Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn

[Bitchysideisouttoplay]

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9071763/Director-TV-drama-Anne-Boleyn-says-best-person-role.html#article-9071763
Not and AIBU really but what does everyone think if this?
Personally I think if you are making a historical drama/film etc surely you should cast a person as close in looks to the historical figure.
Before anyone says I'm.being racist I'm not I had massive issues with the casting in the Tudors due to Johnathan Rhys Meyers being cast as Henry, he is short, not ginger and really does not look anything like Henry in portraits 🙄🙄

Not that I'm a "follower" or "believer" but...

I really enjoyed JRM as Henry - thought he did a brilliant job. So I’ll reserve judgment until I see it, I think.

JRM does that chilling emotionally terrifying thing very well, but I'm biased because I saw Gormenghast when I was around 11 and he became one of my first crushes (along with Leo 😍).

As for Henry Cavill - this man is FUCKING HOT. He's basically my physical ideal. I really really fancy him (can you tell?).

@CrotchBurn

Why cant Anne be played by an actor with a disability?

Let's campaign for that too. Good idea.

But your questions are rhetorical, not that you really care, do you?

Ridiculous. WTF are they trying to prove? Oooooh, look how 'woke' we are.

Pathetic and laughable.

I hope they cast Reese Witherspoon as Rosa Parks one day, or Leonardo DiCaprio as Muhammad Ali. I mean why not? It's about who is best for the role, and shouldn't about skin colour right?

Fuck's sake!!!

@Raceless
In all fairness... Yeah, I was being a bit facetious!

I'm only bothered by it's 'wokeness'. It's utterly cynical really which is a shame. If they'd made Henry a trans man then I'd be slow-clapping.

@user1471565182

Im just glad about anything I know will upset David Starkey.

this

I'd love to see a director take on the story of John Blanke who was a trumpeter at the court of Henry VIII and he was black. He is included in a brilliant book called Black Tudors. Or someone do a fictional recreation of the journey of the Roman man they dug up near Hadrian's Wall that the tests said was born in China - so presumably traveled along the silk road and then on to Britain from Venice. THere are so many stories out there beyond the usual rich white men.

I don't necessarily mind either colour blind casting, or casting that tries to be historically accurate with regard to people's appearance.

I do think the former works better in productions that aren't meant to be naturalistic, and so is often better in the theatre rather than on-screen. But there are non-naturalistic screen productions as well.

What does bother me more however is inconsistency, virtue signalling, historical revisionism, and I'd even say hypocrisy around this issue in the industry. What gets passed off as a colour blind choice in some cases clearly isn't - the've decided to do a race reversal, or a sex reversal, in the choice, but they do't own it. It's only ever done in one direction. You can see in some productions they've taken a role that they can vaguely justify as non-white but the fact is it's idiotic (the recent Secret Garden comes to mind.) And then you have things like Cleopatra - these days almost inevitably cast as a black actress, and that is presented as more historically accurate which is bollocks.

Of course it's now not considered appropriate for actors in theatre to use make-up to play a member of another race either, which narrows possibilities a lot, especially in community productions. Colour blind casting would be an answer maybe, but only if it really was colour blind - then you might find you have a black Juliet, or a white Othello with no attempt to make them look anything other than what they are. At least that would be consistent.

@KnitsAndGiggles

"Have you ever read Othello?"

Yes I've read it. I'm guessing you only asked me that to patronised. I know full well why Othello needs to be black.

Not that my not having read it world change the fact that white men were cast in the role. We didn't see a black actor in the role till quite recently.

I was making the point that the argument that we might as well cast othello as a white man, if Anne Boleyn was played by a black actress was a weak one.

Have you got a photo of him@heyjude12?
No have you? And have you seen the ethnicity of those born in the middle east???
Sorry love but chances ate he would have been brown with black curls....

I think if those people who like to lecture just said it plainly they’d be less issue. ‘We are redressing the balance’.

I quite agree people are busy beating about the bush instead of coming out with it - whatever 'it' is.

But then, people are quite afraid of inadvertently saying the wrong things.

When Harrison Ford is cast to play Nelson Mandela would your answer be the same? Aother example of the hypocrisy that certain topics provoke.

I hope they cast Reese Witherspoon as Rosa Parks one day, or Leonardo DiCaprio as Muhammad Ali. I mean why not? It's about who is best for the role, and shouldn't about skin colour right?

Instead of making comments like this, could people perhaps try not being so bloody stupid instead?

