Actress in riot-sparking movie says cast didn’t know film was about Muhammad

An actress who participated in the movie that sparked deadly riots in Egypt and Libya said she and the other actors didn’t know what the film was about when they shot it.

California native Cindy Garcia said Wednesday that she was told the film’s title was “Desert Warriors” and not as it was named upon release “Innocence of Muslims,” and that “Mohammad’s name was never mentioned in any scene that I was in.”

In an interview for Israel’s Channel 10, she added that she only saw the full version of the film when the producer, who called himself Sam Bacile, sent it to her and she realized what it was about. “We were manipulated,” she said.

“It was going to be a film based on how things were 2,000 years ago,” Garcia said in an interview to Gawker.com. “It wasn’t based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn’t anything about Muhammad or Muslims or anything.”

Garcia said the word Muhammad was dubbed in during post-production. So, for example, in a scene in which Garcia berates her husband, who wants to send their daughter to Muhammad, she is heard to say “Is your Muhammad a child molester?” but claims the line in the script was, “Is your God a child molester?”

“He [Bacile] called me six months ago and asked to edit my voice so they could hear it clearer,” she told Channel 10.

“Yes, things did not turn out at all like I thought they would. I was edited into parts, I have not even seen the whole movie. My only role was that of a mother losing her daughter. And I am on my way to heaven. I am a Christian servant of the Lord God Jesus Christ is my Savior,” Garcia posted on her YouTube channel in response to criticism to the film.

The actors in the film issued a joint statement Wednesday saying they were misled about the project and said some of their dialogue was crudely dubbed during post-production.

“The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer,” said the statement, obtained by the Los Angeles Times. “We are 100 percent not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose. We are shocked by the drastic rewrites of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred.”

Israeli officials said Wednesday they had no record of Sam Bacile being an Israeli citizen as he had claimed.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had not heard of Bacile and there was no record of him being a citizen.

Bacile, a 56-year-old California real-estate developer, told the Associated Press he is a Jewish Israeli-American.

However, Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg reported that Bacile was a fake name and the filmmaker was likely not even Jewish.

Goldberg said he spoke to Steve Klein, who worked with Bacile on the film, and that he confirmed Bacile had no connection to Israel.

“I don’t know that much about him. I met him, I spoke to him for an hour. He’s not Israeli, no. I can tell you this for sure, the State of Israel is not involved … His name is a pseudonym. All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms. I doubt he’s Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign,” Klein said.

YouTube said on Wednesday it would not remove the clip, but it has blocked access to it in those countries.

This video – which is widely available on the Web – is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube,” Google said in a statement. “However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt, we have temporarily restricted access in both countries. Our hearts are with the families of the people murdered in yesterday’s attack in Libya.”

The film, whose trailer was dubbed into Arabic and posted on YouTube, sparked harsh reactions from Islamists in Cairo and Benghazi, where protesters stormed the US Embassy on Tuesday. In Libya, American Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other embassy staffers were killed when a rocket hit their car as they were attempting to flee.

Hours earlier in Cairo, hundreds of demonstrators managed to scale the walls of the US Embassy, tearing down the American flag and replacing it with one that reads “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet.” The flag, similar to the banner used by Al-Qaeda, is commonly used by ultraconservatives around the region.

Bacile said he had not anticipated such a furious reaction. Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, Bacile, who went into hiding Tuesday, remained defiant. He said he believes the movie will expose Islam’s flaws to the world.

“Islam is a cancer, period,” he repeatedly said in a solemn, accented tone.

Israel, however, sought to distance itself from Bacile.

“It’s obvious we’ll have to be vigilant. Anything he did or said has nothing to do whatsoever with Israel. He may claim what he wants. This was not done with, or for, or through Israel,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said on Wednesday.

The two-hour movie cost $5 million to make and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors, said Bacile, who wrote and directed it.

The film claims Muhammad was a fraud. The14-minute trailer of the movie that reportedly set off the protests — posted on YouTube in the original English version, as well as another dubbed into Egyptian Arabic — shows an amateur cast performing a wooden dialogue of insults disguised as revelations about Muhammad, whose obedient followers are presented as a cadre of goons.

It depicts Muhammad as a feckless philanderer who approved of child sexual abuse, among other overtly insulting claims that have caused outrage.

Bacile said he believes the movie will help his native land by exposing Islam’s flaws to the world.

Muslims find it offensive to depict Muhammad in any manner, let alone to insult the prophet. A Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet triggered riots in many Muslim countries.

Though Bacile was apologetic about the American who was killed as a result of the outrage over his film, he blamed lax embassy security and the perpetrators of the violence.

“I feel the security system [at the embassies] is no good,” said Bacile. “America should do something to change it.”

Klein said the filmmaker is concerned for family members who live in Egypt. Bacile declined to confirm.

Klein said he vowed to help Bacile make the movie, but warned him that “you’re going to be the next Theo van Gogh.” Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.

“We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen,” Klein said.

Bacile’s film was dubbed into Egyptian Arabic by someone he doesn’t know, but he speaks enough Arabic to confirm that the translation is accurate. The movie was made in three months in the summer of 2011, with 59 actors and about 45 people behind the camera.

The full film has been screened once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this year, said Bacile.

On Wednesday, US President Barack Obama ordered increased security to protect American diplomatic personnel around the world.

“I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi,” Obama said, adding the four Americans “exemplified America’s commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent condolences to the US, saying Israel understood what it means to be besieged by terrorist elements.

“If there’s one country that understands what the Americans went through on 9/11, it’s Israel, which has stood at the forefront of the battle against terror, which has lost many dear people, and which identifies deeply with the American people at this hour,” he said in a statement.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called anti-Islamic preacher Terry Jones and asked him to stop promoting the film. A spokeswoman said the church would not show the film Wednesday evening.