Colour Blind casting

[ThinWomansBrain]

I know any statement that starts "I'm not racist but..." is usually exactly that, but I find colour blind casting in period drama really distracting.
I've seen two films and a play in the last week where it's been really off - why go to all of the effort of period costume and make up, and then have really implausible actors?

Wicked little letters - first Asian police woman was 1970s. not 1920s
National Theatre production - 1930s play - white couple with an inexplicably Asian Child
Catherine Booth (co founder of Salvation Army) was not black

It's particularly jarring when they are supposed to be portraying real characters.

In contrast, I saw some contemporary dance/theatre this evening, I don't even race or gender of most of the dancers.

Presumably it depends on the race / ethnicity of the actor not affecting the role. Eg in your first example, she was playing a police woman, not an Asian police woman, specifically. It doesn’t make a difference to the character or the story, therefore they can hire the best actor for the part, regardless of race.

The idea that a black actor couldn’t ever be in a period drama is pretty dreadful, if you think about it.

Even when depicting a real person, unless the race of that person is relevant to the story then it doesn’t really matter for the actor. It’s an artistic representation, not a crime-watch reenactment.

Glenda Jackson was stupendous as King Lear.

I think that period drama is always going to be a synthesis of the characteristics of the time in which it is set and the time in which it is made. You mention costume, for example. Look at the 'period' costume of, say, a film set in the nineteenth century and made in the 1940s. You'll see how characteristically 1940s the costumes are.
We are kidding ourselves if we think we are producing full-on 'realism' in our representations of the past. So why not be joyfully, creatively honest about that jn a range of ways, including by casting people without any obsessive attempts to recreate colour matches between actors and the characters portrayed? There are lots of benefits to be had from colour blind casting, and the only 'cost' is that we have to stop pretending that period dramas are a kind of social documentary.

I don’t see the issue personally. Art is never going to be a literal reflection of real life down to minute detail, even the most naturalistic plays rely on theatrical techniques and production such as bare minimum props/staging etc. Films about real people/events will always take artistic license for what makes a better story. I wouldn’t personally be taken out of a play thinking ‘she shouldn’t be a policewoman!’

It's fine for me. I've never found it distracting at all. Perhaps you need to reflect on why you are so preoccupied with a person's race that you let it distract you?

I used to nod along with that historical accuracy point but don't anymore because culture isn't primarily about that kind of accuracy. Shakespeare plays occupy a central role in British culture, but almost all the roles are about white people. Should the best non-white British actors be shut off from the opportunity to play the best British roles? Of course not.

Sophie Okonedo played Queen Margaret in the Hollow Crown. She's amazing in that role. The fact that a historically white queen was played by a black woman seemed entirely secondary to the brilliant acting performance.

No I do not think I have ever seen this as an issue. Should you reflect OP on why you feel this way and why you feel that actors have to be a certain colour?

I find it hard but that is my issue to resolve Colour blind casting is allowing us too see the best actors for the roles.

I taken longer to follow a family where it would be very rare or impossible for the child in the family to have been from the two parents. (I do remind myself that a child may naturally have very different skin/hair. I know it is my problem.

im from an ethnic minority and if does sometimes feel odd seeing an Asian actor playing a lawyer or doctor at a time when you know their race would never just be ignored by everyone around them and there would have been racist slurs or patients refusing to be treated.

Sometimes it can give the wrong impression of an era. For example, in Mallory Towers on BBC there are quite a few ethnic minority actors. This is obviously fine as long as young people don't grow up watching it and thinking this was the norm at the time. In the long run it can make people wonder why some people make "such a fuss" about historical racism and oppression.

I would feel the same as you, OP, about a real character being played by someone who didn't resemble them at all (as with the Catherine Booth example). Re the Asian character, I feel the same when there are anachronisms with the speech - when people say things they would never have said in the time the film was set. But OTOH I would hate to feel, as an (amdram!) actor, that there were roles i was barred from because of my skin colour. Lots of the 'children' of soap characters look nothing like their supposed parents and we swallow that, cos acting, innit.

I don’t think Mary and Joseph were 6 when they had baby Jesus but I’ve never left a nativity with dry eyes.
You know it’s not real. You might know that actor as Batman or that actress is really a scouser etc etc. For the duration of the film or play, you must suspend your disbelief. I don’t see why that’s so hard when it comes to race.

I do wonder if it's OK regarding historical dramas in that it is giving the illusion that black people weren't discriminated against at that time. But at the same time it isn't acceptable for black actors to only be considered for subservient roles in period dramas. Not quite sure what the answer is there.

Interesting that I can only see one YABNU comment above but that 25 ppl (61% of 41) have voted that way.

BTW- YABU.

@Pastachocolate - yes, that's exactly the kind of dissonance that I feel.

& it depends how well its done - with gender blind casting, Tracy Ann Oberman was brilliant in The Merchant of Venice recently, but the whole play was set around that, so it didn't feel out of place, other plays I've seen have worked less well.
I think with the Wicked little letters film it seemed bizarre partly because I grew up in a similar seaside tows in the 60s/70s, 50 years on from when the film was set, and practically the only black people around were the children that my parents fostered.

Parents and kids not matching annoys me as I am wondering if they are supposed to be a step family or adoption and when that plot point will be relevant. (Usually a sub plot in a crime drama where dna doesn't match but someone had an affair or the child was via doner egg/sperm as another twist.)

The thing I don't get is that everyone is still slim and beautiful. If it was truly casting based on talent then why does that matter?

The Asian actor cast in Wicked Little Letters only stood out a bit because all the characters were making such a big thing about her being a female police officer. This was just after WWI when women had already been in traditionally male jobs. But nobody mentioned the fact she was of Indian heritage, which would have been far more unusual then.

I wasn't sure if we were meant to acknowledge it was as asian actor playing an indigenous English woman (called Daisy Smith or something) and that we are sophisticated 21st century audiences who grasp colour blind casting. Or, was she playing an Indian girl who had somehow travelled across the Empire with all that entailed?

I find it weird when black actresses are playing historical women who were most definitely white like for example Anne Boleyn yet a white actress can't be cast in the role of Mulan for example.

Yet a white actress would not be allowed to play the role of a black or Asian character. Why the hypocrisy?

I’m British but of Chinese heritage. To be honest it is irritating, because it is not a reflection of the time at all. I watched a drama set in Yorkshire in the 1700’s a few days ago and it had various black and asian characters working as weavers in the middle of nowhere. Now having a drama set in London at that time you may have seen the occasional ethnic minority but have them in the roles they really would have been in.

I would like to see more drama based on fact so a decent WWI film depicting the Commonwealth soldiers from India and the hardships they faced.

I think when people say they are colour blind it’s a bit of white guilt if I am honest. No one asks to be born in to their race or country.

There's a very very long history of white women playing the role of non-white characters and often in ways that belittle the history of those characters. E.G. Audrey Hepburn played a native American by putting some paint on her forehead.

So when you say white women wouldn't be allowed to play those roles I can only assume you mean it's considered taboo now because they were fairly shocking in the past.

I don't see the hypocrisy to be honest.

Wow, the comments tone has switched.

Sods law.

And sad.

Well it's preferable to a 'whites only' casting call isn't it? I agree with an earlier poster, an actor is playing the truth of a character, not a skin colour. Performance is about emotion and imagination, not historical reenactment, and there are very few roles where skin colour is relevant. Plus, if you think about the number of dramas and plays set before the 1950s that are produced and performed in this country, there would be very little work for minority ethnic actors without colour-blind casting.

I totally agree with you!! But I also get annoyed at Eastenders and Coronation street because in 2024 there should be more ethnic actors in these shows.