Gérard Depardieu as Alexandre Dumas

He’s played Danton, he’s played Cyrano, and so many other icons of French mythology that Gérard Depardieu has become an icon of French history himself, but there’s a lot of people in France upset about his most recent role. As a story in the Daily Telegraph reports, “Black actors and campaigners have condemned a decision to cast Gérard Depardieu as Alexandre Dumas, the French national hero with mixed African blood.”

As the Telegraph story explains, “Dumas was the grandson of a former Haitian slave. His father, although a Napoleonic-era general, was referred to as a Caribbean “negro” and Dumas, who was mocked for his African features, called himself un négre.”

The blond and blue-eyed Depardieu wears dark make-up and a curly wig to better resemble the Three Musketeers author in L’Autre Dumas, which a Times of London report says “is a fictional story about Dumas’ relations in the mid-19th century with Auguste Maquet, the shy assistant who is credited with plotting and drafting much of the Count of Monte Cristo and the Three Musketeers trilogy.” Released last week, it’s been getting raves — until now.

Alexandre Dumas playing Alexandre Dumas

According to The Times report,

The film’s makers said that Depardieu was the ideal match for the novelist, whose works have been turned into 200 films. Not only has the actor played many of Dumas’ heroes, but also his larger-than-life personality resembles that of the novelist. “The vividness of Depardieu is the perfect embodiment of Dumas,” Frank Le Wita, the producer, said. “The subject is not le négre, but la négritude [ghost writing] in literature.”

Both the Times and Telegraph counter that with a statement by Patrick Lozès, president of the Council of Black Associations of France: “In 150 years time could the role of Barack Obama be played in a film by a white actor with a fuzzy wig?”