‘Cool Runnings’ Cast And Director Recall Battling With Disney Over Jamaican Accents, They ‘Wanted A Disney Version’ That Sounded Like Sebastian The Crab
04.10.2023 - 20:11
/ etcanada.com
The cast and crew of Disney’s beloved sports comedy, “Cool Runnings”, are opening up about the troubles they ran into with Disney upon making the 1993 film.
During a recent reunion, in honour of the film’s 30th anniversary this month, director Jon Turteltaub and the cast recalled battling with the media giant over the film’s Jamaican accents.
“Cool Runnings” — roughly based on the debut of the Jamaican national bobsleigh team at the 1988 Winter Olympics — initially got its start apart from Disney with a script that featured a lot of “drugs, racism and the characters were getting laid a lot,” actor Rawle D. Lewis revealed in a interview with The Independent.
“I saw it morph into the movie that it is now,” the cast member continued. “It was something that had never been told before – Jamaicans in tights? People were like, ‘How’s this going to go under the Disney umbrella?’”
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When Walt Disney Studios entered the picture, its executives allegedly fought with Turteltaub over the accent work of the cast members.
“They wanted me to sound like a black Aladdin,” Just Leon recounted. “They wanted a Disney version. It was tough because if anybody wants to be authentic, it’s me — but I’m a professional and I had to do the job.”
“They’d say, ‘People in Middle America won’t be able to understand you,'” Malik Yoba added. “At that time, people had less access to cultural differences and didn’t know how Jamaican really sounded.”
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Eventually, Turteltaub received a phone call from Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was the Disney chairman at the time.
“He said, ‘If