The real Von Trapp family, whom the classical musical "The Sound of Music" is based on, apparently didn't want Carrie Underwood cast on the NBC holiday special, "The Sound of Music Live!," and instead wanted Anne Hathaway, Yahoo! reports.
"It's just upsetting that this could potentially be the final broadcast of our story," Myles Von Trapp Derbyshire, the great grandson of Maria von Trapp, told ABC News of Underwood. "And although her voice is amazing, she doesn't have acting experience... It's just the overall image, she's a country star, she won 'American Idol,' she's very public in kind of a tabloid way. Now we have this very glossy, tabloid figure playing this role."
Maria Von Trapp was memorably played by Julie Andrews in the 1965 film, and Myles went on to explain that Andrews and Mary Martin, who played Maria on Broadway in the 1950s, were both well-respected actresses at the time.
"[Our family has] had the conversations of who could play this role better and it was Anne Hathaway, for example," he said. "Here's someone who just won an Oscar for a similar situation [in 'Les Miserables']. She was able to act and sing."
This isn't the first time Underwood has received disdain for being cast in the NBC special. The 30-year-old singer recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly on the subject of receiving hate on Twitter.
"I think so many people out there still don't understand what we're doing and, therefore, they do have this incredible ownership over the movie, like 'You can't remake that movie!' I get hate tweets and stuff like that and like, 'You're not Julie Andrews!'" she said. "I know I'm not - nobody is, and I would never pretend that I was. I know my place, you know?"
Andrews, however, has defended the casting choice of Underwood.
"I had the best time of my life doing it, and it did wonderful things for me. I think it's great that it's being done again, but doing it live must be so daunting for Carrie," Andrews told Zap2it. "I know they're not doing the movie, though. They're doing the Broadway show - that's what they have the rights to - and I don't know whether it will resonate similarly. In the movie, we cut some things from the stage version and added some songs."
"I did feel badly that she's been getting a lot of mean tweets from fans of the movie," Myles added.