You can’t cast a white person to play Rosa Parks or Nelson Mandela because those people’s stories are inextricably bound up with their race. The fact that they were black is absolutely integral to the things they achieved and the reasons we know and care about them. The same is not true of Anne Boleyn. Her story has nothing to do with her race.

You might actually ask yourselves why it is that we only seem to tell the stories of black people who have overcome huge adversity as a result of their race, and why that’s different to most white people. Or at least, you might if you’re not an ignorant cretin with less understanding of history than the average seven year old. There is a reason why a vast amount of black history relates to the struggle to overcome oppression, and unless you’re an arsehole you can presumably see why it’s not appropriate for white people to play black roles under those circumstances.

@ProfessionalWeirdo

It strikes me as odd that it seems OK to cast a black actor in a white role, whilst a white actor can't be cast in a black role (such as Othello). Isn't equality supposed to work both ways?

Have you even read Othello?

The thing with Othello is that if he "needs" to be black, the other actors need to not be black.

But if you do colour blind casting and rely on the text, the words, to tell the story, you can do what you want with any of them.

Or, you can cast colour-blind but use theatre-magic to transform people.

All of these could be effective from the point of view of telling the story. The first might appeal more to people who see a lot of plays.

If we reverse this would a historical drama with a white or asian martin luther king or nelson mandela be fine? Or a historical drama with the whites cast as the slaves and african people as the the plantation owners ?? If it is portraying history , i think it doesnt work. If its a drama thats aiming for something really different in terms of its storytelling maybe its ok . I agree with others, if we want to create historical dramas with non white actors, why not find the historical characters . Also Scarlet Johannsen ? Not allowed to play a trans character

@riotlady

Love that meme 👏

The excellent Japanese film Throne of Blood is basically MacBeth in a traditional Japanese setting. Why couldn’t they have done something like that, with a full cast of black actors?

This is such a good idea and you could take it so far. Use the stories and plots but represent them in different cultures. I'd love to watch those.

I actually don’t mind it - yes I do absolutely see your point about being historically accurate, if that is the film makers focus.

But in this case it doesn’t seem to be historical accuracy but telling a story... and a story doesn’t have to stick to the truth does it.

So actually I don’t mind and I’m quite supportive of anything which brings more diversity and representation to the forefront.

The choice is either to open up to bringing diversity to the old stories (presenting them in a new way) because NONE of our old stories have minority leads (as they were slaves or otherwise suppressed or none existent in this country at that time)

Or you start telling new stories which aren’t focused on just western histories. Stories where the narrative is from a minority perspective.

When Harrison Ford is cast to play Nelson Mandela would your answer be the same? Aother example of the hypocrisy that certain topics provoke.

You think Anne Boleyn is the UK's equivalent of Nelson Mandela?

Oh Christ I’ve just read back some of this thread...

Do people really still not understand why reverse racism just isn’t a thing?

Why can’t Reese Witherspoon play Rosa Parks???

Fuck me no wonder this world is in the shit.

Gonna go boil my head to rid myself of this utter tripe.

@donquixotedelamancha

Nothing would change in Game of Thrones, for example, if Arya Stark and her family or Daenerys or Cersei were black.

The ethnicities of the books are realistic and specifically worked out. The show did a fairly shit job on the non-white characters but it would require quite a deft hand to make wholesale changes well.

Arya Stark, descended from the first men in Westeros whose family have lived in the icy North for millennia being black would have broken suspension of disbelief for a lot of people. The Targaryens from the East having dark skin instead of the blonde hair and purple eyes might have worked really well and open some interesting possibilities.

...broken suspension of disbelief... Flying dragons, White walkers, WOGS, zombies, speaking trees or whatever and all that. Ok, we believe.

I don't mean to remake it though, I think when something's already made, they should create a new one.

So yes, the fake backstory and history, etc would have been made to fit if black characters were added from the get go...from the book and even just the show itself. As I understand it, a lot of what was on the show wasn't in the book and vice versa. Tbf people were 'absolutely fuming' because of it .

They could do it if they really wanted to. Not saying they have to.

I think the elephant in the room is that Britain today is multicultural but it is historically a white region (and still is in terms of majority) and theres really not any getting away from that no matter how much diversity you try to layer over it in retellings. The best thing to do is to leave that as it is IMO and encourage more diversity in things set in a contemporary context.

It would kind of ruin the bit where desdemona is outed as having a black boyfriend if othello then comes on stage and he’s got white skin though 🤨.

If a characters meant to be tall the actor needs to be tall.