To think that racial diversity in film casting has gone slightly bonkers...

[AngeloMysterioso]

When you have an Asian actress playing Bess of Hardwick?

I just can’t see why anyone thought it was appropriate to have such a prominent woman in English history being played by somebody who is Chinese- can you imagine the outcry if an important black woman was being played in a film by someone who isn’t black, or indeed a significant Asian character being played by a white woman? There’d be uproar, and rightly so. And yet, in the new Mary Queen of Scots film we have a white Englishwoman being played by Gemma Chan.

This Chinese author/blogger said pretty much the same thing, pointing out that when Ed Skrein was cast as a fictional Japanese character in Hellboy the public response was so furious that he ended up quitting. And Bess of Hardwick isn’t even a fictional character, she was a very real woman, an ancestor of our current Queen, whose life and legacy are quite remarkable.

I don’t want anyone to think that there is any racism behind this post at all. I think Gemma Chan is a fantastic actress, but I don’t know, there’s just something about it that reeks of tokenism.

Cross post with Virago

Also there were actually Asian and black members of the royal court during this time period, so it’s not anachronistic to have an Asian courtier featured

Really? There were East Asian members of Mary's court? Do you have a link please?

To lower the tone quite considerable, the one that puzzled me was Eddie Murphy as Doctor Dolittle.

After that, nothing surprises me. Someone wants to cast me as Gandhi, I'll say yes.

"Should a predominantly white school be staging a play where race and representation of race are so significant though? What perspective can they bring to it?"

Is a school play expected to bring a certain perspective to a play? I think you're expecting too much of them there.

"Jones comes from Jonas which also originates from the middle east.

It's the same as the arabic name for John is Yahya and the western equivalent for Jesus is Joshua."

Well I suppose all Biblical names are middle eastern. The thing about Rihanna is new to me. Very interesting.

If the British film industry insists on peddling the same old shitty historical dramas to hollywood, then of course they should be forced to include diverse casting. Otherwise young non-white actors will never get a chance in the UK —it’s pathetic that British non-white actors have to go to Hollywood first before the UK film industry takes them seriously.

I'm white, I don't care what colour an actor is and I find most historical stuff dull. think it's crap that so much of history is portrayed as being about rich white people, why not have films about ALL SORTS of people's lives. Then all sorts of people can act in them, watch them, feel interested.

pre-1950 there was no major change in the DNA of Britons for 12,000 years.

So the roman, saxon, viking, norman and dutch invasions didn't occur?

Also, what does ethnicity have to do with DNA? Humans don't have races or breeds. It's not possible for groups of humans to be 'mongrel', as you so delightfully put, because there is huge variation in our genome and only a tiny part of it correlates with differences in appearance through geographic isolation.

While I think on it- having just bemoaned that we are too quick to call racism, I think @Augusta2012 has made my point by showing what a real racist looks like.

I can’t believe she just used “mongrel” like that.

Some of the films and adverts are so far fetched they become laughable so there is a bit of a point in this although I am certainly not against representative adverts and films being produced.

'X has just gone too far now/ I'm tired of having X thrown in my face etc etc'

This is always, always the reaction of people who haven't experienced whatever type of discrimination X is meant to counter.

As for King Lear being played by a woman. Art is about taking risks and expanding the imagination. It isn't a history lesson or a documentary.

I can't remember the company, but there's an ad running on Tv which has various families cooking a turkey and presenting it on the table. There's a white family, an afro-caribbean family and an asian/middle eastern couple. The turkey belonging to the asian couple is completely covered in rashers of bacon where the others aren't. Odd choice.

The current system is awful and unfair. We’ve got to a point where BAME characters can play anybody, but white actors can’t play anybody except for people who might be white. It’s not equality, it’s discrimination

I can see your point but in terms of many historical BAME characters (e.g. Rosa Parkes, MLK etc), their "story" only exists because of their colour so having a white person play them would be ridiculous. Who cares what ethnic origin a fictional character has unless it's central to the plot?

NotDavidTennant the post is half right. Rihannon comes from Rihanna, which comes from Rayhan, which is a Quaranic name.

Rhiannon (note the spelling) and Rihanna sound similar, but I can't find anything on Google to say they are related. The Wikipedia page on the mythological character, Rhiannon, states, 'Her name appears to derive from the reconstructed Brittonic form Rīgantonā, a derivative of rīgan- "queen".'

Jones comes from Jonas which also originates from the middle east.

John originated as a hebrew name, so of course is originally from the Middle East. However, it was brought here via cultural transmission, not by settlers of Middle Eastern origin. And the surname Jones is undoubtedly of English and Welsh origin.

About 82% of hte UK is white and I don't think the Christmas ads I see reflect that. However that might be because I live in a non white area. How regional are Christmas adverts?

Christmas adverts are the same in all regions

Augusta, that is not correct. At least 90% of the ancestry of Britons was replaced by a wave of migrants, who arrived about 4,500 years ago from Central Europe and the Steppes. Commonly called the Beaker culture.

Oh my, you do realise don't you OP, that white actors frequently get cast in roles where the character in the book/comic book wasn't white. There have also been white/Hispanic actors cast in parts that are based on real people of a different race. And in some cases, films based on legend/folklore or Biblical stories have done the same, because while we may not know if these people really existed, their origin will give some clue as to the race they would have been, if they were real. For example, in the 2014 film Noah, Russell Crowe played the title role. Now if Noah did exist, he would have been of Middle Eastern appearance, he certainly wouldn't have been white, like Russell bloody Crowe!

More here Whitewashing in film

Ohhhhh. Actors act. Clue's in the name.