Last week, casting news for The Little Mermaid live-action remake began making waves (hehe) on the Internet, and it was followed up this week by the casting announcement for Shonda Rhimes Bridgerton Netflix series. And while both pieces of news had me excited, due to Little Mermaid being my childhood favorite and the Bridgertons being my all-time favorite historical romance series…other people weren’t so happy. And setting aside the understandable reservations that some have about the casting of the Bridgertons series, such as the implied changes and new characters, many of the worst comments shared a similar theme with The Little Mermaid’s casting reactions in being focused on the race of some of the actors.
Among the cast, we have Regé-Jean Page playing Simon and Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury, those being the choices that have been the targets of the biggest race-related comments, due to the characters’ prominence in the book series.
Most, like with the Ariel comments, chose to make it about “historical accuracy,” accusing Shonda of “changing [history] to fit her narrative,” with others questioning why the change was done when Julia Quinn did not make them POC in the first place, pulling the “create original stories” card, which are very familiar to anyone who was following the insanity from the Ariel casting last week.
` And I just find it laughable and sickening at the same time. Laughable because historical accuracy is their excuse, but neither Disney nor JQ are necessarily known for their strict adherence to historical accuracy. And it’s even funny for historical romance readers to cry about that stuff, because they’re totally fine with thousands of young, virile dukes (a complete fiction), not to mention some of the anachronistic shenanigans of historical romance books, but an aristocratic historical romance hero (or heroine) portrayed as a person of color? Pitchforks!
Also, I’ve seen the claim touted that if black people existed at all during the Regency, they were servants or slaves. Vanessa Riley (and many serious historians) would beg to differ, having written a number of books set in the period, with black people in different walks of life, from servant to aristocrat, and featuring a wealth of information about Black people in the Regency on her website.
For the most part, it all goes back to colorblind casting and each of the people chosen being who they felt captured the spirit of the role. The main defense given for Halle Bailey as Ariel is her killer pipes, and I have to agree, especially given the fact that some people’s ideal casting choices don’t come close to hitting her range vocally. And while I’m not familiar with any of the cast for the Bridgertons series, I don’t think it’s out of character for Shonda Rhimes, who has produced diverse series like Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder, to cast people of color here either, and am open to giving all of the cast a chance to prove what they can do, instead of passing judgment prematurely.
But regardless of who’s in charge, it’s just disheartening to see so much hatred over the casting of fictional characters, especially since the accusations are the same every time (like, legitimately, I heard the same things come up in response to both Ariel and the Bridgertons, and every other colorblind re-casting)? Becoming “too PC?” Heard that one before. “Black people should make their own show?” What do you think they’ve been trying to do for decades? “Not historically accurate?” See above.
It’s sad that we still have people who hold these antiquated beliefs in 2019. I understand having a love for a childhood classic film or a beloved book series, and dreading changes when a remake or new adaptation comes around. But that’s no reason to be hateful and exclusionary to others, especially to entire groups of people who have put up with decades of not being represented in media, due to systemic barriers in their way.
Courtney Reads Romance 
I love the Bridgertons and I’m looking forward to this show. Years ago, I saw a colorblind cast Our Town at the Arena Theatre. Actors are acting – how they look shouldn’t matter. They are playing a character that is not them. If that didn’t work, how do we explain years of white actors playing Native Americans and foreigners? They’re actors. Same difference.
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This view is fine, as long as colour blind casting is employed everywhere. That is, a white person should also be able to play someone who was actually a person of colour, without there being an uproar (which has not typically been the case in recent times).
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The problem being that white people being cast in POC roles has a history of oppression, POC being cast in “white” roles does not. And in most cases, white people have taken roles that were *specific* to POC, or Yul Brynner in The King and I, Scarlett Johannsen in Ghost in the Shell. Not to mention the fact that white people are the ones with privilege in society, whereas POC (especially Black people) receive discrimination.
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For an alternative view of color blind casting, from a black actor, try ‘“Colour blind casting” is an absurd and insidious form of racism’ by Omari Newton (https://www.yvrscreenscene.com/home/2019/5/1/omari-newton-colour-blind-casting-is-an-absurd-and-insidious-form-of-racism). Not all of his arguments relate directly to Bridgerton, or this blog post; however his larger points do relate, and the article is worth reading just to get an alternative pov. Casting poc actors in ‘white’ roles means pretending, for example, that slavery didn’t happen. For example, these last 3 paragraphs:
“Colour blind casting” is insulting. It is confusing. It is a form of erasure rooted in white guilt and systemic racism. I encourage directors and producers to cast roles non traditionally, but not “blindly.”
