Jake Gyllenhaal’s new children’s book references ‘Prince of Persia’ disaster
Jake Gyllenhaal recently released his debut novel as an author with the children’s book The Secret Society of Aunts and Uncles. The project also references one of his biggest flops, Disney’s 2010 adaptation of the video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Gyllenhaal’s book was co-written by him and his best friend Greta Caruso and follows a ten-year-old aspiring dancer who embarks on an adventure with his uncle.
As reported by Entertainment Weekly, the book’s illustrator, Dan Santat, snuck in a comedic reference to Prince of Persia when the boy, Leo, struggles to dance in front of an audience. As the crowd watches the unfolding disaster, one of them, a skeleton, can be seen holding a playbill for a show called The Persians. Gyllenhaal told the publication this moment was Leo’s lowest.
“That was Dan Santat. He snuck that in before printing, and I didn’t approve that,” the actor-turned-author explained to the publication with a laugh. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“Dan likes to put in his bits of humour, even misspelling my name at the back and having to put a post-it, having two A’s at the end,” he continued. “But no, when I described that space, it was the space where there was no farther down to go than the depths of where Leo is in that moment in the book. So I guess that was Dan’s joke on me.”
Notably, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time starred Gyllenhaal as the protagonist, Prince Dastan. It received backlash for casting a white American instead of a performer of Iranian descent. Following the movie’s poor reception, in 2019, Gyllenhaal spoke to Yahoo Entertainment and reflected on what ensued, labelling it a “slip up”.
“I think I learned a lot from that movie in that I spend a lot of time trying to be very thoughtful about the roles that I pick and why I’m picking them,” Gyllenhaal said. “And you’re bound to slip up and be like, ‘That wasn’t right for me,’ or ‘That didn’t fit perfectly.’ There have been a number of roles like that. And then a number of roles that do.”
The Secret Society of Aunts and Uncles is out now.
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