In a recent interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, actor Fisher Stevens got candid about his controversial role in the movie ‘Short Circuit.’

“As one of the first movies to feature a talking robot as its main character, ‘Short Circuit’ looked positively futuristic when it premiered in theaters on May 9, 1986,” Yahoo! Entertainment reporter Ethan Alter writes. “But there’s at least one element of the hit sci-fi comedy that keeps it firmly stuck in the past: Fisher Stevens’s performance as Indian engineer Ben Jabituya — a heavily stereotyped role he later reprised in the less-successful 1988 sequel.”

Opening up to Alter, Stevens admitted, “It definitely haunts me.”

The Chicago-born actor and filmmaker added, “I still think it’s a really good movie, but I would never do that part again. The world was a different place in 1986, obviously.”

Alter explains that according to Stevens, Ben wasn’t an Indian character when he first auditioned for the John Badham-directed film, which also starred Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg fresh of the success of The Breakfast Club and the Police Academy series respectively. “I was originally cast as a white dude,” Stevens recalled.

However, after getting the role, the movie’s creative team made the choice to “change Ben’s ethnicity without changing the identity of the performer playing him,” Alter writes, adding, “As a young actor eager for that elusive breakout role, Stevens didn’t want to walk away.”

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Cox Media Group