Anne Boleyn

trisher I hope at some point we can reach a stage where the quality of acting is what counts and not the colour of the skin.
This can never apply for historical people who we know about. Would you be happy with Winston Churchill or Princess Diana portrayed by black actors or Michelle Obama and Tina Tuner portrayed by white actors? It's complete nonsense.
We should show people the respect of portraying them as accurately as possible, whether black or white, whatever period they lived in.

Anne Boleyn should not be played by a short obese white woman of the wrong age with blonde curly hair.

So if there are no slender dark haired women good enough to play the part, should they just not bother making the film?

Discriminatory to short people, people who are not "standard" sizes and blondes now. What next?

trisher Oh Boy! Blacking up approved of! Whatever next? Should they then have painted the black actress white? Would that have made it OK for you?
Did I say I approved? I only approve of getting accuracy in the casting of real historical figures, and that is what they were attempting to do. It was a long time ago, they got it wrong, does that mean we should still get the casting wrong?

Chestnut

theworriedwell - you've mentioned Hugh Griffith playing the Sheikh in Ben Hur, Natalie Wood and George Chakiris in West Side Story as examples of white people playing non-white parts. But these are from the 1950s! I think we've moved on since then. And at least they tried to make the actor look the right ethnicity, they were all made up to darken their skin.

Oh Boy! Blacking up approved of! Whatever next?
Should they then have painted the black actress white? Would that have made it OK for you?

The examples given show how difficult historically it was for actors who weren't white to get roles in productions. It still is difficult. I hope at some point we canreach a stage where the quality of acting is what counts and not the colour of the skin. We seem to have managed this to some extent with male/female roles. But there is still a long way to go.

theworriedwell People want accuracy but the only accuracy that seems to count is colour. Why? When Ingrid Bergman played Gladys Aylward was the whole thing ruined because German Curt Jurgens played Captain Lin Nan and the Mandarin is played by British Robert Donat.
Colour is not the only accuracy that counts! Anne Boleyn should not be played by a short obese white woman of the wrong age with blonde curly hair. The whole package counts, not just colour. There have been many examples of bad casting in the past, and now we have this one, a completely different race!
In old movies white people have often played other races. Maybe that was wrong, but at least they tried to make them look authentic. Robert Donat was made up to look Chinese, so was Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu.
If you believe they were wrong to do that then why are you now saying this is right? It's a contradiction.

theworriedwell your posts are brilliant. Thank you

As an aside, I watched a bit of West Side Story a couple of days ago. The amount of greasy orange foundation that the blokes were wearing was quite alarming.

theworriedwell - you've mentioned Hugh Griffith playing the Sheikh in Ben Hur, Natalie Wood and George Chakiris in West Side Story as examples of white people playing non-white parts. But these are from the 1950s! I think we've moved on since then. And at least they tried to make the actor look the right ethnicity, they were all made up to darken their skin.

I've just thought of a film with a non white actor playing a white prince so the closest equivalent I could think of.

Omar Sharif playing the Austrian Prince Rudolph in Meyerling. I remember seeing it when it came out, must have been late 60s. Don't remember anyone being worried about an Egyptian playing an Austrian Prince. I wonder why that didn't cause issues, maybe because Prince Rudolph wasn't British or maybe because he isn't so dark.

Namsnanny

Namsnanny

theworriedwell

I don't remember any fuss when a French Canadian actress (Geneviève Bujold) played Anne Boleyn in Anne of a Thousand Days. She even won a award for it, how authentic was that?

But Anne Boleyn lived many years in France. She was fluent in the language and fashion of the court. Being, as she was a favourite of the Queen.
So there was at least some justification.

Justification for her French accent.

You've mentioned a couple of times that no one had replied theworriedwell.

Thanks Namsnanny I had missed that. I'm not sure her French accent covers it, She was French Canadian and with French Canadian's in the family they wouldn't say it is a French accent. speaking French yes bit like Americans speak English but the accent is different. French Canadian accents do get picked up by French people, at least they have been with my relatives. So I don't think a French Canadian playing Anne Boleyn is accurate or authentic just because they both spoke/speak French, I'm sure there are black actresses who speak French if that qualifies them.

Namsnanny

theworriedwell

I don't remember any fuss when a French Canadian actress (Geneviève Bujold) played Anne Boleyn in Anne of a Thousand Days. She even won a award for it, how authentic was that?

But Anne Boleyn lived many years in France. She was fluent in the language and fashion of the court. Being, as she was a favourite of the Queen.
So there was at least some justification.

Justification for her French accent.

You've mentioned a couple of times that no one had replied theworriedwell.

AGAA4 yes you did but it is still just skin colour. People want accuracy but the only accuracy that seems to count is colour. Why? When Ingrid Bergman played Gladys Aylward was the whole thing ruined because German Curt Jurgens played Captain Lin Nan and the Mandarin is played by British Robert Donat.

