The first trailer for Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s French-Candian remake has left fans confused, with many calling out the forthcoming series’s whitewashed casting.
After the trailer for Escouade 99 was released last week, fans were quick to slam the Quebec-based remake for casting white actors in roles originally played by Latinx actors.
Notably the lead characters Amy Santiago and Rosa Diaz (and played by Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz, respectively, in the original series) have been recast as “Fanny” and “Rosalie”.
Fumero shared her initial excitement about the trailer on Twitter, but also remarked on its casting.
The actor tweeted, “Gotta [say] though after watching this… I’m suddenly curious about the Latina population in Quebec. Just sayin.”
Her call-out has received nearly 8,000 likes, with many other fans voicing similar frustrations on social media.
One user wrote, “You’re willing to make a copy of the show while at the same time erasing the nationality of the two female leads”.
Another from Montreal said, “Unfortunately, our TV producers don’t seem to care about diversity and it’s like that for almost every TV show. It’s white, white white. Shameful”.
Others, however, have defended the remake by citing Quebec’s small Latinx population as justification for its casting of white actors instead.
One user posted a tweet stating, “We do have a problem with representation since I can’t name a Latino-Quebecoise actress, but it’s unfair to yell whitewashing when there’s literally 25 times less Latinx people in Quebec than in NY”
Fans of Brooklyn Nine-Nine were also quick to notice that its French-Canadian counterpart appears to be a near shot-for-shot remake of the original.
The French-language series follows “a group of endearing and out of the ordinary detectives who fight crime at Escouade 99 in Quebec City”.
Escouade 99 is scheduled to air on 17 September.
