How can I cast a fat girl that gets made fun of without actually hurting her?

U

UncleKornicob

Member
Alright, broad thread title, but it sums it up relatively. I am in the pre stages of writing a screen play about about a broken home in a broken neighborhood. One of the scenes I envision involves a 10-11 girl who gets made fun of for her weight. This poses a great question though, how can I cast a little girl who is clearly over weight, and on set have the "bullies" repetitively make fun of her real life weight in the made up scenario? I need this scene especially to be real, and it needs to capture true emotions. But I'm not willing to risk a real girls feelings for a scene. How do I do it? How can I cast an overweight 5th grader and have her get made fun of for her weight without crushing her in reality? Tough, I know. It's been done before.
 
I think you're over thinking this. You need to advertise this as a role for an overweight kid and that the subject matter deals with bullying because of the weight. I don't see the hangup. If they (and their parents) aren't comfortable with the role they can opt out.
 
Yup, definitely be upfront that the role is an overweight girl who's the target of bullying - that will avoid wasting everyone's time during the casting process.

As far as the actress's feelings, I think those will mirror the character's feelings in the overall film, and this will also come up for discussion during casting interviews with the potential actresses and their parents. How does the script resolve the bullying plot/subplot?
- If the character throws herself in front of a bus, then yeah, that's a total downer for the actress too.
- If the character gets revenge by pushing the bully in front of a bus, then certain actresses (and parents) will think that's brilliant, and others will be horrified.
- If the character becomes super-popular/rich/talented/whatever, then you risk a fake sickly-sweet ending that few will like.
- Or maybe this character is a bit part and doesn't even get a plot resolution - especially awkward.

Perhaps more than the plot, the biggest issue would be how everyone on set (actors and crew) treat her through the whole production process, from casting onwards:
- if everyone (including the 'bully' actors) is nice and the bullying is clearly acting and only happens during the scenes, then it could be a positive experience, with all the actors exploring the bullying theme together. Quite seriously, be equally careful about who you cast as the bullies - they need to be people who only reluctantly bully as required for the role. I know it would complicate the casting process, but you may want to do some work-shopping of potential actors together, to check for real/screen chemistry - ideally they should like each other in real life, but hate each other on-screen. And/or empower the actress by letting her help choose the bully actors and their lines?
- if on the other hand she feels like she's only there to be the fat freak, then yes she'll hate you forever :)
 
the only other way is to be a jerk about it, and write / shoot it in a way that you can swap out the other persons performance to one with worse words in post - you just have to make sure that the fat girl has lines that makes sense in both scenarios.

I am very fat myself and have been made fun of more than my fair share - it truly is the last socially accepted rude behavior left. You can't make fun of someone for being gay, or jewish, or black - but just look around, making fun of fat people is a great way for folks to make themselves feel better, bully someone and not only get away with it, but be praised for doing so. Heck, if you do it at work, who knows, HR might pull the fat guy/gal aside and tell them that they need to lose weight so that the health insurance premiums go down... or that you are being a workplace distraction being so fat, or that if you don't lose weight they will have to let you go.

Especially nice not all overweight people overeat - many people have a medical condition. Can you imagine having someone make fun of someone else for, say..... being pregnant, or having AIDS, or cancer.... yeah, cancer is funny .. I love cancer, especially little kids with cancer.

Who knows, maybe you're about to tell me that you're doing a piece about how making fun of fat people is wrong - of course, I would have no way of knowing if that was true, but even if that is the case, 99/100 times dialogue like this is really just filler material to help "spice up" the script.... I mean, if that doesn't work, lets do some blackface comedy, thats always a crowd pleaser :)
 
captainjman said:
the only other way is to be a jerk about it, and write / shoot it in a way that you can swap out the other persons performance to one with worse words in post - you just have to make sure that the fat girl has lines that makes sense in both scenarios.

I am very fat myself and have been made fun of more than my fair share - it truly is the last socially accepted rude behavior left. You can't make fun of someone for being gay, or jewish, or black - but just look around, making fun of fat people is a great way for folks to make themselves feel better, bully someone and not only get away with it, but be praised for doing so. Heck, if you do it at work, who knows, HR might pull the fat guy/gal aside and tell them that they need to lose weight so that the health insurance premiums go down... or that you are being a workplace distraction being so fat, or that if you don't lose weight they will have to let you go.

Especially nice not all overweight people overeat - many people have a medical condition. Can you imagine having someone make fun of someone else for, say..... being pregnant, or having AIDS, or cancer.... yeah, cancer is funny .. I love cancer, especially little kids with cancer.

Who knows, maybe you're about to tell me that you're doing a piece about how making fun of fat people is wrong - of course, I would have no way of knowing if that was true, but even if that is the case, 99/100 times dialogue like this is really just filler material to help "spice up" the script.... I mean, if that doesn't work, lets do some blackface comedy, thats always a crowd pleaser :)
Click to expand...

Rekindled Robert Downey Jr.'s career… ; )
 
It's called acting. It's not real. You advertise for a fat actress and you'll get a mum and dad thrown in for free. If your crew are professionally behaved it will be fine. Everyone knows the difference between reality and pretend! I worked for many weeks with a UK name who has made her name from being obese. She doesn't get upset by idiots who say the wrong things, and most large people have coping strategies for these idiots. Some, sadly don't but these are very unlikely to be actors, so wouldn't respond to the ad.

Here in the UK, under 16s have legal protection and need licensed chaperones and certain dramatic scenes could be trouble. They're not able to be in a scene with certain content - physical and sexual abuse, for example. It means screenplays have to be written so as to reduce their exposure either by editing or removal from set for certain bits and fixing it in the edit. Very often this part of our child protection law gets a bit blurred by production people but often parents too. Very tricky to be in charge of!
 
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