When is it OK to cast across racial lines? This is one of the movie questions of our time, and it’s complicated. Let’s take two recent, apparently contradictory examples. Case one: Mary Queen of Scots, which included Gemma Chan – a British actor of Chinese descent – as Bess of Hardwick, a real-life, very-much-white ally of Elizabeth I. For some, Chan’s casting was “historically inaccurate”. Case two: the forthcoming Hellboy reboot, which made headlines last year when Ed Skrein (white, British) was cast as Ben Daimio, a Japanese-American character. In response to the angry reaction, Skrein withdrew from the role, and was replaced by Korean actor Daniel Dae Kim.
So in the first instance, the argument is “race doesn’t matter” and in the second, the argument is “it really, really does matter”. Confusing, huh? The first thing to remember is how, until recently, most Hollywood and British movies were created, controlled and performed by white people – even the non-white characters. “If John Wayne can play Ghenghis Khan, I can play Bess of Hardwick,” stated Chan in a recent interview, questioning why actors of colour are only allowed to play their own race. And yet they see plum Asian roles taken by white actors, such as Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell. It was a similar story with Hellboy’s Ben Daimio. Sure, he’s a comic-book character, but one whose Japanese heritage is an essential part of his identity. Why cast a white guy?
Yes, Bess of Hardwick had no Chinese ancestry, but if we’re talking “historical accuracy”, let’s acknowledge how much disbelief we already suspend when it comes to historical movies. Most Elizabethans had manky teeth, terrible skincare and bad lighting. They did not speak in modern English. Mary probably had a French accent, not a Scottish one. And the whole movie is premised on an encounter between the two queens that never actually took place. It is fiction, not documentary. What’s more, there have been people of colour in Britain since at least Roman times, so erasing them (as countless previous movies have done) is no less inaccurate.
The other example Chan cited was Hamilton – a musical whose creators’ and performers’ non-whiteness is arguably the principal reason for its success. As Lin-Manuel Miranda has often said, Hamilton is a story of “America then, told by America now”. It’s the same with movies, and not just historical ones: they always reflect the “now”. And what both Mary Queen of Scots and Hellboy are saying in this particular moment is that they get it about representation. Chan’s casting helps to correct a systemic imbalance; Hellboy’s whitewashing threatened to perpetuate that same imbalance. There’s no real contradiction.