Was Lawrence of Arabia ruined for anyone because Alec Guinness played Prince Feisal or Mexican Antony Quinn played Auda Abu Tayi or Puerto Rican Jose Ferrer played the Turkish Bey? Thank heavens they found Omar Sharif to save the day.

If none of those things caused anyone concern then maybe they should wonder why. We have discussed it at home and my husband wasn't sure about it (he isn't white) but on thinking about it he agreed that if he was OK with the very Welsh Hugh Griffith playing the Sheik in Ben Hur why would a black woman playing an English Queen be an issue. Not to mention that Hugh Griffith actually got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role.

Of course there are many many examples of people of colour being played by white actors but for some reason when it is the other way round it causes an issue. I do remember Rita Moreno complaining about Natalie Wood getting the part of a Puerto Rican although she didn't seem as worried about George Chakiris playing a Puerto Rican, like Natalie Wood he was the child of immigrants but not from Puerto Rico.

That was for the worriedwell

Read the post. I also said no white person should play a black person who had lived

Oh yes, *FannyCornforth", Caedfael not Caedmon, but neither of them cads. It was along time ago that I read the books. Must read them again.

Caedmon was a different bloke altogether, a cowherd named Cædmon who lived at the Abbey of Whitby and composed beautiful poetry. His story was told by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People I have found a piece online about him here

Alegrias1

I'd say you'd won the internet again theworriedwell but it seems to get some people's backs up.

Made me chuckle, I rarely win anything although I did win a Christmas hamper when I was a young mum with no money. Oh the excitement, someone offered to drive it home for me but I was so thrilled (and worried in case it got lost) that I loaded it onto the pram.

Elegran

theworriedwell after reading all the "Caedmon" books I watched the TV series. The short, stocky, practical and decisive Welsh Caedmon with dark curly hair of the books (all spelt out in the text) was played as dreamy and indecisive (and more than a bit wet) by a tallish, willowy, mousy-straight-haired Derek Jacobi. By the end of the series he had made the character his own, but it always seemed to me a totally different Caedmon to the one the author created.

Cadfael, isn't it?

Toadinthehole ?
Am thoroughly bored by the subject now in any case, so will leave the ‘wise and well read GNer’ ( no idea who that is!) to chunter on from a sedentary position.

I'd say you'd won the internet again theworriedwell but it seems to get some people's backs up.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202105/medium-330249-anne-boleyn.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202105/medium-299820-anne-boleyn2.jpg

Anne Boleyn was a real person so we owe her the respect of trying to get it right with her appearance, the correct age, hair colour, race.

Keith Michell had a couple of Annes who were close to being accurate. Dorothy Tutin in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (TV series) and Charlotte Rampling in Henry VIII and his Six Wives (movie).

AGAA4

To show respect to a person even if they are long dead they should be portrayed as accurately as possible.
There is nothing racist about this. If a person of colour was represented by a white actor this too would be disrespectful.

And showing respect seems to primarily come down to no black person portraying a white person?

So no one up in arms about Yul Brynner, Ingrid Bergman, Charlton Heston then?

I wonder why some people think racism plays a part in this?

*what
Isn’t fine, is posters trying to imply that those who like at least a modicum of historical accuracy in their tv programmes are thinking in a ‘racist’ way.
The thread didn’t start off that way, but increasingly, when posters saw that others didn’t agree with them, this rather desperate assertion of racism crept in.*
This is a great example of what I was getting at earlier on one of the AB threads

The above is one interpretation of what happened on this thread, based on the outlook of one poster’s interpretation of the motives and thought processes of others. It is not my interpretation, and I am pretty sure that yet others will have their own opinions which my be different again.

History, even recent history, is not about ‘facts’. It is about interpretation.

theworriedwell after reading all the "Caedmon" books I watched the TV series. The short, stocky, practical and decisive Welsh Caedmon with dark curly hair of the books (all spelt out in the text) was played as dreamy and indecisive (and more than a bit wet) by a tallish, willowy, mousy-straight-haired Derek Jacobi. By the end of the series he had made the character his own, but it always seemed to me a totally different Caedmon to the one the author created.

To show respect to a person even if they are long dead they should be portrayed as accurately as possible.
There is nothing racist about this. If a person of colour was represented by a white actor this too would be disrespectful.

How much do other casting decisions bother people? I asked about a French Canadian playing Anne Boleyn, I don't think anyone answered. Mel Gibson playing an Englishman has been mentioned, Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher. How about Ingrid Bergman playing Gladys Aylward, tall Swedish woman playing a short English woman? None of these things seem to cause much upset. White actors playing Native Americans was quite common I think. Yul Brynner, Russian, playing the King of Siam (Thailand.) Charlton Heston as so many biblical characters it would be hard to list them all.

Are all those things OK because no white person is portrayed by a non white person and if that is so then what is the reason.