The white sign-language interpreter booted from Broadway’s “Lion King” for his skin color quietly settled his federal discrimination case against the theatre company that fired him, The Post has learned.
Keith Wann and the Theatre Development Fund — a nonprofit that provides ASL interpreters at Broadway shows — resolved the dispute outside of court just two weeks after Wann filed his lawsuit and The Post published a front-page report.
“The matter between myself and TDF has been resolved and both parties are satisfied with the discussions that ensued,” Wann wrote in a social media post announcing the settlement. “I look forward to the review of the process that will come from this to hopefully benefit the interpreting profession.”
Keith Wann and the Theatre Development Fund resolved the dispute outside of court just two weeks after Wann filed his lawsuit. Courtesy of Keith Wan
Wann filed the lawsuit on Nov. 8 after he and another interpreter, Christina Mosleh, were told to back out of the production in April so they could be replaced by black sign-language experts, according to the suit and emails obtained by The Post.
“Keith Wann, though an amazing ASL performer, is not a black person and therefore should not be representing Lion King,” Shelly Guy, the director of ASL for “The Lion King,” told Lisa Carling, the director of the Theatre Development Fund’s accessibility programs, in an email.
Wann’s decision to take the case up in court was met with online backlash from the deaf community.
“Stop taking all the jobs when we have black interpreters that are the better fit…,” said deaf performer Raven Sutton. Broadway World/Shutterstock
“You disgusted me,” Randy Spann, host of the deaf talk show The Real Talk with Randy, said in video response to Wann’s lawsuit. “Enough is enough. Let black people get their opportunities to get a spotlight.”
In a viral TikTok video, deaf performer Raven Sutton blasted Wann for his decision to sue the theatre group.
“This is not discrimination,” Sutton signed on the video that amassed over 57,000 views. “Reverse racism is not a thing. Stop taking all the jobs when we have black interpreters that are the better fit. Wipe your own white tears because we are not going to do it for you.”
“There are some people justifying why they don’t support him through the lens of racial identity politics,” said Jared Allebest, a deaf civil rights attorney. Stephen Yang for NY Post
Many Post readers and others in the deaf community came out in force to support Wann and condemn the outrage he faced.
“I’m baffled by the hate,” Jared Allebest, a deaf civil rights attorney, told The Post. “There are some people justifying why they don’t support him through the lens of racial identity politics”
In Wann’s statement this week, the interpreter addressed the criticism he faced online and the debates his lawsuit spawned.
“Over the last week I have seen a lot of pain in our community and have also seen some much-needed conversations,” Wann wrote. “It is unfortunate that assumptions were made, and conclusions were drawn without all the facts.”
An actor fired from Broadway’s “The Lion King” on his first day of paternity leave has accused Disney in a new lawsuit of violating his human rights.
William James Jr claims he was fired, in part, in retaliation for multiple complaints he made about the show’s production director Ameenah Kaplan, according to a complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
James, who was in the ensemble cast and was an understudy for the leading role of Mufasa, claims Kaplan bullied him and made “unwelcome advances” on the actor during the better part of James’s time in the cast.
Since joining the team in 2018, one year after James did, Kaplan flirted with the actor and invited him out to drinks, the suit alleges.
In February 2019, Kaplan began “unreasonably” berating James and threatened to limit his performances, according to the suit.
James claims Ameenah Kaplan bullied him while also making unwelcome advances.Robb Sapp/The Conscience Cloud
In December of that year, Kaplan publicly taunted James after finding out about the actor’s complaints against him, provoking an argument for which only James was reprimanded, he alleges in the lawsuit.
After an investigation, Disney told James that it found the harassment claims to be baseless. James accused the giant company of “sweeping (his) complaints under the rug.”
“Disney & Lion King management allowed me to be SEXUALLY HARASSED, STALKED, THREATENED, DISRESPECTED, TAUNTED, TORMENTED, GAS-LIT, BULLIED & INTENTIONALLY PLACED IN UNSAFE SITUATIONS by a sociopathic, manipulative & dangerously director,” James said in a 2021 tweet.
