I Avoided TV Shows Where the Cast Were of the Wrong Race, Says Actress
The star of Bridgerton’s new spin-off TV show has admitted she chose her TV shows growing up based on the race of the cast. India Amarteifio told Radio Times that she never watched period dramas because they only featured white people – even though she is half white and diversity is supposed to be all about people of different backgrounds coexisting. The Telegraph has more.
Mixed-race British actress India Amarteifio is set to play George III’s wife Queen Charlotte in a new Netflix series, a prequel to the international hit Bridgerton which will portray the royal consort as a woman of African descent.
While about to take on a role in a much-anticipated period piece, Amarteifio has revealed that she avoided watching costume dramas because of the limited racial representation on screen.
“I never used to watch period dramas,” she told Radio Times magazine, adding: “I’m half black and white. My family looks like lots of different people.
“I didn’t see myself represented so I didn’t ever feel a need to watch them.”
If Ms. Amarteifio instinctively avoided TV shows because of the race of the cast, perhaps she needs to submit herself to some unconscious bias training…
And isn’t inserting people of one heritage into the historical portrayal of another culture ‘cultural appropriation’ or something?
Double standards on race on full display once more. But then of course that’s the name of the game in the diversity industry, where the new social rules apply very differently depending on your position in the victimhood hierarchy. And don’t you dare complain, gammon!
Of course, if people want to make and watch period dramas with unrealistically diverse casts, they should be free to do so. And if others want to watch more accurate portrayals, likewise. But the creeping normalisation of anti-white racism and aversion to anything that fails to include enough token diversity, no matter how anachronistic or unnecessary, is hardly conducive to good race relations and social harmony.
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Who is that picture meant to be of above, Elizabeth I?
Mrs George III.
Yes, just after Elizabeth I realized ‘White Face’ was racist.
I avoid almost all modern TV and commercials because of the unrealistic amount of diversity on display, which is politically motivated and linked to a movement to destroy European culture and civilisation – it’s enemy propaganda.
As for feeling “represented”, what a pitiful load of nonsense. Sometimes one feels “represented” in some artistic production if there are some direct connections to ones own personal background and experience. Race could be a part of that, as could sex, nationality, socio-economic status and an infinite number of other characteristics. At other times one is drawn to and able to appreciate/enjoy art that is on the surface many times removed from ones own experience but somehow it resonates with you, or maybe it doesn’t but it provides some insight into others’ experiences. Sometimes it’s just fun. I’ve never really given it much thought until loonies like this woman started getting a platform to spout bullshit like this.
That’s good enough for me tof.
Try watching Blue Lights on BBC iPlayer. It’s a Northern Irish police drama, with 95% Northern Irish actors, a couple of English actors, and other than a (token?) black woman in a very small part, no attempts at diversity casting. It’s excellent and the acting is superb. It’s a bit like the brilliant Line Of Duty but much more plausible.
Thanks for that; will check it out
Hard to believe
Slipped through the net
I liked the first four episodes of Blue Lights, but the last two were so improbable it was laughable. Also the blonde copper’s kid being mixed race then being “racially targeted” had the BBC overlords fingerprints all over it. That entire plot line was shoehorned in for no reason other than BBC.
As a non-gardener, I find that I dont relate to gardening programmes, and tend to avoid them. Do I need to go on a course..?
A gardener reassignment course!😀
Weird, I rather used to enjoy the “Ladies No 1 Detective Agency” series
I don’t let my kids watch Paw Patrol because the main characters don’t look like them. My puppy watches it alone…
What a pile of w*nk…
Anothwer one to avoid.
Before all this BLM woke carp I use to not think about a person’s skin colour, it was irrelevant.
Now I find I go out of my way not to associate with or watch anything that has people that are purely there because of the pigment of their skin. Its the same with gender.
I believed in a meritocratic society but that has long gone, if it was ever there at all.
Shouldn’t the cast of some show represent the dramatis personae and not the prospective audience?
