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Why did Rocketman cast a black woman for Bernie Taupin’s wife? The real Maxine was blonde & W

posted 5 years ago by Ruthlilycat (90)
4 replies | jump to latest

The woman cast in Rocketman, Sharmina Harrower. She is beautiful, but she’s not anything like the real Maxine Feibelman-Taupin.

Maxine Feibelman was a gorgeous blonde woman, with straight hair. She was the person whom “Tiny Dancer” was writter about. Sharmina is very tall. Casting director who wanted to cross-culturally /transgressively cast a BW for a WW for this role and also, probably the producers and director who wanted this are just WRONG for doing this.

Completely inaccurate. Pix at the link.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7769357/Maxine-Taupin-reveals-moment-realized-Elton-Johns-Tiny-Dancer-written-her.html

[–] TimMC (9143) 5 years ago

Asking questions is racist. Mmkay.

[–] Otter (24464) 5 years ago

Maybe the real Maxine didn't give them her permission to imitate her in the film?

But in terms of filmmaking... she comes into the film at their "We're not in Kansas any more, Toto" moment, and her function is to represent the new world opening up to them. She's not only the kind of beautiful girl who wouldn't even talk to them the week before, but one who is utterly different than the girls they knew back home. She's meant to look absolutely nothing like the girls from Pinner.

[–] harria59 (1) 4 years ago

I don't know... I just watched it today and was curious on the history of the song. When I saw the real Maxine I was like, huh? In my mind, if I was doing a biopic on someone I would say "hey, here are the historical people of significance we want to replicate. Go find some that match in casting". Instead, it was probably more along the lines of "We need to make sure we have an interacial couple included in this for diversity purposes." I don't know, it's getting a little silly in my opinion. Similar to what they did in that Chernobyl series. The "woman scientist" they portrayed never existed in real life, but they claimed she "represented the many hard working scientists who tried to solve the problem at hand." They really just wanted to fit a woman in somewhere due to some societal pressure or something I'm not aware of going on in Hollywood. Other than that, it's more of a musical play than a "movie". I'm into real in-depth history and stories of rock n' roll, so this kind of portrayal doesn't really move me too much. They essentially took the same formula used in Bohemian Rhapsody and injected some steroids. This style of movie is really meant to appeal and reach a broader, casual fan/audience. Also, watching it there were moments where I felt that I wasn't in the 70s/80s..

[–] Philhelm (509) 4 years ago

I just looked her up and I'm surprised since she isn't even pretty. She's not hideous, but maybe a 5/10 at best, and I'm not saying that to be snobby.