“I Am Not My Hair” singer/hit maker/realist, India Arie, has once again joined the the many people- celebrities and civilians alike- who think that casting Hispanic actress, Zoe Saldana, as Nina Simone made absolutely not one ounce of sense and a few days ago, India voices her frustration and confusion about why the producers of Nina Simone’s upcoming autobiographical film decided to go to such extreme lengthhs of having to darken Saldana’s skin and put a prosthetic nose on her, just to make her more believable as Nina.

When asked what she thought about the physical portrayal of the great Nina Simone in the film here is what India said:

“It made me sad. The way she looked in the movie was ugly. Whether or not Nina Simone was beautiful in your eyes, I thought she was beautiful. But in this movie, she just looked weird. Her skin looked weird, and her nose looked weird. It made me wonder, ‘Was that how the filmmakers see her? Did they not think she was beautiful? Were they like, ‘Yeah, we got it! That’s how she looked.”

“It’s not my place to say how Zoe Saldana perceives herself, and I can’t say how anybody else perceives her, either. I see her as a black person of Hispanic origin, but I don’t even know what that really means, because I don’t know anything about race and Hispanic culture.

India also voiced her confusion over why the producers would cast someone who looks completely different from the beautiful African features that Nina Simone was so proud of and fought hard to celebrate and embrace through her art:

So in the context of the politics of race in America and the politics of race in the entertainment industry in America, to make a movie about a person like that and cast an actress that has to wear blackface and a prosthetic nose is tone-deaf. To propagate that institutionalized racism that is historical in Hollywood in a movie about her is ironic in the worst possible way.”

“If I was going to pick someone I know, I would choose Adepero Oduye [a Sundance breakout for 2011’s Pariah, most recently of The Big Short] because of her acting chops and her facial features.

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