Vanity Fair announced it will not issue a correction in its September cover profile of Angelina Jolie after reporting that the director allowed a controversial casting process of the lead child role in her latest film, “First I Killed My Father.”
“To cast the children in the film, Jolie looked at orphanages, circuses, and slum schools, specifically seeking children who had experienced hardship. In order to find their lead, to play young Loung Ung, the casting directors set up a game, rather disturbing in its realism: they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away. The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie,” Vanity Fair wrote.
Reader outcry over the passage forced Angelina Jolie to respond to Vanity Fair’s reporting about the casting process, which she called “false and upsetting.”
“The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened,” Jolie said in her statement. Her lawyer also contacted Vanity Fair, asking that they remove the original paragraph from the online version of the story, and issue a correction in both print and digital versions of the story.
After playing back recordings of Jolie’s interview with the magazine, and reviewing transcripts, Vanity Fair stands by its reporting, and refused to comply with the lawyer’s requests.
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