Julia Fox, known for her eccentric ex-relationship with rapper Kanye West and emerging acting career as a standout in 2019’s Uncut Gems, is exposing the “racist” conversation that led her to drop a project she says she’d been part of for five years.
“OK, so the craziest thing just happened to me,” she begins in a new video posted to TikTok. “So I’ve been attached to a project for five years. I’ve given creative contributions to it, emotional contributions to it, it was like my baby. I even brought on like a major, major A-list icon to play alongside me and everything was going great until this white man director came in.”
According to Fox, this white male director, who she doesn’t name, “was trying to kick me off the project, meanwhile I’ve been there for five years and he’s been there for a week,” she continues. “I had mentioned [to him] that I really thought it was important to have diversity in our lead cast,” which immediately rubbed him the wrong way, she said.
“He said, ‘Why? White people have it really hard too. And plus, diversity casting is like using Black people as puppets.’ Meanwhile, we’re actors, we’re all fucking puppets, what are you talking about?” she says, reading from the notes she said she took during the phone call.
“‘White people don’t have a duty to cast Black people because so many Black projects happen and Asian projects and nobody gets mad that there’s no white people in the cast,’” she reads from his alleged remarks. “He said ‘Turn on Netflix, turn on any streamer, it’s all Black projects. Go to India, all the movies in India have all Indian people, nobody gets mad that they don’t have diversity.’”
Fox claimed that she took him to task about his statements: “I said, ‘Honey, white people have been the default up until now. Let them have their all Indian movies,’” to which he allegedly responded, “‘What are you talking about? Wake up, we are in 2024—this isn’t 2005 or something.’” Fox says she was put off by the conversation, and subsequently quit the production.
“It was giving Proud Boy, it was giving ‘All Lives Matter,’ it was giving white supremacy, and at that point I was done arguing,” she says in the video. “And I said ‘You know what, I can’t work with you, I’m done.”
Fox adds that the director also shot back at her claim that “[white people] have opportunities handed to us so much more easily,” insisting that he’d had a “hard time” as white man. “He’s probably had a hard time because of his shitty fucking personalty,” she adds, saying his comments displayed his “racism” and “misogyny.”
She’ll let the person remain unnamed for now, she says, as she’s “grown to love the people attached, the producers, the writers, the other actor in question, and I don’t want to blow up this whole thing for them.” But, she added, “I just can’t believe I’m having conversations like this in 2024.”
None of the films listed on Fox’s upcoming slate on IMDb seem to fit the bill of what she describes in her video, including the Jordan Peele-produced horror film Him, in which she will star alongside Marlon Wayans, set to release in 2025.
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