Faizon Love Sued Universal For Removing The Black Stars From The International Poster Of “Couples Retreat”
Couples Retreat. A movie I never saw and likely never will see. Despite receiving a pitiful 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, the Vince Vaughn vehicle about couples retreating (?) made Universal Pictures a whopping $171 million in 2009. Now one of the film’s stars, Faizon Love, is suing Universal for racial discrimination. He says he and his Black co-star, Kali Hawk, were erased from the overseas version of the poster, while the rest of his white co-stars (Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman, Kristin Davis, Malin Ackerman, Kristen Bell) got to stay.
Here are the two different posters:
Universal sued for cutting black couple from 'Couples Retreat' publicity posters https://t.co/ZXKzHOi6Mu pic.twitter.com/9DJAZGL1l9
— Page Six (@PageSix) November 26, 2020
Um, yeah. That’s fucked. His name isn’t even on the overseas poster. In the docs for the lawsuit, Faizon says the studio chose to segregate white and Black talent when marketing to an international audience. He says he brought it up back in the day and the film’s producer, Scott Stuber, promised him the altered poster would be taken out of circulation. It wasn’t. The then-chairman of Universal Pictures, Adam Fogelson, apparently promised Faizon to throw a few roles his way to make up for it. He didn’t.
Faizon posted about the lawsuit on Instagram, and defended the fact that he’s doing this eleven years after the movie was released:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CICERtqDTOS/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CIECQcwDDMA/
He also went on TMZ Live to give more details. Faizon says neither he or his co-star Kali deserved this treatment, and it’s just another example of Hollywood’s “white arrogance”. He says, “how do you explain taking the only two Black people that’s in your movie off the poster?” When asked if Universal ever gave him an explanation for his erasure from the poster, Faizon replied:
No, that’s where the arrogance comes in. “We didn’t know!” They kinda tried to pass the buck.
He goes on to say:
It’s an arrogant, racism thing. There’s an underlying tone. I got upset when, uh, John Boyega… when I saw the Star Wars trailer. I was so happy to see him in that movie cuz I’m a big fan of Star Wars. When they took him off the poster, I was like, this is a direct… this is because I didn’t step up at the time and put my foot in somebody’s ass. This is what happens when you don’t step up at the time and do what you’re supposed to.
Universal has yet to comment, but I’m sure their response will be something like, “Hey, since then we released the 2018 Oscar winner for Best Picture, Green Book! Remember Green Book? This shit basically solved racism!”
Pic: YouTube