In an interview with Salon, comedian Bassem Youssef claimed he lost a role in the upcoming Superman movie because of the anti-Israel views he expressed on Piers Morgan.
Naturally, along with most of what else Youssef has claimed when it comes to the Jewish state, it is simply not true.
Filmmaker and DCU chief James Gunn is looking to clear the air after comedian Bassem Youssef said he thought he lost a role in Superman: Legacy due to comments he made about the Israel-Hamas war.
In social media posts Friday, Gunn publicly endorsed an IGN article reporting that Youssef’s potential role as dictator Rumaan Harjavti was written out of the upcoming superhero movie before Youssef went viral with a Piers Morgan interview in October. The article also said that while Youssef had been in talks, he was never actually offered the role. “This is accurate,” Gunn wrote alongside a link to the article.
In a subsequent post, Gunn said he and Youssef were now on the same page. “There isn’t one word against another,” he wrote. “[Bassem] and I talked and we’re good. I understand how he thought things might be (which he was clear about in his interview), and I told him the whole story.”
EW has reached out to representatives for Youssef and DC Studios for further comment.
Milly Alcock, who was recently cast as Supergirl in the DCU, has also been a vocal advocate for Palestinian liberation, and her position on the conflict does not seem to have affected her tenure with DC Studios. AussieTheatre.com reported in December that Alcock signed a letter calling artists to wear “traditional Palestinian scarves” in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Youssef’s allegation – which is basically that Jewish studio execs yielded undue power to drop someone just because they are anti-Israel – is essentially antisemitic. But Youssef is not antisemitic, he tells us so in the interview (while also telling us what we are doing is like what the Nazis did to us).
Incidentally, the guy interviewing him here, Dean Obeidallah, is not a fan of mine.
