Former Luigi John Leguizamo says the Super Mario casting's representation "kind of sucks"
Leguizamo: "For them to go backwards and not cast another [actor of color] kind of sucks.”
John Leguizamo, Luigi emeritus, has offered up some thoughts on Nintendo and Illumination’s upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie, and especially the voice casting for the animated film. Specifically, Leguizamo has expressed, not for the first time, his unhappiness at the fact that Mario and Luigi will now be played by a couple of white guys, with Chris Pratt and Charlie Day taking on the roles of the Mushroom Kingdom’s iconic plumber-adventurers.
Talking to IndieWire at the premiere for his new movie The Menu—which co-stars Anya Taylor-Joy, who’s playing Princess Peach in Mario—Leguizamo recalled how hard he and directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton had to fight to get the studio to cast a man of color as Luigi in 1993's Super Mario Bros. Saying Jankel and Morton, “fought really hard for me to be the lead because I was a Latin man, and they [the studio] didn’t want me to be the lead,” Leguizamo called the casting, “such a breakthrough. For them to go backwards and not cast another [actor of color] kind of sucks.”