Very well put.
The “actress” seems not to understand much about art.
Actors and actresses aren’t widely known for their staggering collective intellect
I’ve seen plenty of them speak intelligently about their art, and the arts in general. One would hope for some basic understanding, but it seems like for this woman it’s more of a job than a vocation or calling.
Or even “acting”
Or the tale of the theatrical agent who calls one of his clients and says ‘Great news, I’ve got you the lead in Long John Silver, rehearsals start Tuesday’. ‘That’s great’ says the actor, but why don’t we start on Monday..?’ ‘Ah, well’, says the agent ‘Monday is when you’re having your leg amputated.’
I’m here all week…
I’m waiting for the upcoming drama on Idi Amine starring Antony Hopkins.
Not available, he’s about to start filming ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ as the main character. Patricia Routledge will play Winnie.
😀😀😀
Tom cruise is about to play the aborigine in a remake of walkabout!
‘Of course, if people want to make and watch period dramas with unrealistically diverse casts, they should be free to do so.And if others want to watch more accurate portrayals, likewise.’
The ‘we’re a free Country… if you don’t like A then don’t bother with it, choose B… argument only works if there is a choice.
It is impossible to watch anything made within the last ten years which does not ram ‘diversity’ down your throat. Programmes prior are littered with ‘trigger warnings’, censored, or just not broadcast.
Freedom does not exist without choice. We are no longer free – even in politics there is no choice.
I’m perfectly happy with diversity casting. My kids went to schools that were fairly racially diverse which also had a well earned reputation for drama putting on at least 2 full productions a year. It would have been ridiculous if the school had restricted the roles by ethnicity.
A couple of kids from the school have gone on to professional acting careers, at what stage in their careers would you expect their role choice to be constrained by their ethnicity?
I always like to see the best actor get the role.
There’s an interesting case in point at the RSC at the moment. Hamnet is playing. Shakespeare is played by a white actor, Anne (Agnes) Hathaway and their 3 children are all played by mixed race actors. I don’t think this is diversity casting as I understand it as it seems that there’s been a deliberate policy of selecting actors of a consistently mixed racial heritage. This makes me suspect that the best actors haven’t been chosen for these 4 roles.
It’s box-ticking virtue signalling …..
A couple of kids from the school have gone on to professional acting careers, at what stage in their careers would you expect their role choice to be constrained by their ethnicity?
Diversity casters want black people to play roles of white people but not the other way round. That would be considered seriously racist.
I think writers and directors should write about and cast whoever they bloody well want. I that means that some race is under-represented then people of that race can get busy writing and directing stuff that involves them.
The example of a school isn’t overly helpful IMO – there’s a very limited pool and it’s probably more about trying to find something for everyone who wants to be involved to do. A professional or commercial production is a different matter.
What we see now in TV, films and advertising is non-white people being massively over-represented, part of a deliberate attempt to destroy European civilisation. In a few centuries time, not much will be left and we will be in misery.
“In a few centuries time”
You’re an optimist!
The speed and scale of destruction since 1997 has been astonishing, got much worse after 2019 and I think they intend to complete the job by 2030.
I struggle to think of myself as an optimist. I just think the decline into abject misery will drag on a while.
“In a few centuries time, not much will be left and we will be in misery.
Bloody hell tof you’re an optimist
I would suggest a time frame of 10 – 20 years max.
I always expect actors to dress and behave as befits the period of the drama they appear in, to walk with a limp, stoop or hump if that is what the original author called for, and to speak with an appropriate accent. I do not expect an improbable back story to be invented to account for the appearance of the actor.
There have however been a number of dramas where the fundamental characteristics are simply ignored and the power of the acting ensures that they don’t detract from the performance at all.
Two examples that I can think of immediately are Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, and David Oyelowo as Javert in Les Miserables. Powerful performances that completely overrode any personal attributes.
One way racism!
Why aren’t Asian actors complaining?
