WELLINGTON: Peter Jackson's troubled “Hobbit” project has become embroiled in a race row after a would-be extra was told she was too dark to play a one of the pint-sized Tolkien creatures, reports said Monday. Briton Naz Humphreys, who has Pakistani heritage, attended a casting session in the New Zealand city of Hamilton last week, queueing for three hours only to be told her skin tone was not suitable, the Waikato Times reported. “It's 2010 and I still can't believe I'm being discriminated against because I have brown skin,” Humphreys told the newspaper. “The casting manager basically said they weren't having anybody who wasn't pale-skinned.” The newspaper said video footage showed the casting manager telling people at the audition: “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.”Humphreys said she was a huge fan of Jackson's Oscar-winning “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and, with a height of 1.5 meters (five foot), 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 color. “They all look kind of homogenized beige and all derived from the Caucasian gene pool.” Humphreys has started a Facebook group called “Hire hobbits of all colours! Say no to hobbit racism!” A spokesman for Jackson told the newspaper that the director was unaware of the casting restriction and described it as “an incredibly unfortunate error”. – Agence France
