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Odd this

Thandie Newton has said that she cannot get parts in Britain because there are no roles for black actors in period dramas like Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife.

Because every damn actor of every damn colour ever has whined about not getting enough parts….

28 thoughts on “Odd this”

  1. ” no roles for black actors in period dramas like Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife.”

    Wow. Imagine that.

    And if she were to be offered a period authentic role for a black actor she’d probably decry it as racist anyway.

    People rightly decry Hollywood shoe-horning a white dude into every foreign period piece and fantasy movie as nothing more than pandering to an idiot audience. They freak out about blackface and non-transgender actors taking transgender character roles.

    Why would shoe-horning an anacronistic role just to have a black actor be in any way different from the above.

  2. I do wonder if secretly the British like such shows because they don’t have black roles, or rather because they reflect the world the British like to imagine themselves in, i.e. Entirely white middle/upper class.

    It’s like Mad Men, set a show in the 60s and suddenly you can bypass rules about glamourising smoking on TV.

    I think we are going to see a lot more of this, also because many plots come to an abrupt end with the invention of the smart phone.

  3. The Vale of York/North Yorkshire of the the 20s/30s where Downton is setwas monolithically white. It still is, pretty much (curry house in Thirsk perhaps). There were no black people there. This isn’t about them.

    I also note how monolithically white the Norway of ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ was. Bastards

  4. “She recently claimed she was once groped by a co-star and told of her experience with a producer who had explained she would be topless in a scene because it would get “ratings”.

    “I’m talented at what I do, but I’ve had to struggle against racism and sexism,” she told the magazine. “But I’m glad of it, in a way, that I survived and overcame.””

    They weren’t hiring you for your talent, love…

  5. This should be addressed only if there is a concerted effort to recruit more underrepresented white British footballers to the premiership.

    It is about equal importance and sympathy generating……

  6. JuliaM, Thandi moans about being told to appear topless yet appeared to be perfectly happy parading around stark naked in Westworld.. Depends whether being topless in a “B” movie is not as good for one’s career as being completely naked in a prime time series alongside Sir Anthony Hopkins I suppose.

  7. Rob Harries, isn’t the underrepresentation of white footballers in the Premier League balanced out by the underrepresentation of black managers?

  8. She is an aging actress now well-started on the down side of the hill. She has been the female lead in a number of “A”-list-ish Hollywood films . But they were mostly bad, “Mission Impossible 2” being prob the biggest. Shame it was bloody awful and the weakest of the series. She was also in a truly terrible remake of “Charade” called “The Truth about Charlie” which was so bad I spent most of it wondering if it was an attempt at a spoof but someone had forgotten to put the jokes in the script. Regardless of her colour Audrey Hepburn she ain’t.

    After a resume like that she is lucky to be working at all.

  9. If this carries on people are going to get the idea that actors and the media are self-obsessed whining cunts who do nothing but shout “Me! Me! Me!” all day.

  10. Thandie Newton has said that she cannot get parts in Britain
    […]
    The London-born actress will make her debut in BBC One crime drama Line Of Duty when it returns next Sunday.

    Person who is eating cake complains she can’t have cake. What exactly was in those cakes?

  11. So Much For Subtlety

    Ms Newton was certainly pretty when younger. She was actually quite stunning in MI2. Having seen, well, most of her in Westworld I am not sure I would bother these days.

    Added to which she has a history of b!tching about men who gave her work and seem to have tried their luck in a mild way. What she calls sexual assault.

    So frankly who cares? The obvious solution is to send her back to her native Zambia where she can get all the Black (well, Black-ish) roles she likes. Why do we let these people into the country in the first place?

    Besides, she can still do the occasional Robin Hood film. As we all know Britain was full of wise elderly Black men back then so she ought to be a shoe-in for Marion.

  12. I was watching a BBC4 things about the Norman Invasion a few days ago and Duke William’s ambassador was a black man. I spent most of the programme Googling trying to work out what evidence there was for black people in England and Normandy in the 11th century.

    As the grave of a family of Chinese traders has been discovered in 1st century London ruins, it would be more historically accurate for William’s ambassador to have been Chinese.

  13. ‘Thandie Newton has said that she cannot get parts in Britain because there are no roles for black actors in period dramas like Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife.’

    And her point is?

    But wait . . . are period dramas all that are being produced today ?!?! Maybe she’s not getting roles because she has the intellect of a turnip.

  14. The Meissen Bison

    Another solution would be to commission a progressive reworking of some of the classics along the lines of:

    Michael Mansfield Park
    or
    The Mystery of Edwin Dude

  15. Like 99% of people lucky enough to become millionaires playing dress up she earned that money largely by being pretty. ‘Sexism’ paid for her house.

    Re: UK period drama, in a few years non-white actors will be playing all sorts of historically unfeasible roles as the ‘colourblind’ casting favoured by the Globe and National Theatre becomes effectively compulsory*.

    Sadly many of the people here and at places like Samizdata who claim to be against the machinations of socialism (but who roll over and accept every reality-defying nonsense of the left) will say “well it’s fiction anyway” and tell Ecksy he’s a mental for getting angry about it.

    *white actors playing non-white will still be frowned on of course (not that I have a problem with this; Anthony Hopkins blacking up for Othello was daft, but it should work both ways)

  16. It’s interesting to see the parts that Art Malik gets on the telly. In many it matters not a hoot whether he’s white or light brown; he is presumably hired because he’s a rather good actor.

  17. Eh?

    Last time I went to see King Lear, the part of Cordelia was taken by a black girl. Pretty good she was too, the obvious incongruity (given that Lear was Derek Jacobi!) rapidly becoming un-noticed.

    I spy special pleading.

  18. She is pretty and has a good body, but has an unattractively aggressive attitude. She also has a slightly simian face

  19. So Much For Subtlety

    BraveFart – “She is pretty and has a good body, but has an unattractively aggressive attitude.”

    Well that seems a little harsh. She was a very pretty girl who has made a living out of looking pretty and reading the odd line, but who is now losing her looks and so her career in decline. She is not taking it well and is reacting by desperate attention seeking. She has assumed men would listen to her because she is so clever, as opposed to wanting to sleep with her. And now they do not want to sleep with her, they do not want to listen to her either and her response is to up the noise to keep what attention she still has.

    It is tragic really. If a woman only has her looks, what is she to do when they fade? Ms Newton seems to have spent no time acquiring any other accomplishments that might make her attractive. And, as I have said, men basically have no interest in women they do not want to sleep with any more than eight year old boys have any interest in eight year old girls. She has been poorly advised but at least she was sensible enough to marry and have some children.

    “She also has a slightly simian face”

    Well, I like her face. Or what it was. It does seem that White people tend to like Black faces more the less Black they are. Halle Berry for instance is Black but not, you know, Black Black. Still Black men don’t much like Black looking women either. Virtually every Black man with options marries someone significantly lighter than him, if not White (or occasionally Asian).

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