There isn’t a built-in victim culture where every failure to get something you want can be claimed to be racism. Asians tend to be rather successful and very hardworking.
They are. Yellowfacing may not be as established a term as blackfacing, but it exists.
It’s about verisimilitude. If it’s a theatre play or a studio-bound shot-on-video play, it’s different from a film or TV drama. With a play, you know you’re watching actors performing a character. With cinema or television drama, you’re supposed to believe the character is the person you’re watching. While the line blurs at times, someone of a different race, with no attempt made at using makeup to pretend to be of that race strikes a bum note and prevents you fully engaging with what’s on screen. And if the actress in the article is so racist that she can’t watch television with white people, that’s her problem. The UK population, even now, is 87 per cent white, three per cent black and seven per cent Asian. I would no more expect a black woman to play a historical Queen of England than I’d expect a white woman to play Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar! I wouldn’t go to Japan and expect half the cast of their TV shows and movies to be caucasian. If people really want unrealistic mixed race casts in a historical context, maybe filmmakers should delve into some steampunk novels and adapt those. At the end of… Read more »
This obsession with race has made a lot of people – who ordinarily wouldn’t have allowed skin colour to, er, colour, their views of others – do just that. Some of them have rushed to one end of the other of the opinion spectrum as a result, leaving a great many somewhere in the middle who are just pissed off with the whole thing and not feeling very tolerant of anyone, white or non-white. This could be reversed very quickly by people like this unintelligent actress and her white leftie supporters just f**king right off at their earliest convenience.
I was fascinated by the life and achievements of Muhammad Ali, but have always avoided watching the fights with Henry Cooper, Chuck Wepner, Carl Mildenburger, Oscar Bonavena, Joe Bugner, George Chuvalo etc etc. I consider myself very balanced.
Who cares what she watches? From what she says, she is racist and in what is hopefully a minority who control what they watch by the race of the actors. Racism in either direction needs to be unacceptable in our country.
But why the incorrect racial casting? What does it serve?
I think it is the identity marxism idea of Equity. A perverse view of how history is portrayed, that because black people are not represented in all aspects as historical characters, that is not because black people were not present at the time in question, but because discrimination occurred in the casting process. There was racism in the casting process.
Equity 1st and correct historical representation 2nd or 3rd. So because all people are equal, it must be access that is problem for why a white historical character is played by a white actor and not a black actor.
Thus, in order to have equal access and hence equality of outcome, the admission criteria must be adjusted or removed. So historical accuracy is removed as a casting metric.
Just a final word on this. When I was a younger man there was a programme on the TV called Desmonds, a comedy series set in a West Indian barbers shop in London with the fabulous Norman Beaton in the lead, and a host of excellent black comedy performers and a token white bloke or two. We loved it, and it never occurred to us that we shouldn’t watch because the ‘weren’t like us’. What a sad indictment of racial integration that people can’t enjoy the performances without some narcisstic inclusion.
Yes, I used to run into the gentleman who played Pork Pie a bit (he was a regular at a pub run by one of my friends.) Hell of a nice man, beautifully spoken and a fabulous singing voice. This inclusion nonsense – seeing people resembling yourself – is a modern thing. I didn’t want to watch anyone like me in movies and TV shows. I watched Star Trek to see people I wished I could be like. I’m a years-long addict of anime and Asian cinema. I was watching Asian films when Michelle Yeoh was still calling herself Michelle Khan before Tomorrow Never Dies. My frustration is that by the 1990s most of the racial thing had gone from our society. Everybody thought Samuel L Jackson was cool. Avery Brooks as Hawk in Spenser for Hire and Hawk was a complete badass. Lenny Henry was probably my favourite comedian in the 1980s. We all cheered for Daley Thompson and everyone from zero to 100 loved Frank Bruno. The racial pot getting stirred coincides with the rise of social media and a ‘professional thin-skinnedness’. This is being orchestrated by anarchists who want to destroy our society and there’s big money… Read more »