As “revenge” for speaking out, Disney fired James on the first day of his paternity leave in March 2020 while the production was on its North American tour, he says in the suit. The termination was carried out “in the most callous way at the most unreasonable time” so as to send a message to other employees.
All the Disney princessesPhoto: Olga Thompson (Walt Disney World Resort via Getty Images)
Now that another Disney+ Day has come and gone, we can get on to the meat of Disney’s big weekend: The D23 Expo, where the greatest fans in the world can get a look at the stuff they’ve already seen before but now reimagined.
Kicking off the day was Cynthia Orivio, our new Blue Fairy, who reminded the audience that there was a new version of Pinnochio currently being memory-holed on Disney+. Continuing the theme that these sorts of things were now the order of the day, Disney Studios chairman Alan Bergman took the stage to remind us that these reimaginings, such as The Lion King, Beauty And The Beast, Cinderella, and Cruella, were “iconic.” We assume he meant that the movies use “iconic imagery,” but regardless, more of these iconic reimaginings and sequels are coming down the pike.
Bergman then brought Walt Disney Studios president Sean Bailey out to take us through the upcoming ways they’re reviving old brands.
Don’t worry: Hocus Pocus 2 and Disenchanted are still coming
First up were the sequels. Hocus Pocus 2 debuts later this month, and since we already shared the trailer, we’ll move on to the other big sequel announcement: Disenchanted. Don’t get it twisted with Matt Groening’s Netflix comedy Disenchantment. This is a sequel to the wonderful Amy Adams comedy Enchanted from 2007. The whole cast is back, including Adams, Patrick Dempsey, Adele Dazeem Idina Menzel, and James Marsden. They’ve upped the ante by adding a Maya Rudolph, too. And now, there’s a trailer.
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Disenchanted lands on Disney+ on November 24, 2022.
Disenchanted | Official Trailer | Disney+
Reimagining the past is Disney’s future
The presentation was done round-robin style, with Bailey shuffling VIPs on stage for about five minutes, playing a clip, and then shuffling them off. So next up, Jude Law and the cast of Peter Pan & Wendy took the stage.
Directed by David Lowery, who directed one of the best films of 2021, The Green Knight, and Disney’s delightful remake of Pete’s Dragon, Peter Pan seems a bit more stylish than the other movies announced today. It’s still filled with nostalgic images pulled straight from the Disney vault, but also a distinct visual style, location shooting, and a fish-eye lens that won’t quit. So how will this differ from literally every other revisionist PeterPans fromthe last 20 years? Those got theatrical releases.
Our new Captain Hook, Jude Law, said that this version gets into the “backstory a little more” when Peter and Hook “were once friends.” But, again, it remains to be seen how this one will differentiate itself from the numerous other Peter Pans.
Perhaps the trickiest aspect of the movie is Tiger Lily, a character that hasn’t been treated with much respect by Disney in the past. Nevertheless, newcomer Alyssa Wapanatâhk said she was very “excited to have the honor” of playing Tiger Lily. “To be able to tell the story for her, that was phenomenal for me.”
Peter Pan & Wendy [sigh] hits Disney+ next year.
After pushing Peter Pan back to Neverland, Sean Bailey introduced the trailer of The Haunted Mansion and announced that Winona Rider was joining the cast. Director (and former Disneyland employee) Justin Simin also mentioned that “according to TikTok,” Jared Leto is playing the Hatbox Ghost. We await the horror stories from his fellow castmates about how hard he tried to fit into a hatbox for the role. But really, this one is for the real Hatbox heads.
“That script was funny and filled with interesting characters, but it had a little bit of like a dark edge to it,” Simin told the crowd at D23. “I just really related to it. I felt like I knew how to make it. I felt like I understood New Orleans. And, of course, I’m a fanboy. So I felt like I understood the ride, and I felt like I got a responsibility here to make sure all the little details, all the Easter eggs are there because I’m a nerd for real.”