What we need is “colour conscious casting.” If you want to introduce characters of colour into your story as a writer, director or producer, please do so in ways that encompass our complex history and our lived experiences.
Race matters. Race is not interchangeable. Pretending that it is irrelevant diminishes the struggles many of us still face today. If your concept can not account for the inclusion of our bodies on stage or screen in ways that actually integrate us into your story authentically, in ways that are honest, real, and humane, then don’t bother to include us at all. To do otherwise is asking performers to further diminish ourselves to appease white liberal guilt, and asking audiences to continue patting themselves on the back for living in a fantasy world where racism never existed. “Colour blind casting” is the theatrical equivalent of #AllLivesMatter. It needs to be retired from the theatre like it’s ideological relatives “Black Face”, and segregation before it.
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Thanks for the correction on that. I’ve since learned about “color conscious casting,” and how it *was* employed for Bridgerton. But it is interesting that the fix for decades of white people taking on POC roles is an attempt to level the playing field by giving *everyone* an opportunity for what are typically white default roles, as seen in something like Mary Queen of Scots (I haven’t seen that, so I don’t know much about it). But instead of making new things for POC specifically to shine in, they retread old familiar territory, but “hey, let’s plop a few nonwhite actors in there to look woke.” One of the conversations that resonated with me with the recent Gal Gadot Cleopatra casting was that Cleopatra has been *done*, and there are other Egyptian Queens that need their stories told, but no, another Cleopatra with a white actress.
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Race is still there though. Skin color is a characteristic of each of us, just like eye color or hair color. Just as they look for resemblance of these elements when they make movies or whatever else, people will want this to be applied to skin color as well. Seeing a black/Asian English queen is just as surprising as seeing the Emperor of China portrayed as a Scandinavian man. Simply, it ignores history. Ignoring that non whites were disliked and had no place in higher European society (and had many difficulties in lower places as well) is not being racist, it simply means being realistic. If there were to be created a story set in Timbuktu at the court of the emperor, including actors of skin colors other than Sub-Saharan would be as wrong as portaying Asian ladies in 1800 England or black intellectuals in Renaissance Italy (a series about Machiavelli portrayed him as black). Being racist is wholly another thing than seeking historical accuracy. And that’s why nobody complained about Grey’s Anatomy (I am quite fond of Bailey myself, she is an amazing and strong woman), because that’s set in 21st century America where melting pot is the norm, not in racist 19th century Britain which considered slavery abolishion a great deal. Do we really want to act as if everything was normal, as if it was an antiracist, inclusive Eden? Come on
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I strongly suggest reading my Bridgerton review for some updated thoughts on how they handled it. This was in response to the casting specifically. And I really hate the “what if they cast a white actor in a POC role” comparison, because of the history there. And as for Queen Charlotte specifically, there’s been articles about their methodology for casting her based on a long held theory about her ancestry, because guess what? People intermarried between countries and continents and races mixed? Whodathunkit? Not to mention the documentation for lots of free Black people in Britain for centuries, something Vanessa Riley notes in the Research portion of her website (although specific to the Regency).
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The Royals today show blatant racism towards Megan and other High brow royals show it too.
In modern Britain.
Racism is still strong today in Britain though it should not be.
So to pretend it was not in Bridgerton, and everyone was all hunky dory and lovey dovey is just nonsense and false.
Racism was far worse, in a nation that thrived on slavery for the most part.
Yes there were some Black people who had elevated themselves to prominence, but the majority were servants and lower class…. Like most people.
So to portray them all in-termarrying casually like its the Norm and is all accepted is just wrong.
Vanessa Riley needs to do far more research that also involves common sense too.
The Duke today is always being racist in a modern world…. How do you think it would have been in the Regency era??
Just because some were accepted, it does not amount to all being accepted.
There is a big difference.
Vanessa would do well to learn that.
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Please consult my Bridgerton review. I go into some of the things you bring up there. Also, there’s an alternate perspective that, like with everything else they decided to change for the sake of fantasy and alt-history, race is handled in a similar way. I don’t necessarily agree with all the decisions made, but at the end of the day, the show isn’t meant to be a historically accurate piece in any sense. I mean, just look at the costumes and the music choices. And “Vanessa would do well to learn that?” How dare you?! Black romance authors have always had the burden of having to show receipts to prove their history wasn’t all doom-and-gloom, and she’s hardly the only one to deal with this. Historical Romance has never been 100% accurate, but dealt with the “plausible.” She has the records for these unique events and people to create her more inclusive alternate history. No different than all the white authors including ten thousand hot dukes and rakes that have slept with anything that moves yet somehow don’t have syphilis. YOU would do well to remember that.
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