Anne Boleyn as a black woman

[Frustratedbeyondbelief]

Am anyone explain why ? I know this question raises the issue of race which is highly controversial. It is not meant to be goady.. just perplexed by what they are trying to achieve. To me like playing GHandi and Martin Luther King as while men..

For context I hope my non racial credentials as a mother of mixed race children assist in not seeing this as an 'anti black' thread ... I genuinely would like to be educated as to why this is thought to be a 'good thing' when simply factually incorrect . ? Her home at Hever is less than a mile away, I have never had any idea she was black or mixed race. Just seems a bit 'trendy' ...

Lottie you are right. Woke people are so embarrassing 🙈

Have you got an example of an actor playing a known historical figure of the opposite sex?
Harriet Walter as Macbeth, as Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and as Prospero. Glenda Jackson played Lear at age 82 and was wonderful in the role.

The Other Boleyn Girl is a travesty.
It implies that the charges of incest against Anne were founded and any modern historian worth anything agrees that they were made up charges like those of witchcraft.

@ChewtonRoad

Have you got an example of an actor playing a known historical figure of the opposite sex? Harriet Walter as Macbeth, as Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and as Prospero. Glenda Jackson played Lear at age 82 and was wonderful in the role.

Most of those are fictional figures.

I think Shakespeare is partly because some plays have been done so many times it's very difficult to stand out from the crowd.

Mind you, perhaps the Tudors are getting to that point as well.

@madroid

Having seen one of the best productions of Romeo and Juliet performed by an all male cast - including Juliet - I can well believe that if Bolyen is good we will forget her skin colour within 5 minutes.

I think it's a really good idea to mix up our cultural assumptions - it's good for us and the acting profession!

Well, that's how it would have been played in Shakespeare's day.

How difficult is it to find a modeling height, talented women with brown eyes?

'modeling'?

Middling. Autocorrect.

I found it just as silly when the devastatingly handsome Jonathan Rhys Myers was cast not only as the red headed Henry 8th , but at the end of his life when it was well known he was an obese wheezing mound of pus!

I found JRM silly too. Too short for a start.
But Henry was handsome in his youth. A hot redhead could have been used and then fat suited up later.

Not sure whether this has been mentioned before but Laurence Olivier played Othello, Ben Kingsley played Ghandhi, Alec Guinness played Prefessor Narayan Godbole in A Passage to India. All acted well - does it matter that they were white actors playing non white characters?

I loved the colour blind casting in David Copperfield.

I don't think it matters at all.

@kaleishorrid

Not sure whether this has been mentioned before but Laurence Olivier played Othello, Ben Kingsley played Ghandhi, Alec Guinness played Prefessor Narayan Godbole in A Passage to India. All acted well - does it matter that they were white actors playing non white characters?

I loved the colour blind casting in David Copperfield.

I don't think it matters at all.

When you say 'Ben Kingsley' do you mean the actor born Krishna Pandit Bhanj?

Stuff like this is really starting to annoy me now.

Anne Boleyn was WHITE. She should be played by a WHITE woman. Unless this is some trendy off the wall production where she is played by a gay black bloke in a wheelchair just to be a bit controversial. If the shoe were on the other foot there would be uproar.

I'm really glad I'm not growing up and trying to get a grip on history. It's as bloody as confusing as hell.

@IcedPurple

Yes I do - I wasn't aware of that but I'm pretty certain the other two actors mentioned are white.

And you'll notice that I said that all were good actors and it didn't matter they were playing non white roles.

Othello being played by a white man loses a layer of meaning and symbolism.

Without a black Othello it's just dudes spreading rumours about girls. Yawn.

[quote kaleishorrid]@IcedPurple

Yes I do - I wasn't aware of that but I'm pretty certain the other two actors mentioned are white.

And you'll notice that I said that all were good actors and it didn't matter they were playing non white roles.

[/quote]
These were all from decades ago. And two were fictional characters. Apart from maybe Kingsley, who is half Indian, they would not be cast in those roles today.

@kaleishorrid

Not sure whether this has been mentioned before but Laurence Olivier played Othello, Ben Kingsley played Ghandhi, Alec Guinness played Prefessor Narayan Godbole in A Passage to India. All acted well - does it matter that they were white actors playing non white characters?

I loved the colour blind casting in David Copperfield.

I don't think it matters at all.

That was a long time ago though

@SunnydaleClassProtector99

I found JRM silly too. Too short for a start. But Henry was handsome in his youth. A hot redhead could have been used and then fat suited up later.

