The Screen Actors Guild is looking into complaints that the producers of Planet of the Apes and their stunt coordinator violated affirmative action contract rules requiring them to “cast qualified [stunt] persons of the same sex and/or race” as the actors for whom they are doubling,” the online Inside magazine reported Thursday. The magazine cited internal SAG documents claiming that white stuntmen regularly doubled for Michael Clarke Duncan, a black actor portraying a gorilla and that several men doubled for Helena Bonham Carter, who plays a chimpanzee. But stunt coordinator Charlie Croughwell told Inside that his decisions were based solely on concern for safety. “When you use the wrong person for something and somebody gets killed, then you are violating something,” he said. Nevertheless an unnamed black stuntman told the online magazine: “They made a minimal effort to comply with SAG rules.”
