The Native American extras working on Adam Sandler’s first Netflix movie, The Ridiculous Six, reportedly walked off the set after hearing his insensitive, outdated jokes.
Around a dozen actors and actresses left the set, along with the film’s Native american cultural advisor on Wednesday, reports the Indian Country Today Media Network. Many were from the Navajo nation and found the jokes about women and elders incredibly inappropriate.
The jokes in the script included names like Beaver’s Breath and No Bra for the women, an Apache character urinating while smoking a peace pipe and inappropriate feathers on a teepee.
“There were about a dozen of us who walked off the set,” Loren Anthony, a member of the band Bloodline and the Navajo Nation tribe, said. Anthony said he was told that the film would not be insulting or racist, but that was clearly not the case when he read the script.
“I was asked a long time ago to do some work on this and I wasn't down for it,” Anthony said. “Then they told me it was going to be a comedy, but it would not be racist. So I agreed to it but on Monday things started getting weird on the set.”
“They just told us, 'If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave.' I was just standing there and got emotional and teary-eyed,” Allison Young, also a Navajo and a film student, said. “I didn’t want to cry but the feeling just came over me.”
The film is a Western parody that also stars Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi and Dan Aykroyd. It was originally developed at Sony, then moved to Paramount and finally landed at Netflix in February.
Netflix later sent a statement to Vulture, which reads, “The movie has ridiculous in the title for a reason: because it is ridiculous. It is a broad satire of Western movies and the stereotypes they popularized, featuring a diverse cast that is not only part of — but in on — the joke.”
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