Angelina Jolie has denied a controversial casting process for her movie First They Killed My Father, which was described in Vanity Fair.
According to the excerpt from Vanity Fair, Jolie and her casting team placed money on a table, allowing children that were auditioning for the Cambodian film to take it. However, after they had taken the cash, the director “caught” them, forcing the kids to explain why they needed the money.
Srey Moch was chosen for the part.
“Moch was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time,” Jolie is quoted as saying. “When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back. When she was asked later what the money was for, she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral.”
Jolie now claims that the casting process has been misconstrued, that it was “a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film.”
Jolie gave a statement to Variety, saying, “The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting,” she wrote. “I would be outraged myself if this had happened.”
First They Killed My Father is based on a book by Loung Ung. The story is a retelling of Ung’s survival of the communist Pol Pot regime. The film has a Netflix release in September.
Originally published August 1, 2017. Updated November 21, 2019.
