Dakota Fanning Rejects Allegations on Whitewashing over Muslim Character

A clip from the TIFF-bowing feature, Sweetness in the Belly has gone on to spark an outrage that involves actress Dakota Fanning. The actress has now responded to the allegations of whitewashing over her latest role, that is of a Muslim.

According to reports, In Sweetness in the Belly, adapted from Camilla Gibb's 2005 novel and screening in Toronto, the actress — recently seen as a Manson girl in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood — plays a child refugee who is abandoned in Africa by her parents and raised in Ethiopia as Muslim. 

The first clip from the film, directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, was released earlier this week, and fell foul of several online commentators, who complained on social media that Fanning's role — which originally Saoirse Ronan was attached to play — should have gone to a Muslim actress or a woman of color. 

Muhammad Butt tweeted as he said, "so many talented Muslim actors out there and you cast... Dakota Fanning???????????????????? and to play an ETHIOPIAN?????????????? I BEG YOUR PARDON???????????????"

But the actress went on to respond saying, "I play a British woman abandoned by her parents at seven years old in Africa and raised Muslim," she said. "“My character, Lilly, journeys to Ethiopia and is caught up in the breakout of civil war. She is subsequently sent ‘home’ to England, a place she is from but has never known."