Historical drama

[Banananew]

Genuine question
Why do production companies use people of colour in dramas set in historically times? We were watching a program earlier set in the 1960's and there were a number of characters of colour. It was set in a very rural part of the country that my parents were from. This really would have been unusual/unlikely. So why does this happen?
I am not bothered as it doesn't particularly matter, but why?

Sigh. Read what you said and unpick your own ‘logic’. You said that people of colour are ‘over represented in the media compared to the national population’ so that ‘people going on about colour blind casting giving people of colour more work is actually ridiculous’.

So, as people of colour are ‘over-represented’ in the media compared to their proportion of the UK population, are you suggesting that doing away with colourblind casting will restore ‘proportionate representation’ or something? Or why is it ‘ridiculous’?

I’m glad when we see representation in historical dramas. There were people of many nationalities in the UK for hundreds of years. We only imagine a white past because that is what the historical record of the time recorded. Anyone that wasn’t white was ignored and discriminated against and not shown in the old films/ paintings etc. Your rose tinted glasses for a white past are not as accurate as you think they are.

The moors included North African Muslims.

That's what I said - Arabs and Muslims.

Maxine Peake was superb as Hamlet. Absolutely embodied a late teenaged boy. It’s called acting.

You can passively aggressively ‘sigh’ as much as you want. You are assuming the over representation is due to colour blind casting which I never said and the research doesn’t suggest that either. In fact research has shown that other minority groups such as disabled, trans, etc are also over represented in the media compared to the general population demographic which clearly isn’t due to ‘colourblind’ casting. I only pointed it out because people were under the misapprehension that actors of colour weren’t getting much work and were therefore at a disadvantage compared to white actors without colourblind casting.

I also never said it was bad because it unfairly advantages actors of colour. You made that up all on your own.

Sometimes acting isn’t enough. Do you think a white person should play Mary Seacole? What about a Chinese man?

Part of Mary Seacole’s story is the attitudes to black people at the time and the attitudes to women.

Acting is intended to serve the drama rather than the plot and its message being subverted to serve the acting.