Anne Boleyn

Ah Aveline. I’m afraid it’s a new world and it’s not going away whether you want it to or not. Embrace or ignore. I guess it’s like the 50s when Elvis swivelled his pelvis. Cries of shock horror then. It’s the way of life. It grows and changes. We either accept or stay angry. I know what I choose.

I stand by what I said. We'll obviously not agree and I won't be watching that 'woke' nonsense.

As an addition to the what abouts- men dancing swan lake??? It was astonishing and fabulous. As many have said, it’s about the performance not the colour or gender.

To be honest seamstress if someone is playing a historical figure I do get annoyed if they have the wrong hair or eye colour. Just as I expect clothes and hairstyles to be correct.

If it's fiction people can do anything that works. Years ago I saw Athene Seyler on Wogan. I think she was in her 90s and she did one of Rosalind's speeches. She was instantly a young girl, it was beautiful.

Lol true!

The dresses from Disney do not match the historical eras at all.

"Reign", while very visually appealing, is more like a catwalk of models than a historical depiction of events.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/may/23/jodie-turner-smith-anne-boleyn-interview-queen-slim-kaluuya

interesting interview with the actress about the role

Its called acting folks- they will be using language that the real person didn't use, wearing clothes that are not 100% authentic and so on. Do we think AB s skin colour is the most important thing about her? What if someone with the "wrong" hair or eye colour was cast? would there be such an outcry? Surely its the story/ drama that is the important thing. Bring on diversity I say.

Were the Boleyns black? If not this is just silly.

It hasn't been mention yet - the actor playing George Boleyn (Ann's brother) is also not white.

Is that a problem for the some posters too?

welbeck

what about a school nativity play.
will the black children never get a chance at mary or joseph, forever consigned to being the black sheep.

Steady on! Using the expression 'black sheep' will set some people off.

Maybe - I can overthink ?

I think in this case that there is not a lot of thinking to be done, though. We have few facts about Anne (or, indeed, about many historical characters from so long ago), that so much of what we think are 'facts' could very well be wrong. This one just seems so irrelevant to her story that all the objections just don't stack up (for me, anyway).

I think you're overthinking it. Anne Boleyn is a historical figure. Her life history was real. She wasn't black.
Play around with stereotypes in fiction if you want but, for me, stuck to factual reality.

Perhaps 12 years a slave should have been played by a white person but it just wouldn’t be authentic.
Can you not see the difference here? Solomon Northup was a slave because he was black. Anne was not Queen because she was white.

The suggestion that casting directors could equally well have men playing women in roles where the sexy of the character is integral to the role are either missing the point or suggesting that skin colour is so important that it must be a primary consideration when choosing an actor to play a role in which race was irrelevant. Maybe they should ask themselves why they think like this.

welbeck

what about a school nativity play.
will the black children never get a chance at mary or joseph, forever consigned to being the black sheep.

For more accuracy, then these black children should actually be in the front of the queue for obtaining the roles of Mary, Joseph, etc. Unless, of course, there are Arab children in the school. Always was fed up with the way the very pretty, blonde haired girl got the part of Mary!!!! Of course, for centuries European artists painted their Jesus pictures with little regard for skin colour accuracy.
Skin colour is pretty unimportant in acting any role.

i never heard of that happening. just used whoever was around.
i never got beyond being part of the crowd, with some drapery from my mother's box, shuffling in between the audience.

I think we need to differentiate between fact and fiction. Anne was white and a woman. Perhaps she should be played by a black man? Perhaps 12 years a slave should have been played by a white person but it just wouldn’t be authentic.

Regarding Mary and Joseph parts for black kids I remember my brother being blacked up (this was 60 years ago) to play one of the 3 kings. In those days there were no black kids in our area.

That’s different then. I haven’t read the books or seen the film, which is why I asked.

Anne’s skin colour is not relevant to her story though, so the analogy is a strange one.

Actually Jack Reacher's tallness is necessary to the plot because he gets involved in a lot of violent situations where his height is a definite advantage. It's quite a leap to imagine Tom Cruise in the same situations.

Welbeck And vice versa, acting ability being the main criteria (criterium? criterion?) for casting - but the custom of white actors playing black roles has come in for criticism.

When the short Tom Cruise was chosen to play the very tall Jack Reacher in the films of the popular Lee Child books many, many people were unhappy.
Is the Reacher character’s tallness necessary to the plot? If Cruise played Goliath or someone who had to be huge, the objections would make sense, but I’m not sure I’d be bothered otherwise.

The thing is, though, that ‘whiteness’ was never what Anne was known for - her skin colour was incidental to her story and her fate. That’s why it doesn’t matter.

what about a school nativity play.
will the black children never get a chance at mary or joseph, forever consigned to being the black sheep.

what about a woman actor, fiona shaw, plying hamlet.
i think all roles should be open to all actors.
otherwise black actors are going to have a severely limited list.
why shouldn't they have a chance to play the real meaty parts, from history or fiction.
i say they should.

^^Just as an actor's hair colour, height, weight etc are not important (to most people) it is surely time that skin colour doesn't matter either? Would anyone say 'I am not watching that programme because it the casting is just to appease redheads. If Damian Lewis said he was going to play the role of a dark haired character, there would be hell to pay'? I doubt it, somehow.

When the short Tom Cruise was chosen to play the very tall Jack Reacher in the films of the popular Lee Child books many, many people were unhappy.

I thought the art of the actor was portraying a role in all aspects as realistically as they can? If the role was a real person, or someone described in physical terms, I would expect a competent actor to show as many physical aspects as practical of the character they were playing, as well as the psychological aspects, Eyes are not easy to change unless they use coloured contact lenses, but the eyes are small in comparison with the rest of the body. Hair colour is usually dyed if it is very different from reality, gait can be altered (which actor was it who said they always tried to get the shoes right, then they walked as the character did?)

Skin colour can be altered to some extent with makeup, but in the current climate, being asked to look white would be taken as an insult by a non-white actor, just as using a "blacked-up" white actor to play a non-white role was condemned by them. So surely it makes more sense to use an actor who already looks more the part than one who looks nothing like the real-life person?

It does rather seem that whiteness is the most important characteristic for some posters.

Whilst I can see that there are some things that would scream as historically inaccurate (Anne wearing a watch, for instance), I wonder how much of what we consider to be 'facts' from history are, in fact, just interpretations that have caught on - often because of one director's view of how to present them?

Even 'facts' about the times we live in are not cast in stone. Ask two people to write an account of Brexit, for instance, and there is a good chance that they will present very different 'facts'. It is the same with history, except that with the distant past such as the Tudor era, there were fewer people who could write, and each time there was a change of dynasty (or in Henry's case, a change of wife) documents and portraits were destroyed, in the manner of a teenager blocking his ex from Facebook and deleting her photos from his timeline?.
There is such a lot that we just don't know, so it is left to dramatists and authors to make a story out of what little information they have to go on.

It is safe to say that Anne was not black, but casting has never really been about getting a replica of the historical character. It is far more about getting someone who fits with the dramatist's interpretation of events.

Just as an actor's hair colour, height, weight etc are not important (to most people) it is surely time that skin colour doesn't matter either? Would anyone say 'I am not watching that programme because it the casting is just to appease redheads. If Damian Lewis said he was going to play the role of a dark haired character, there would be hell to pay'? I doubt it, somehow.