According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has tapped Sydney Agudong to play Nani Pelekai in Disney's upcoming live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch.
The article states that Sydney was "born and raised on the island of Kauai, Hawaii" and doesn't mention if she is Native Hawaiian.
The casting choice sparked immediate backlash across social media. Here's why:
Pacific Islanders have notoriously little representation in Hollywood. And the majority of PI celebs who do find fame in the US are light-skinned — despite many, many islanders coming in a range of darker skin tones.
So Lilo and Nani's looks were a big part of what made Lilo & Stitch iconic for many folks in the PI community. With her brown skin and body shape, Nani became the first mainstream representation for many Pacific Islanders.
Casting an actor without these features has sent the internet into an uproar. Many Pacific Islanders were upset at Disney for taking away this opportunity for representation:
Nani has thick legs and thighs, brown skin, and curves and that was cool to see growing up because I didn’t feel so insecure about my body. Again she’s probably going to be just fine but man
And people of all different backgrounds felt similarly:
Literally no one asked for a live action Lilo & Stitch the movies & shows are perfect. As a brown kid I didn't have a lot of representation growing up and seeing Disney not cast brown actors to play Nani & Lilo is so hurtful. Disney do better!
A lot of folks took a nuanced view of the situation, explaining that while light-skinned Native Hawaiians certainly exist, this role should have gone to a dark-skinned Native Hawaiian:
@FilmUpdates I think it's important to recognize that yes, she is Hawaiian and light skinned/white passing Hawaiian natives exist. But nani is a dark skinned Hawaiian woman so give a dark skinned actress the chance too play her. regardless, this is still colorism/white washing.
i’m sure she’s amazing— it just really puts me off that disney has an aversion to casting brown people a lot of the time or someone canonically similar. hawaiians are very diverse (look at me for crying out loud) but girls who look like me shouldn’t be the only ones getting role
Of course, not everyone was upset that Sydney would be playing Nani.
Some people thought the actor's Hawaiian ancestry meant her casting was justified:
And others drew comparisons to Halle Bailey being cast in The Little Mermaid:
@remslvst @FilmUpdates I don’t see a problem with it. If Ariel can be black then Nani can be lighter skinned.
However, many people argued that Nani's skin tone is essential to the story, which is not the case for Ariel:
nani is meant to portray the experience of natives who visibly are ethnically native, and the struggle of keeping family together with the looming threat of tourist settlers and increase of housing prices. the movie portrays the life of local hawaiians, https://t.co/7VFCkqdmcC
yall don’t remember how nani would get laid off of jobs for seemingly random reasons and lilo would get bullied by the white girl in her class and the fact that someone called cps on them in the movie for seemingly no reason — all this happened BEFORE stitch came into the picture https://t.co/IBwucon5EO