Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first Twilight, is speaking out about her thwarted attempts to make the film more diverse. According to her, these efforts were blocked by none other than Stephanie Meyer, the author of of the novels the franchise is based on.
Hardwicke told The Daily Beast that she wanted to cast more people of color; however, Meyer “had not really written [the story] that way.”
“So she probably just didn’t see the world that way,” Hardwicke said. “And I was like oh my God, I want the vampires, I want them all — Alice, I wanted her to be Japanese! I had all these ideas.”
But Meyer apparently wasn’t on board.
“And she just could not accept the Cullens to be more diverse, because she had really seen them in her mind, she knew who each character was representing in a way, a personal friend or a relative or something,” Hardwicke said, adding that in speaking with Meyer, she specifically noted that in the books, the vampires had “pale glistening skin.”
In the end, Hardwicke was able to convince Meyer that Kenyan-born actor Edi Gathegi should play Laurent. “The only reason that came through was he was described as having olive skin,” Hardwicke told The Daily Beast. “And I said, there are black olives out there!”
Afterward, Meyer “was open to the students in [Bella’s] peer group being other ethnicities,” which prompted the casting of Christian Serratos and Justin Chon. “So we were able to open it up a little bit,” Hardwicke said.
Read the full interview here, which also chronicles the current 10-year anniversary of Twilight.