Racial Hiring in Hollywood

Whenever I walk across campus, I like to call my sister to check in. She’s in her thirties, has two kids, and is an actor. She is bilingual in French and English and is a thin, average height, white woman. Recently, she hasn’t gotten many chances to audition. I asked her why and she told me it was because casting directors are looking for women of color to play the primary roles she wants and she feels excluded, as if there is prejudice against white women in the field. This made me feel uncomfortable because she seemed to be ignoring her privilege, so I decided to dive deeper into what racial casting means for people like my sister and our overarching. 

Traditionally (and even now), Hollywood has been #SoWhite. People of color were given minor roles that tended to reflect stereotypes, while white people were not only dominant onscreen, but offscreen too, in the director’s room, writing the scripts, and producing the shows. In the middle of the 2010s, there seemed to be a switch. Race in history was challenged through Broadway shows like “Hamilton” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, casting actors of colors in roles that white people previously held. This seemed like a good thing, but it was not enough. 

Last semester in my AMCS class, Visual Culture Studies, we learned about Plastic Representation, when white actors are replaced with actors of color without factoring in a personalized racial history into the role. This is like when black people replace white people in traditional white roles, like in the beginning of Jay Z’s music video, “Moonlight”, or when famous black actors like Lil Rel Howery, Lakeith Stanfield, Jerrod Carmichael, Issa Rae, Tiffany Haddish, Tessa Thompson, and Hannibal Buress replace, word for word, a short clip of a “Friends” episode. The music video brings up the question of representation for actors of color. The plasticity reflects merely switching out white actors for black actors, and erasing their racial identity. Meaningful diversity is not when films represent people of color, but when their diversity is multi-dimensional; their script written for a character of their race, produced for them, and shaped with the conscious care of keeping in mind their racial experience. Furthermore, actors like Eddie Redmayne, a famous able-bodied cisgender man, have played a differently abled person (Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”) and a transgender person (Lili in “The Danish Girl”). There are many actors with the motor neuron disease Stephen Hawking had and other trans actors who are rarely casted because there are no opportunities for roles that fit their identities. When those opportunities come to fruition, they are snatched by people who have the ability and privilege to assume any other role. 

There are not opportunities for roles that fit their identities, but when those opportunities come to fruition, they are snatched by people who have the ability and privilege to assume any other role

In a lot of shows, there also appears to be a “token minority,” when people of color are casted solely for their racial diversity. For example, the TV show, “Girls”, has a predominately white cast, although set in Brooklyn where only one third of the population is white. Additionally, when “The Hunger Games” was casted, the creators announced they wanted “a Caucasian girl” for Katniss. Meanwhile, Shonda Rhimes casted “Grey’s Anatomy” specifically avoiding labelling characters’ racial identities. Many things come together behind screen without us noticing, meanwhile casting directors are consciously specifying or, more rarely, going in blind, to create the racial identities, gender, age, ability, body type, and accents of the characters. 

There are also legal considerations, like antidiscrimination laws, actors’ unions, and bargaining agreements, to make sure to specify the character, not the actor. Even when race is not specified for the character, actors can read between the lines, or judge based off racial stereotypes. In casting “Girls”, both casting directors and the creator were white, and neglected proper representation in the hiring process, allowing for mistakes like relying on racial stereotypes. Casting that reinforces racial stereotypes comes when the people creating the characters do not represent the diversity of the actors they want to hire. 

TV and film creators for a long time feared that more diverse shows would not sell as well, but new hits like “Black Panther”, “Atlanta”, and “Get Out,” reflect the success possible when all stages of the industry consider diversity. When there are no racial specificities for casting, directors typically hire white actors. There are plenty of people of color applying to be actors, casting directors, writers, producers, and directors, like Jordan Peele, Ava DuVernay and Ryan Coogler. Hollywood’s historical whiteness is making diversifying the TV and film industry difficult. One step towards progress is changing the people who shape what the characters look like to make them multi-dimensional. Hopefully, actors will soon be able to encompass their role not through plastic representation or tokenization, but through authentic, thought-out representation. In the past, getting a role as a white woman was easier than it is now because slowly, Hollywood is diversifying. I see this as progress and thus, I think that my sister’s struggles grabbing a role, though tough for her, reflect a positive change for the bigger picture: more diverse representation in Hollywood. We want to hear stories that reflect America’s diversity, not another “Gilmore Girls”.