Nico Parker addressed the hate she received from online trolls who criticized her casting in the live-action How to Train Your Dragon film.
“There’s some people that really love the animated movies and really want to see an exact play-by-play of that film, and I hope that you can watch [the new version] and find something that you love about it, regardless,” Parker, 20, said in a recent interview with The Times. “But for the people that just hate inclusivity, hate change — when it comes to that side of things, I just don’t care. If I wouldn’t value your opinion on most things in life, I can’t value your opinion on my hair. If I did, I would go mad.”
It was first announced in May 2023 that Parker would be joining the cast of the fantasy adventure film, a live-action remake of the 2010 animated film of the same name. Parker landed the role of Astrid, the love interest of main character Hiccup.
More recently, the trailer for How to Train Your Dragon was released on February 12. Many trolls flocked to social media to point out how the animated character Astrid had blonde hair and blue eyes. However, Parker, who is the daughter of actress Thandiwe Newton, thinks that the film industry is making strides in the right direction when it comes to casting.
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“When I was younger, the amount of mixed-race or Black icons, people that I would look to on screen to be like, ‘Oh, this feels like me,’ felt really minimal in comparison to what it could be for young people now, and I think that’s really special,” she said. “There’s still a long way to go — for women in general, in terms of new parts, original material and female-led stories. But I think that everything’s changing. I’d like to think that I could contribute to that change at some point.”
Supporters of Parker are eager to see her in action when How to Train Your Dragon is released in theaters on Friday, June 13. At a press event, director Dean DeBlois said that Astrid was “a little underserved” in the animated film and teased how fans would see a whole new side of the character in the live-action version.
“Nico Parker plays Astrid, [and] that feeds into this idea that she has come from a different culture, that she is a descendant of one of those prized dragon-fighting warriors that were collected by Vikings in different places,” he said. “She hopes to be chief of this tribe one day. She’s got great ambition, and what’s nice about it is that it creates a conflict between she and Hiccup.”
Additionally, DeBois, 55, teased the “reimagining” of the original Viking movie produced by DreamWorks Animation more than a decade ago.
“With the rushed production schedule and the limited resources that we had on that first movie for DreamWorks, there were things that we skipped past that we could have maybe done a little more justice to — some of the characters, some of the depth of relationships and the immersive action,” he said. “It’s a reimagining that holds quite faithful to the story and yet finds moments where we could enrich character relationships, give a bit of depth, give a little bit of mythology that might have been lacking in that original.”
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