No, Chicken Run 2’s recasting controversy isn’t just ‘ageism’... necessarily

The decision not to invite Julia Sawalha and other stars back for the long-awaited animated sequel ‘Dawn of the Nugget’ has understandably gone down poorly, writes Louis Chilton. But there’s more to it than just corporate brutality

Scrambled eggs: several characters from the original ‘Chicken Run’ have been recast for the new sequel (Aardman/Netflix)

Twenty-three years is a long time. Since the year 2000, governments have risen and fallen; an entire way of life has been washed away by the great digital sea. So when Aardman animation studio decided to make a sequel to turn-of-the-millenium favourite Chicken Run, it knew the process would be fraught. Sure enough, the long-awaited sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, has proved to be a delicate balancing act. The biggest change has been the recasting of the original’s two lead characters, Ginger and Rocky, first voiced by Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson, now by Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi. A host of the supporting players have also been subbed out – Romesh Ranganathan and Daniel Mays step in as spivvy rodents Nick and Fetcher, in lieu of Timothy Spall and Phil Daniels, while David Bradley replaces Benjamin Whitrow, who died in 2017.

But it was Sawalha’s casting, however, that proved the most contentious, with fans of the original – and Sawalha herself – suggesting that ageism was to blame. (Gibson’s offscreen disgraces, particularly the 2006 scandal that saw him recorded making antisemitic remarks to a police officer, mean that Rocky’s recasting has been accepted without quarrel.) Sawalha is 55, while Newton is 51; the Ab Fab star stated in 2020 that she was “devastated”, having been told – baselessly, she argues – that her voice was “too old” to recreate the character she originated at 30. It’s clear that her recasting could have been handled better. But it isn’t necessarily as simple as just ageism.

More than two decades passed between the original Chicken Run and Netflix’s sequel (streaming now). Over such a stretch of time, actors’ voices naturally change. It doesn’t amount to disloyalty to admit that an actor is no longer necessarily the right choice to play a character. For his part, Sam Fell, Dawn of the Nugget’s director, has offered vague, placating answers when pressed on the recasting. “I felt like this film has evolved since the first film. The world has turned on its axis and things have changed.” Ostensibly, this is a creative decision, and a subjective one. No one is entitled to an acting project.

For an idea of what an alternative approach may have sounded like, we can take the 2019 Pixar sequel Incredibles 2. Recorded some 14 years after the original, yet set immediately after it, the animated film was in some ways jarring, with Craig T Nelson’s Bob Parr in particular sounding like a much older man, despite looking and behaving much the same.

A more extreme example can be found in The Simpsons, which currently features voice actors who are nearly three and a half decades older than they were when they were cast. Julie Kavner’s Marge is a rasp, a far, far cry from the voice audiences know and love, while the rest of the cast – Dan Castelaneta’s Homer included – are also unable to replicate their original tenors. The characters, to varying extents, just sound off. That’s not the actors’ faults, but a hard fact of life. Does this mean they should be recast? The project cancelled? Rewritten to reflect the new ages? Not necessarily – no one’s clamouring for The Simpsons: Golden Years – but it inevitably changes the very nature of the work.

And yet, there are legitimate reasons for fans to be wary about Chicken Run’s switcheroo. Recasting roles in a film like this is not purely a creative decision. The artistic decision-making of a multimillion-pound film franchise is bound inextricably to commerce; Sawalha wasn’t just denied the chance to reprise her acting role, but the money and exposure that would have accompanied it. Also significant is the fact that ageism is alive and kicking in the film industry; leading roles for women of Sawalha’s age are hard to come by, especially in the world of children’s animation.

Coop dreams: Rocky (Zachary Levi) and Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) in ‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’ (Aardman/Netflix)

Ultimately, Dawn of the Nugget manages to sidestep much of the messiness surrounding the casting through the sheer fact of its frivolity. It is a harmless, broadly likeable children’s film about clay chickens pulling off a heist; there’s a limit to how much importance we can bestow upon it. For Sawalha, and her fans, it’s a reminder that there’s still a lot of work to do when it comes to women in the film industry who are no longer twentysomething ingenues. But this is the nature of filmmaking. Sometimes, ruffled feathers are going to be unavoidable.

‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’ is streaming now on Netflix