Peter Jackson // Current TV

A British woman of Pakistani origin was turned away from auditions for Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit in New Zealand on the basis that she was not white enough.
Naz Humphreys, who is 5ft tall, had travelled to Hamilton from Auckland last Tuesday in the hope of securing an extra role on Peter Jackson's forthcoming two-part adaptation of JRR Tolkien's classic fantasy tale.
But after a three-hour wait she was told by a casting agent that her skin tone made it unlikely she would be cast.
According to the Waikato Times a video shows a film company representative telling the crowd: "We are looking for light-skinned people. I'm not trying to be – whatever. It's just the brief. You've got to look like a hobbit."
The independent contractor who made the comments and placed an advertisement in a local New Zealand newspaper specifying female hobbit extras "should have light skin tones" had been dismissed, a spokesman for Jackson's Wingnut Films said.
"No such instructions were given, the crew member in question took it upon themselves to do that and it's not something we instructed or condoned," he told AFP.
The agent had placed a classified advertisement in the Bay of Plenty Times listing essential requirements for potential hobbits, including age, 16-80, and height - below 170 cm (5 foot 7 inches) for men and 158cm (5ft 2in) for women. The additional demand for light skin tones applied only to women.
Humphreys has started a Facebook group called "Hire hobbits of all colours! Say no to hobbit racism!"
"It's 2010 and I still can't believe I'm being discriminated against because I have brown skin," Humphreys told the Waikato Times newspaper.
"The casting manager basically said they weren't having anybody who wasn't pale-skinned."
Naz Humphreys said she was a huge fan of Jackson's Oscar-winning "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and, at 150 centimetres, had hoped for a bit part in "The Hobbit", a two-part prequel to the original movies.
"I would love to be an extra," she said. "But it just seemed like a shame because obviously hobbits are not brown or black or any other colour.
"They all look kind of homogenised beige and all derived from the Caucasian gene pool."
In "The Lord of the Rings", Tolkien described three races of Hobbits inhabiting the Middle Earth fantasy world which is the setting for the movies, including harfoots, who "were browner of skin" than the others.
The Wingnut spokesman said anyone who met the height and age criteria was free to audition, regardless of skin colour.
"The crew member in question has been dismissed from the show," he said. "It's something we take very seriously." The spokesman did not say when the sacking occurred. A British woman of Pakistani origin was turned away from auditions for Lord of the... more

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