Angelina Jolie SLAMMED by Vanity Fair: Yes She DID Exploit Orphans!

When Angelina Jolie did her big Vanity Fair interview, she probably imagined that everyone would devour the quotes about Brad Pitt and the divorce and then move on.

Except it hasn’t really turned out that way, has it?

Sure, at first we analyzed the hell out of the quotes about Brad, but then we started to notice that there was something a little more scandalous tucked away elsewhere in the interview.

Specifically, it seemed like there was a story about Angelina traumatizing some poor Cambodian children to cast her new movie, First They Killed My Father.

And when we say the story was tucked away, we mean it — it was basically a short summary of a story she told, without many direct quotes from Angelina herself.

According to the story as it was originally published in Vanity Fair, Angelina and the rest of the crew wanted as much authenticity as possible in the movie, so they looked for child actors in orphans and slums.

When they’d gotten enough kids gathered, they played a “game” in which “they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away.”

“The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie.”

The story outraged many, many people — after all, the idea of dangling money in front of poor children just to snatch it away doesn’t sound like the kindest thing that’s ever happened.

And when you throw in Angelina’s anecdote about the child they cast as the lead, a girl named Srey Moch, and how she cried and cried about the “game” because she imagined using the money for her grandfather’s funeral …

Well, it’s just not great.

In a statement released after the backlash began, Angelina insisted that the children were very aware that they were playing a game, and that the money used was obviously fake.

“The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting,” she said. “I would be outraged myself if this had happened.”

She said that every precaution was taken to ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of the kids on set, and that all the fuss was over nothing — the story was taken out of context.

But now, Vanity Fair is backing their original story.

According to the magazine, they were contacted by Angelina’s lawyers after the story began circulating, asking them to run a statement about the casting game, both on their site and in next month’s issue.

The statement they submitted claimed that the crew “showed the children the camera and sound recording material, explaining to them that they were going to be asked to act out a part.”

“The children were not tricked as some have suggested,” the statement continued. “All of the children auditioning were made aware of the fictional aspects of the exercise.”

“We apologize for any misunderstanding.”

So that’s what Angelina’s lawyers wanted Vanity Fair to release. But what they actually released was the full transcript of that section of the interview.

And it’s pretty darn interesting.

According to the transcript, Angelina began the story by explaining that they went to “what they call a slum school” to find the lead for the movie.

“And I think,” she said, “I mean they didn’t know. We just went in and — you just go in and do some auditions with the kids. And it’s not really an audition with children.”

“We had this game where it would be — and I wasn’t there and they didn’t know what they were really doing.”

She explained that “They kind of said, ‘Oh, a camera’s coming up and we want to play a game with you."”

“And the game for that character was ‘We’re going to put some money on the table. Think of something you need that money for."”

Sometimes they tempted the kids with money, sometimes they did it with cookies, but then they would “catch” them stealing, and they told the kids “We’d like you to try to lie that you didn’t have it.”

At no point did she say that the money was fake, and at no point did she stress that the children were well-aware that the game wasn’t real.

Which isn’t to say that none of that happened — she also says that she wasn’t even there during all of this.

But because of this, Vanity Fair’s official statement reads that they stand by the story as it was published.

Sorry ‘bout it, Angie.

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Angelina Jolie: I Never Exploited Any Orphans!

When Angelina Jolie’s big Vanity Fair interview came out last week, people absolutely ate it up.

Brad Pitt divorce talk? Health problems caused from the stress of the split? More divorce talk?!

It’s understandable why so many people were so intrigued by it all.

But after we were done reading about Brad and trying to discover Brangelina’s real cause of death, we went back and read the full interview.

And we discovered a pretty disturbing story about Angelina’s new movie, First They Killed My Father.

The movie, an upcoming Netlix release, is based on a memoir by Loung Ung, and it’s all about her horrific experiences growing up in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

Angelina directed it, and she wanted it to be as authentic as possible — so according to a story in the Vanity Fair interview, she looked to “orphanages, circuses, and slum schools” to cast the children in the movie.

When they rounded up enough kids, they played a “game” in which “they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away.”

“The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie.”

Angelina said that Srey Moch, the girl chosen to play the lead in the film, “was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time.”

“When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.”

And when they asked the little girl what she’d imagined using the money for, “she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral.”

It all sounds pretty twisted, right?

And also a little bit heartless.

Basically everyone who read that story got at least a little bit outraged at the thought of rich and famous Angelina Jolie dangling money in front of poor children and then snatching it away, just to cast a movie.

But, as Angelina says now in a statement to Huffington Post, that’s not at all how it went down.

“Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of the children on the film starting from the auditions through production to the present,” she stated.

“Parents, guardians, partner NGOs whose job it is to care for children, and medical doctors were always on hand everyday, to ensure everyone had all they needed.”

“And above all to make sure that no one was in any way hurt by participating in the recreation of such a painful part of their country’s history.”

She also called that casting game that got everyone all riled up “a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film.”

Angelina is “upset” that it was “written about as if it was a real scenario.”

“The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting,” she said. “I would be outraged myself if this had happened.”

She closed her statement with “The point of this film is to bring attention to the horrors children face in war, and to help fight to protect them.”

Hopefully she’s right, and the children involved were completely and totally aware of what was going on.

But will her explanation be enough to calm her critics?

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Angelina Jolie: Under Fire for Exploiting Cambodian Orphans!

When Angelina Jolie’s big Vanity Fair interview came out yesterday, most people were immediately drawn to all the quotes about Brad Pitt and the divorce.

Which is definitely understandable — there’s still a lot of dirt there that we don’t know about.

But the interview was so long, and she covered so many topics, the whole thing is really worth a second read-through, after you feel all your Brangelina feelings.

And when you do read it again, you may realize that there’s a seriously disturbing story tucked away in there.

Throughout the piece, Angelina’s upcoming film, First They Killed My Father, is discussed.

The film is based on Loung Ung’s memoir of the same name, and it’s about her experiences growing up in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

Angelina directed it, and obviously an important part of making the movie was casting a child who would be able to act out such horrific moments.

So there were probably lots of auditions, right?

The cast is entirely Cambodian, so she probably just went over with a team and held auditions until the right child actor was found.

Except that’s not exactly how things went down.

According to an anecdote in Angelina’s profile, “To cast the children in the film, Jolie looked at orphanages, circuses, and slum schools, specifically seeing children who had experienced hardship.”

“In order to find their lead, to play Loung Ung, the casting directors set up a game, rather disturbing in its realism.”

The “game” in question went like this: “they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away.”

“The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie.”

Angelina recalled that Srey Moch, the girl selected to play the lead, “was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time.”

“When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.”

Then, she said, when they asked that poor little girl what she imagined using the money for, “she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral.”

So instead of behaving like people with hearts would, they pulled kids from orphanages and slums, dangled money in front of them and tried to get them to remember bad times?

Sounds like a brilliant move, right?

Just kidding — it actually sounds heartbreaking.

To taunt these poor children this way, and to then send most of them away because they didn’t suit their needs is just too sad.

And it seems like most people agree.

“Angelina Jolie deliberately re-traumatized children to make her movie, turning their lived experiences into entertainment,” one person wrote on Twitter.

Another tweeted “‘Humanitarian’ Angelina Jolie cast her new movie by giving poor Cambodian children money and then taking it away.”

One person even joked “The Hunger Games, except its Angelina Jolie auditioning you to be in a f-cked up movie.”

It’s really just a horrific story, and it’s hard to understand why Angelina even felt the need to include it here.

Or why a team of people thought their casting “game” was an acceptable thing to do in the first place.

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