15 Most Controversial Movie Moments 2016

Since the announcement that Zoe Saldana would take the lead role in a forthcoming biopic about legendary musician and civil rights activist Nina Simone in 2012, both the actress and movie have faced a barrage of criticism by people who see the casting choice as committing blackface. When the trailer hit featuring Saldana, an American actress of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, in dark skin makeup and a prosthetic nose in order to look more like Simone, the outcry grew louder.

Simone’s estate completely disassociated from the movie, telling Saldana in a tweet ‘Please take Nina's name out your mouth. For the rest of your life’. Though Simone’s daughter, singer and actress Lisa Simone Kelly, has said Saldana shouldn’t be personally vilified she points out that her mother’s racial identity was central to her life and career and that to cast someone so physically unlike Simone wasn’t the best casting choice: ‘My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark. Appearance-wise, this is not the best choice.’