Justin Simien (Dear White People) signed on to direct Disney’s newest take on Haunted Mansion, he tells Consequence, because he immediately connected with Katie Dippold’s script, and that he knew it needed to star LaKeith Stanfield — even though the script didn’t state that the lead role of Ben was a person of color. “I think the assumption is that the lead character would be white because it’s always, frankly, the assumption when it’s not specified in the script,” he says. “But I don’t think I could’ve directed it if that were the case.”
Inspired by the iconic Disneyland ride, Haunted Mansion begins in New Orleans, as tour guide in mourning Ben (Stanfield) gets drawn into uncovering the secrets of the rural spook-occupied house recently acquired by single mom Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase W. Dillon). It’s an ensemble in nature, but Ben’s emotional journey is a key anchor of it — a challenge worthy of the Oscar-nominated actor.
Simien says there was pushback to casting a Black actor in the role — “it’s never overt in that way, but you certainly feel a resistance to some names that you don’t feel to others.” However, he adds, “I felt really strongly about LaKeith. I felt I saw myself as Ben, and I also felt like Ben is from New Orleans and should be a Black guy because New Orleans is predominantly a Black city. It just felt kind of criminal to make a movie about New Orleans and not put a Black person in the lead. It’s an 85% Black town. It doesn’t really get a lot of representation in film that feels authentic to me. That was an essential part of my vision, to be honest.”
Casting Stanfield is comparable to the casting of Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Simien notes, because in both cases, “you hadn’t really seen him lead a movie in that way before. He’s a very particular kind of character actor. And LaKeith kind of had that unicorn vulnerable, but cool, swagger, and a sad boy energy that reminded me of Johnny Depp in that film — I also personally knew LaKeith to be a very charming, warm, soulful person. So I knew he had the leading man qualities. It was really just a matter of getting to showcase that and tease that out. He is a phenomenal actor and a phenomenal person, and just exactly who you want by your side, who understands that we are trying to tell a bigger story.”
Invoking Pirates was “a touchstone” in Simien’s conversations with Disney execs: “It works sometimes more than others,” he laughs. “But the thing about Disney is that so many of their movies are blends of dark and light and humor and sadness and strange casting choices or idiosyncratic artistic decisions. I drew upon a lot of Disney references in making this movie — I tried to speak Disney in as many ways as I could to communicate.”
In developing the project, Simien felt “very protective” of Dippold’s screenplay, “and I felt so called to help realize it. Because she had put on the page a really sophisticated story about grief and about death, but it was also very funny and encased in this family movie.”
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