It seems that although the movie Black Swan was premiered, the scandal surrounding the cast still persists. Natalie Portman’s Black Swan double insists that she did most of the dancing that was credited to Natalie Portman and this has caused quite a stir.
Sarah Lane is a professional ballerina and was casted as a double for Natalie Portman’s role in Black Swan. So far so good, but when the American Ballet Theater dancer gave an interview to Glamour magazine about her involvement in the dancing scenes of the moves, everything took an unexpected turn. According to Sarah, the producers of the movie called her and asked her to be quiet. Sarah told “20/20” in an exclusive interview that:
“He asked if I would please not do any more interviews until after the Oscars because it was bad for Natalie’s image,”
“I’m not speaking because I feel I should be heralded. I’m just speaking because they’re completely lying about the amount of dancing that Natalie did in the movie.” 
According to Portman, she was the actual dancer in some of the most memorable parts of the movie, parts which helped Natalie Portman win an Oscar for best actress. The face was changed using face replacement effects, so it looked like Portman was dancing and executing those professional ballerina moves. Indeed, Portman did some of the moves, but it was mostly Sarah doing all those difficult dancing scenes. Sarah Lane said:
“They were trying to create this image, this facade, really, that Natalie had done something extraordinary. Something that is pretty much impossible … to become a professional ballerina in a year and half. Even with as hard as she worked, it takes so much more. It takes twenty-two years, it takes thirty years to become a ballerina.”
Natalie Portman has been highly praised for the amazing efforts she has put into her role for the movie, and it seems this bothered Lane as, according to her, it was most of her dancing on the movie, and that it’s not fair to lie.
Because Sarah’s statement caused a stir, Black Swan’s director Darren Aronofsky gave a written statement in which he states that he actually had his editor count and that the fact is that about 80% of the scenes were done by Natalie Portman. He stated:
“Here is the reality. I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film — 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. Twenty-eight are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math, that’s 80 percent Natalie Portman.”
As a response, Lane states that she does not consider face shots of Natalie Portman as dance shots, and that she considers full-body shots as dance scenes. However, Lane did not sign an agreement which offers her credit for her part in the movie, but this is not what interests her, according to her statement. The thing that ticked her was actually the fact that marketing strategies portrayed Portman as a world class ballet dancer and according to Lane that is not right, as it takes so much work to get to such a level. She does acknowledge that Portman did work hard but says:
“There’s so much emotionally that goes into motivating yourself and being able to physically push yourself to reach a certain level, that you have to reach to be a professional ballerina with one of the biggest ballet companies in the world and to sustain that standard over a whole career,” “It really hurts for someone to say that, they got a personal trainer and they became what I spent blood, sweat and tears doing every day, all my life, in just a year and a half.”
When asked about this matter, Natalie Portman said that she didn’t want to tarnish her amazing experience by entering it into “nastiness”. People have started taking sides, some are on Lane’s side while others, such as Mila Kunis, defend Natalie Portman.
What do you think, should Natalie have gotten all the credit?
Source: abc news Photos courtesy of Getty Images
