Race row fury after white celebrity blacks up and says N-word while performing Kendrick Lamar hit on Polish karaoke TV show… and WINS the top prize
- Kuba Szmajkowski won TV show Your Face Sounds Familiar with his performance
A Polish TV show has sparked outrage after featuring celebrity contestants dressed in blackface and performing as Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar.
In the singing competition show called Your Face Sounds Familiar, singer Kuba Szmajkowski appeared as one of eight celebrities performing karaoke versions of popular songs while trying to imitate the style of the original artist.
Delighting the jury who praised the 21-year-old’s performance as ‘amazing’, ‘brilliant’ and ‘One big WOW’, after winning the completion Szmajkowski donated the prize money to a children’s cancer organisation.
Polish actress Pola Gonciarz also appeared as a ‘blacked-up’ Beyoncé, singing If I Were a Boy. Clips of both performances have now gone viral with viewers branding them ‘disgusting’.
Complaining about Szmajkowski’s performance, one viewer said: ‘Why did they let him say the word ‘n****’ knowing it was a very racist term? (…) Very unpleasant on the part of the producers and the performer.
‘As a dark-skinned person, I am outraged by this performance!’
Kuba Szmajkowski and backing dancers perform in the singing competition show Your Face Sounds Familiar
Polish celebrity Szmajkowski, who is white, in a picture from his social media at Tower Bridge in London
The singer posted the makeup process behind the scene before his performance
Another outraged viewer wrote: ‘You can appreciate the culture or the art without being offensive or doing blackface.’
Another commented: ‘That’s actually disgusting’, while yet another posted: ‘Kendrick needs to file the nastiest copyright suit of all time.’
Polish actress Pola Gonciarz was also blasted on social media after posting clips on Instagram.
One follower said: ‘This is so incredibly misguided and ignorant. Blackface shouldn’t be done ever, anywhere. We should not put people’s skin color on like costumes.’
Another complained: ‘Shocking that this kind of racism was allowed on TV in 2023’, while one outraged fan said: ‘wtf are you DOING????? you can’t blacken your skin to pretend to be an African-American! this is so ignorant!!!’
After winning the completion Szmajkowski donated the prize money to a children’s cancer organisation
Kuba Szmajkowski appeared as one of eight celebrities performing karaoke versions of popular songs while trying to imitate the style of the original artist
In a 2021 episode, actor Tomasz Ciachorowski also went blackface to covered ‘Stronger’ by Kanye West.
After editing out the N-word, the TV show responded saying: ‘ Dear Viewers, we are very surprised with the number of negative comments regarding to the [sic] tv show Your Face Sounds Familiar.
‘The Polish edition of the show, seen as exemplary abroad, always tries to show great performances, which strive to be as close to the original as possible. Incredibly important for us, as well as for the artists taking part in the show, is the charity aspect of the programme.
It added: ‘The intention of each star performing on the show, as well as of the whole production team, is to recreate the original performance in the most precise manner, while honouring the original artist.’
Now, video has resurfaces of a 2021 performance on the same show by Polish actor Tomasz Ciachorowski who blackfaced to covered ‘Stronger’ by Kanye West.
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