Bailey brought out Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins for a sneak peek of Mufasa: The Lion King. Jon Favreau’s The Lion King made over a billion dollars, so that means people liked it. However, the “live action” animation in Mufasa probably won’t convert anyone turned off by the last trip to Pride Lands. Still, then again, Barry Jenkins is very good at making movies. Here’s what Barry Jenkins said about the film:
Mufasa is the origin story of one of the greatest beings in the history of the alliance. Mufasa, all caps. It’s a story told in a few different time frames. Rafiki, Timon, and Pumbaa, who we all know and love, are relating the story of Mufasa and how he came to a very beautiful, awesome, fantastic young cub. It’s a story about how Mufasa rose to royalty. We assume he was just born into his lineage. But Mufasa was actually an orphaned cub, who had to navigate the world alone. And in telling this story, we get to experience the real journey of how Mufasa found his place and the circle of life. It is pretty awesome.
I felt I had to make this movie because when I was 14, I was helping raise two nephews. And there was a VHS tape that we watched maybe 95 times in the span of 20 days. So I really knew this character. I loved him. But then as I was reading this wonderful script, I was thinking about Mufasa and why he’s great and how people become great. And it’s crazy. I am not a king, but when I make my movies, I was on stage at the Oscars with Moonlight, and I was there and five of my best friends from college were also there. And what you are learning the story is that Mufasa is who he is. He is great because of the family and the friends he has with them. And so I saw myself in that. I thought, this is a really beautiful story to tell.
For Marc Webb’s Snow White, Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler took the stage to show some footage. There are no dwarves yet—and seeing as they were cut from the title, who knows what their role will be. Thus far, it looks similar to the other remakes, recreating the look of the animated classic. But we’ll need to see Dopey to know how scary this thing is going to look.
Similarly, Rob Marshall invited Halley Bailey on stage to show off The Little Mermaid teaser and a clip of “Part Of Your World.” It doesn’t look like all the effects are done yet, but right now, it’s reminiscent of Avatarand the “merman” commercial from Zoolander. On the other hand, Marshall did promise four new songs from Alan Menkin and Lin Manuel Miranda, so that’s something.
Pixar on Disney+
The director of The Good Dinosaur, Peter Sohn, is back, and he brought some clips and concept art for the next Pixar movie Elemental. Sohn described the film as “very personal” and that the germ of the idea came from his parents. “We immigrated to the U.S. from Korea in the early seventies,” Sohn said. “They had no money, no family, no English. But they managed to create a life in New York.”
Similarly, Elemental files a “fire family” assimilating in Element City, “where Earth, air, water, and fire are characters in our community.”
More Pixar is coming in 2023 as we got a little more information on Win Or Lose, the studio’s first television series. The show stars Will Forte as the coach of a ragtag little league baseball team, the Pickles, and the week leading up to their big game. Each episode will focus on a different character’s perspective, allowing for various animation styles.
Pixar also announced two new features Elio and Inside Out 2, which we wrote about here.
Wait! Disney also has some cartoons to share
Disney Animation Studios will not be outdone. Today, they showed clips of their upcoming series Zootopia+ and Iwájú.
Zootopia+ is a six-part series that, like Win Or Lose, focuses on a different character and genre in each episode with various animation styles—some of which look really cool and others like Pixar.
On the other hand, Iwájú is a downright historic collaboration between Disney and an outside animation studio. Jennifer Lee, the Chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios, retold the story of how she had read about a Nigerian animation studio that was going to take down Disney. So she did like many Disney execs before her and bought the competition.
With the team from Kugali, Disney will premiere the futuristic sci-fi series Iwájú next year.
Finally, Lee brought out the cast from their upcoming 61st animated feature, Strange World. Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, and Lucy Liu star in an outer space adventure about a dysfunctional group of explorers. This one comes out on November 23.
Strange World | Teaser Trailer | Walt Disney Animation Studios
“Our film is inspired by some of the great adventure stories that we grew up with,” said co-director Don Hall. “Specifically stories about a group of explorers that stumble upon a hidden world.”
What are we most excited to discover? Jaboukie Young-White’s character, Ethan Clave, which Young-White described as “the vibe master” who makes “the vibe great.”
And that’s everything from the D23 Expo Disney Animation Studios and Pixar presentation. Check back tomorrow when Disney tries to bury us under a mountain of Star Wars and Marvel announcements.
