Original Luigi actor John Leguizamo refuses to watch ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’

John Leguizamo has doubled down on his criticism of The Super Mario Bros. Movie due to its lack of diversity.

The actor, who played Luigi in the 1993 live-action film Super Mario Bros. opposite Bob Hoskins, told TMZ he won’t watch the animated reboot because the film “messed up” by not including Latin actors in the voice cast.

• READ MORE: ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ review: plucky plumbers’ new adventure should have stayed a pipe dream

“They could’ve included a Latin character,” Leguizamo said. “I was groundbreaking, and they stopped the groundbreaking. They messed up the inclusion, they disincluded.”

He added: “Just cast some Latin folk. We’re 20 per cent of the population, the largest people of colour group, and we’re underrepresented. Overrepresented in the worst kind of jobs, though.”

Asked one final time about possibly seeing the movie, Leguizamo stated: “Hell no!”

The actor previously criticised the “backwards” casting in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, where he explained the efforts taken by the directors of the 1993 film to cast him as Luigi.

“The directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton fought really hard for me to be the lead because I was a Latin man, and they [the studio] didn’t want me to be the lead,” Leguizamo told IndieWire. “They fought really hard, and it was such a breakthrough. For them to go backwards and not cast another [actor of colour] kind of sucks.”

Chris Pratt and Charlie Day voice Mario and Luigi respectively in the reboot, alongside Jack Black as Bowser, Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a collaboration between Nintendo, Universal Pictures and Illumination (Despicable Me), directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic.

In a two-star review, NME wrote: “It’s faithful enough to tempt existing fans to the cinema, but too perfunctory to be pored over. Is the Mario movie super? To paraphrase one of the title character’s catchphrases, it’s-a mediocre.”

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