Colour Blind casting

I was about to say I am all for colourblind casting as I enjoy having interesting characters and performances, especially of Shakespeare, but I suppose this could be a problem and I hadn’t thought of it like that. What if casting for historical dramas (less Shakespeare as Shakespeare is always a fantasy, even when it was first written as that’s why so many plays are set in Italy) is colour-washing and gender-washing the reality of history, when women and people of colour were treated horrifically?

That reminds me of the BBC’s Father Brown, where women, people of colour and gay people are cast as allies/good guys and Father Brown on their side, when in reality the Catholic Church was one of the very systems that contributes to systemic inequality and the books were written by Chesterton to promote “good Catholic values” and very much did not support women, gay people or people of colour.

I wouldn’t like it, but Liam Neeson also has many, many more opportunities to feature in historically accurate shows than our hypothetical Hispanic actress. Sometimes the ends justify the means.

Unless we’re just going to say too bad to anyone of non-white, non-male background. You’ll just have to take it on the chin that your acting career is limited as you’re just not the right colour?

Literally jesus is portrayed by white people,that's worse than Liam neelson being Martin Luther king surely.colour blind casting has gone on forever.

That's a fair point about Mandela specifically.

But I wouldn't expect people to be happy about a white actor playing Shaka Zulu for example, even though as far as I'm aware he never suffered any racial discrimination.

@Startingagainandagain there is an issue that we seem to make historic drams that pull from very limited source material. There are a lot of stories out there that include BAME people - we had a whole empire that spanned the globe for goodness sake.

I saw Wicked Little Letters and found it distracting to begin with. Once I had worked out it was colour blind casting I could enjoy it. I kept thinking, "unmarried Irish woman living with black boyfriend? In the 1920s?? They'd be run out of town. "

Afterwords I thought, colour blind casting is like showing us utopia, where race ceases to be an issue.

It would be strange to have a white actor play Nelson Mandela.
If a drama's theme were say racial discrimination it might be a bit confusing if there were colour blind casting.

You'd hate the current production of Macbeth in Leeds then @ThinWomansBrain . Really diverse cast,all absolutely phenomenal actors. Superb production, facilitated by the best actors for the roles.

I think it is daft for a real life historical figure to be played by an actor that does not look as much as possible as they did and forces people to suspend disbelief.

It is like suggesting that because she is a great actor Meryl Streep would make a good Gandhi or Martin Luther King in a biopic...

Or that Marilyn Monroe could be played by Bradley Cooper to be fully inclusive.

It is just silly.

These days there would be an outcry, an rightly so, if a white actor tried to portray someone of a different race so it does not make sense that asian or black actors would be made to portrait a white historical figure or appear in period drama portraying times when they would not have been part of that society (I doubt there were many black vikings for example).

We should not try to rewrite history instead we should make sure that more contemporary parts are created by actors from all backgrounds and that there is less discrimination and sexism in the industry in general, like any workplace.

Also it is perfectly possible to focus on historical experiences from the point of view of a non white person. Steve McQueen did that with 12 years a slave.

Maybe what we need is to move away from just showing in films and TV what happened in western/predominantly white societies throughout history and have more content which focus on stories of people from other backgrounds.

There was also a big furore about Eddie Redmain playing a transwoman, with people saying that it was taking a part away from a "real" transwoman? Where do we draw the line? Should only gay people play gay parts? Does that mean gay people can't play straight parts?

Didn't Disney also recently drop actors with dwarfism from Snow White to be politically correct? Which then meant less acting jobs for actors with dwarfism!

See I completely disagree with the above posts about Bridgerton, I think it's clearly an alternative heightened reality (e.g. the clothing colours do not attempt to reflect the reality of textiles technology in Georgian Britain). Shondaland took a modern rumour (that Queen Charlotte was mixed race) and ran with it, it's internally consistent. It's also not colourblind casting, families are either black, white or asian. I think it's a very clever way to introduce more black characters into period dramas.

How would you feel if Nelson Mandela was played by Liam Neeson?

No it was just pure old misogyny.

I’m white and not woke but I really like colour blind casting. Acting has a massive issue with barriers to entry.

Who cares if Queen Victoria is played by a Hispanic actress? It doesn’t take anything away from the play/TV show.

Depends on the film, obviously a film claiming to be big budget and historically accurate is going to bug me more than a comedy and low budget stuff.

🤣I'm sure that was great comfort to her. 🤣

It wasn't because of her skin colour though!

How much worse could she have been treated ultimately her head being chopped off!

Re 'non matching' children can I remind you that plenty of people adopt and that doesnt mean there is going to be a subplot it's just normal life.

I agree with your comments about Queen Charlotte. I suspect it was done in order to highlight the issue of racism but the way it was done seemed, to me, to be divisive. It almost seemed to suggest that there was good reasons for there to be such a divide between black and white and they needed some kind of "saviour" character to come in and make them all play nicely together. It seemed very badly done and had undertones of actual racism ie suggesting there was inherently a big difference between the black people and white people that needed "fixing" or "overcoming".

I do find it jarring when member of the same family are different ethnicities as I find that unrealistic.

There must be some historical figures who can't be colour blind cast though. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King spring to mind. Their race is integral to their story.

This is another great point. The fact it only seems to apply to non-white actors feels slightly condescending. Like it's some kind of a 'reward' for them. 🙄

Yes, especially in murder mysteries when everything is a potential clue to who’s the killer, and you’re racing to work it out before it’s revealed!

I mean that's technically correct but I think before Windrush the average % of non-white people in the UK was similar to the % of Zoroastrians who are present today.

Have you ever met a Zoroastrian? Maybe you have but probably not, so the idea of peppering period dramas with non-white actors is a bit silly tbh.

I actually think context here is key to the production. Sometimes an actors skin colour gives important information about their role in the production.

For example one of the reasons the world of Game of Thrones felt so realistic (apart for the dragons obvs) was because the casting was done in such a way that it was consistent, so everyone from the North was white, those from the West were blonde and aryan looking, the southerners were olive skinned and those from the summer islands were black. When Dany went east she met a more mixed racial group which was consistent with that areas history.

It made it very easy to see who was from where, what their motivations were and added a realistic grounding to the casting.

Compare that to something like the Rings of Power, or Witcher series where race seems randomly assigned and it leads every single place to feel like everyone there place and detracts somewhat from the overall theme.

I do a lot of work in schools, and attend a lot of nativity plays. The cast in them tends to reflect the racial profile of the school just fine these days. I've seen plenty of black baby dolls in the manger too😂.