‘Appalling’: Backlash over Angelina Jolie’s bizarre Cambodian orphan story

ANGELINA Jolie has revealed how she managed to find child actors for her new film among Cambodia’s poorest orphans. People are absolutely horrified.

Casting directors for Angelina Jolie’s Cambodian genocide movie trolled through that nation’s poorest quarters and employed a cruel, emotionally manipulative game to test child actors.

Jolie is taking heat for callous tactics used to find the young lead for her upcoming First They Killed My Father, about the Khmer Rouge-led genocide.

Casting directors went to circuses, orphanages and slum schools and put money on a table in front of groups of little girls, Vanity Fair reported. The girls were told to look at the cash, think of a reason why they needed it and then snatch it.

Angelina Jolie tells @VanityFair how she found her Khmer Rouge film lead by tempting deprived kids with cash and then snatching it away... pic.twitter.com/ufNKS4GOjb

— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) July 27, 2017

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

This weird casting process — aimed at finding a kid who’d experienced the most hardship — eventually led to the hire of little Sareum Srey Moch. The untrained actress will play the young version of Loung Ung, a human-rights activist whose memoir is the basis of Jolie’s movie.

“What? This is appalling,” British TV host Piers Morgan tweeted about the movie’s casting.

What?
This is appalling. https://t.co/zDXGrW0RuK

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 27, 2017

Others on social media were up in arms over the cruel casting process, labelling Jolie “crazy”:

Angelina Jolie is crazy. What a cruel psychological game to play with impoverished children. pic.twitter.com/iAEUhINBui

— Denizcan Targaryen (@MrFilmkritik) July 26, 2017

Why would Angelina Jolie subject impoverished children to this cruel scheme? https://t.co/BTAOugEPST pic.twitter.com/oDmNS07CYC

— Yashar Ali (@yashar) July 26, 2017

angelina jolie really played a psychological game w/ impoverished kids instead of, you know, just having them audition like a normal person

— ellie (@spikejonzes) July 26, 2017

Angelina Jolie is seriously messed up https://t.co/yebLd5gk44 pic.twitter.com/XpUkpbhwPc

— Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) July 27, 2017

Why in the HELL were Angelina Jolie and Co traumatizing poor cambodian children for "casting"? How is this applause worthy? https://t.co/79XYK1eRXK

— Shanelle Little (@ShanelleLittle) July 26, 2017

The actress seemed completed unfazed by the merciless casting process.

“Srey Moch was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time,” Jolie told the mag. “When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.”

Jolie got teary-eyed thinking of the little girl’s lifetime of trauma.

“When she was asked later what the money was for, she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral.”

A rep for Jolie could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.

This story originally appeared on the New York Post and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as ‘Appalling’: Backlash over Angelina Jolie’s bizarre Cambodian orphan story