, short OP made long, are there cases where writers have sold out? Have any characters been switched from black to white or otherwise from one race to another?

I can think of many instances of ACTORS playing a character of another race (Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffanys, Ava Gardner in Showboat, Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon, Lawrence Olivier in Khartoum, Orson Welles in Othello, etc.), but have characters themselves changed race?

I can think of a few where characters went from white to black: Denzel Washington’s character in The Pelican Brief or Angela Bassett’s character in Contact for example. In both of these the characters were pretty much “race neutral” in the story, and while Washington was an Oscar winner and his PELICAN character (Gray Grantham) was the male lead and more substantial than Bassett’s in Contact the movie was such a “JULIA ROBERTS STARRING IN” vehicle that he may as well have been a supporting role.

An odd case: Captain Nemo was originally Indian in Jules Verne’s drafts of 20000 Leagues, then was changed to a more Euro character in the final version, then was made Indian (or half-Indian) in some of the other appearances, and was played by James Mason in the most famous adaptation. I barely count this though since Verne himself varied on his ethnicity.

2

Felix Leiter is white in the Ian Fleming James Bond novels, but has been portrayed by both white and black actors. IMHO I wouldn’t take this as any kind of “selling out,” though perhaps an exercise in affirmative action.

3

Post deleted

4

I don’t know if this counts as significant, but in the Stephen King novela that the Shawshank Redemption was based on, the narrator, Red, got his nickname because he was Irish with red hair. In the movie, Morgan Freeman doesn’t have red hair.

5

Peter Sellers in Almost Every Movie He Ever Made.

Morgan Freeman, again, in Bonfire of the Vanities; in the book, the judge is jewish.

6

Kingpin was played by Michael Clarke Duncan in DareDevil despite Wilson Fisk being white in the source material. He was picked because of their otherwise similar builds.

7

Bernie Rhodenbarr was a white man in all of the books Lawrence Block wrote. But when he sold the movie rights, they changed the character to Bernice Rhodenbarr and cast Whoopi Goldberg in the role. When he wrote the next book in the series, Block included a prologue in which he supposedly had to explain how this happened to Rhodenbarr.

8

Ged in the SF Channel adaptation (using term very loosely) of A Wizard of Earthsea was a blonde-haired blue-eyed boy, while he had dark hair and brownish features (as did his people) in the novel. To be fair I did not catch that myself when I read it (as a general practice I tend to skim prose which is almost wholly descriptive).

9

I was gonna mention this one. Le Guin was NOT amused.

Daniel

10

Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers was Filipino in the original novel (Samuel R. Delany once described how inspired he felt when he discovered the hero had dark skin). The movie had him played by a white actor. However, since the movie was such a wretched trashing of the original, this particular element was overlooked.

11

Casper Van Dien’s an actor?:wink:

Not quite a race change, but an ethnicity change of no less radical a difference- Armand in Interview With the Vampire. As described in the book he’d look like Zac Efron wearing a red wig and in the movie he was Antonio Banderas.

12

The kid named Doctor in Jumpstart started out white, but has been Black for quite some time.

But why would they make Anansi Boys before American Gods? (Anansi Boys is very sort of a sequel to that book)

13

In the Lincoln Rhyme novels by Jeffrey Deaver, both the titular character and his assistant Thom are white males.

In the movie adaptation of The Bone Collector, Lincoln Rhyme was played by Denzel Washington and Thom was played by Queen Latifah. :dubious:

14

Billy Dee Williams (black actor) played Harvey Dent (white character in the comics) in the Tim Burton-directed Batman movie.

15

They changed a number of characters from Asian to white in the movie 21.

16

In the upcoming Avengers, Nick Fury is played by Samuel “Snakes on a Plane” Jackson.

17

I never read the book, but weren’t all of the characters in Bringing Down the House “race neutral” stand-ins for all the real kids? Not to mention the fact that I’m pretty sure several kids were composited in the book as one “character.”

Which is also not a change seeing as how Nick Fury’s look in the comics is based on Sam Jackson. In fact, there’s no movie that qualifies in the least for this thread since the comic Fury IS Sam Jackson.

18

In Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books, the character of Morgan is a white barbarian sort, kind of a Norse berserker.

However, in the late, lamented TV series, Morgan is played by Conrad Coates, a very dapper and distinguished black man.

Personally, I like the representation in the books better, but that’s personal preference, of course.

19

Robert Neville from I Am Legend, played by Will Smith in the recent movie, was white in the book.

Speaking of Queen Latifah, she played a supporting character in the horrible adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Sphere that I’m pretty sure was white in the book.

20

You must be thinking of the Ultimate version of Nick Fury but Atomicflea was perhaps referring to the original 616 version of Nick Fury who is definitely white.