* 𝖓𝖔𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖘 .

“Disney has admitted to using makeup to help dozens of white extras look Middle Eastern for crowd scenes in its upcoming, live-action remake of “Aladdin,” The Sunday Times reports. According to the British newspaper, “The company says it resorted to darkening white people for roles requiring skills that could not be readily found in the Asian community” near Longcross Film Studios, where shooting is underway, “such as stunt men, dancers and camel handlers.”

Located in the English county of Surrey, Longcross is about a 50-minute drive from London, home to a 1.1 million-person population of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Arab descendants.

The movie’s director, Guy Ritchie, declined to comment for the Times story, which quotes a onetime stand-in for one of the film’s leads, Kaushal Odedra. “On one set, two palace guards came in and I recognised one as a Caucasian actor, but he was now a darkly tanned Arab,” Odedra said. “I moved inside the marquee where there were 10 extras and two were Caucasian, but they had been heavily tanned to look Middle Eastern.” He also witnessed a line of approximately 20 “very fair-skinned” actors waiting to have their skin tones darkened, but declined to raise the issue with “the almost entirely white crew, [which] seemed somewhat intimidating.”