When Idris Elba refused to cast his real daughter as his onscreen child: “The chemistry wasn’t right”
Nepotism has been running rampant in Hollywood since the advent of the moving image, not that Idris Elba gave a shit when he caused friction at home by refusing to cast his real-life daughter as his onscreen child.
On paper, Isan Elba probably thought she had the role in the bag. After all, the secret to a convincing parent/child relationship in any film, TV series, or stage production is authenticity and realism, making the audience buy into the idea that the two characters are related by blood.
Not to state the obvious, but she’d already spent her entire life going method for the part by being Elba’s daughter, so in theory, she wouldn’t have to work too hard to convey their genuine relationship to the viewers. And yet, she wasn’t right for the gig, and the person who had to break the news was her old man.
What must have made it even tougher on poor Isan was that it wasn’t as if she was auditioning for a prestigious drama, an Oscar-baiting dramatic heavyweight, or even an emotionally taxing tale. Instead, she was in contention for Meredith Samuels, the rebellious daughter of her dad’s Nate, a widowed physician who ends up fighting for his life against a ravenous CGI lion in director Baltasar Kormákur’s intentionally silly B-tier genre flick, Beast.
“She auditioned, and it came down to chemistry in the end,” the leading man told iHeart Radio. “She’s great, but the relationship in the film and the relationship between my daughter was… the chemistry wasn’t right for the film, weirdly enough.” A dagger through the heart, Elba admitted that Isan refused to speak to him “for about three weeks” afterwards.
It must have been a kick in the teeth for Idris Elba’s daughter to be told that she wasn’t good enough of an actor to convincingly play Idris Elba’s daughter, especially in a knockabout man versus nature thriller. While he should be applauded for not crumbling in the face of favouritism and becoming the latest star to embrace the nepotistic side of the industry, it must have been awkward behind closed doors.
In the end, Isan had to make do with being her old man’s plus one to Beast‘s maiden screening. “She was very gracious about it, and we got through that,” Elba explained. “And I’m really proud of her to go through that, not get the role, but still come to the premiere.”
That’s all well and good, but it can’t have been easy for Isan to sit there during the premiere and watch Iyana Halley play her father’s daughter, knowing that it could have been her. As his only daughter, there’s literally nobody else among the billions of people on the planet with more experience of being Elba’s girl, which still wasn’t enough to convince him.