The Tudors' aesthetic wasn't meant to be historically accurate though. I read an interview with the costume designer and she was quite open about this. The men had no facial hair or cod pieces and the women had flowing hair - no severe gable hoods - and bare shoulders. Some of them wouldn't have looked out of place on a modern red carpet! They said that they wanted a 'rock 'n' roll' Henry and Rhys Meyers was just that.

I do agree it was ridiculous that he still looked like something out of a Calvin Klein ad in the later series though. The Ann of Cleves and Katherine Howard stories made no sense with a hunky Henry. Apparently he simply refused to don a fat suit and there wasnt' anything they could do about it.

I think it's one thing if a production is going for a certain overall slant and not aiming for historical accuracy, at least in that respect. However, if this series is claiming reasonable historical accuracy but we're simply not meant to notice that Ann Boleyn is black, then that's just silly.

@Dontforgetyourbrolly

I found it just as silly when the devastatingly handsome Jonathan Rhys Myers was cast not only as the red headed Henry 8th , but at the end of his life when it was well known he was an obese wheezing mound of pus!

I don't think I could have carried on watching an obese wheezing mound of pus but you did make me laugh.

I enjoyed JRM though but was not tricked into believing he was a dead ringer for Henry.

I didn't know that about the fatsuit. What a diva 😂. I agree about the Catherine Howard storyline. It only works with a middle aged fat Henry.
Natalie Dormer is the best Anne Boleyn to date. Catherine Howard actress was great too. Even Joss Stone did well as Anne of Cleeves.
But I still would have liked a strapping redhead for Henry.

I think it's one thing if a production is going for a certain overall slant and not aiming for historical accuracy, at least in that respect. However, if this series is claiming reasonable historical accuracy but we're simply not meant to notice that Ann Boleyn is black, then that's just silly.

They are not trying to make a historically accurate show.

According to one of the other actor of colour in the show:

“I think colour-blind casting is actually an old, old term that we should try and eradicate really, as well, because I don’t actually think there’s such a thing. Because it’s impossible to avoid someone’s race in a story. And I think if you’re trying to ignore the fact that we’ve cast those people in those roles, then you’re not understanding the concept of retelling a story that goes beyond that. And we’re not consciously doing a historically accurate show, of course, because otherwise the casting would look completely different.”

www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/anne-boleyn-thalissa-teixeira-diverse-cast-exclusive-newsupdate/

[quote GreenMeeple]I think it's one thing if a production is going for a certain overall slant and not aiming for historical accuracy, at least in that respect. However, if this series is claiming reasonable historical accuracy but we're simply not meant to notice that Ann Boleyn is black, then that's just silly.

They are not trying to make a historically accurate show.

According to one of the other actor of colour in the show:

“I think colour-blind casting is actually an old, old term that we should try and eradicate really, as well, because I don’t actually think there’s such a thing. Because it’s impossible to avoid someone’s race in a story. And I think if you’re trying to ignore the fact that we’ve cast those people in those roles, then you’re not understanding the concept of retelling a story that goes beyond that. And we’re not consciously doing a historically accurate show, of course, because otherwise the casting would look completely different.”

www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/anne-boleyn-thalissa-teixeira-diverse-cast-exclusive-newsupdate/[/quote]
The actress interviewed refers to 'Downton Abbey' as 'historically accurate' so I think she and I may have different understandings of the concept.

The actress interviewed refers to 'Downton Abbey' as 'historically accurate' so I think she and I may have different understandings of the concept.

Not many Period dramas are truly historically accurate but Downton Abbey does portray itself as trying to be accurate to the time period (I haven't seen enough of it to know if it succeeds in that). So I think all she is saying is that this show is not trying to portray itself that way. Which some people on here seem to be afraid of.

It's bloody ridiculous! It makes it impossible to get into the story as we know that the real character was white. It's pc woke bullshit. I'm not remotely racist either. I've seen all black productions of Shakespeare etc and they were great because the whole cast were black there were no glaring distractions. Are all the PC people here really saying that if Henry VIII was played by a Japanese actor, that would be ok?

Loved Bridgerton and agree this really works in fiction.
Assuming AB was white then it's a little weird to cast a non white actress. I guess you'd need to watch it to see how it works.
If they wanted to open up roles to talented black actors (which needs doing) they could have been more creative and chosen a more interesting story - it's about time other stories are told . However, I am biased because I think Tudors are quite boring