Anne Boleyn

Vegansrock Didn’t AB have an extra finger? Should we demand that only actors with this physical characteristic be cast?
There’s calls for all gay characters to be played by gay actors so why not?

Alegrias1

20:36
You nailed it!

MaizieD

It's Art. Art doesn't have to be representational.

Have you objected to the hundreds of white actors who've played Othello?

Then we can look forward to Kate Winslett playing Rosa Parks or Helena Baxendale playing Michelle Obama. Contrived wokeyness makes a mockery of what it pretends to support, in the same way that back in the 60s/70s anything with 'man' was banned so we all talked about Personchester, Personfield etc..

Well I can confidently say I have never said, or heard anyone else say, Personchester.

Wee bit extreme there, I think.

Alegrias1

Well I can confidently say I have never said, or heard anyone else say, Personchester.

Wee bit extreme there, I think.

Whataboutery and things that didn't happen in indispensable's comment.
But it's all about accuracy isn't it!

However, we DO know that AB wasn’t black. I did enjoy Bridgerton with it’s mixed cast but that wasn’t factual. AB is a very well known historical figure and her red haired daughter is too.

However, for me personally, it’s an overdone topic and that’s why I don’t intend to watch.

As the only black Queen of England has been played by white actresses (and blondes at that) I think it is only fair that a black actress should play Anne Boleyn. www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/12/race-monarchy

Queen Charlotte wasn’t black.

indispensableme

MaizieD

It's Art. Art doesn't have to be representational.

Have you objected to the hundreds of white actors who've played Othello?

Then we can look forward to Kate Winslett playing Rosa Parks or Helena Baxendale playing Michelle Obama. Contrived wokeyness makes a mockery of what it pretends to support, in the same way that back in the 60s/70s anything with 'man' was banned so we all talked about Personchester, Personfield etc..

Seriously ?

greaterdiversity.com/englands-first-black-queen-sophie-charlotte-born-1744/

She certainly didn't look like Helen Mirren.

For tickingbird Thanks for the link *Alegrias1"
Queen Charlotte, wife of the English King George III (1738-1820), was directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a black branch of the Portuguese Royal House. The riddle of Queen Charlotte’s African ancestry was solved as a result of an earlier investigation into the black magi featured in 15th century Flemish paintings. Two art historians had suggested that the black magi must have been portraits of actual contemporary people (since the artist, without seeing them, would not have been aware of the subtleties in colouring and facial bone structure of quadroons or octoroons which these figures invariably represented) Enough evidence was accumulated to propose that the models for the black magi were, in all probability, members of the Portuguese de Sousa family. (Several de Sousas had in fact traveled to the Netherlands when their cousin, the Princess Isabella went there to marry the Grand Duke, Philip the Good of Burgundy in the year 1429.)

Six different lines can be traced from English Queen Charlotte back to Margarita de Castro y Sousa, in a gene pool which because of royal inbreeding was already minuscule, thus explaining the queen’s unmistakable African appearance.

I have seen some terrific plays where black actors have played white kings: Anjoa Andoh as Richard II, David Oyelowo as Henry IV and Adrian Lester as Henry V. Cracking performances all of them.

Shakespeare's plays have been translated into over 100 languages and performed in countries where the predominant skin colour is not white and facial features do not conform to whatever European "norm" people expect of this Channel 5 production. Does having a black African Anne Boleyn or a Japanese Anne Boleyn make a production any less valid? Of course not.

Black actors playing white historical figures is nothing new - Ira Aldridge, for example, who played Richard III.

It's time we looked beyond skin colour and other physical characterisics and simply enjoyed the acting.

Certain characters in history are so well documented (British history) that to present them as black or Chinese or any other race, is just contrived arty-fartery.
Can you sit back and seriously accept a black actor as Anne Boleyn ( I mean WHY?) or a black actor playing Hitler/ Queen Victoria/ Stalin/ etc etc.Most people would find it laughable.

And calling it contrived arty-fartery is inverse snobbery.

Sorry are we now going to do "Let's keep our British History British and White" ??? (Damned foreigners get in everywhere!!!!)
It's not fact you know it is a play

Other historians have pointed out that the evidence that either Madragana or Margarita was Black is pretty thin. Madragana was recorded as a Moor by one Portuguese royal chronicler, but that claim was disputed by another; it has also been suggested that she was a “Mozarab”, a group with its own ethnic and cultural history in Europe

Trying to post a link to this article but difficult as I’m using my phone.

It's not fact you know it is a play

Actually trisher it is fact. Anne Boleyn was a real person.

So she was, and there have been numerous dramas about all the Tudors few of which were fact based. It is possible to have real people in fictional pieces of work, you know. I very much doubt if all the trappings, costumes, settings and language used are authentically 16th century, so why not complain about them? "Oh that dress has some machine made lace on it. In 15?? it would have been handmade." It's called artistic licence.

tickingbird

^It's not fact you know it is a play^

Actually trisher it is fact. Anne Boleyn was a real person.

Yes, she was a real person, but any drama is fictionalised. We don't know, and never will, what her motives were, what Henry felt about Katherine, whether she loved Henry Percy, what Cromwell was thinking, what any of their private lives were like. We can't know any of that, so the scriptwriters make it up. That this seems to be news to so many people is a mystery to me.

As I said upthread, it is not meant to be a revision guide. It is entertainment. Those with a knowledge of history will be able to pick out the 'facts', and everyone else can just enjoy the story.

If she doesn't get beheaded at the end I'd be very surprised, as that, the fact that Henry divorced Katherine to marry her, that she was the mother of Elizabeth and miscarried other babies, and that the C of E split from Rome in order that her marriage could go ahead are amongst the few facts that we know.

What do people think Historians do? They research the facts, put them together to tell stories that match their world view and fit with their understanding of facts from other stories of the day. There are various versions of Anne. A scheming plotter, a witch, an adulteress, a misguided romantic, and most recently the victim of a narcissistic tyrant who may have suffered from an inherited blood disorder that caused many of his offspring to die.

Whichever version you (generic) were taught at school is not necessarily the right one. Until we can go back in a time machine we will never know which is right, and even then, two time travellers seeing the same thing are likely to report it differently from one another. That this version may not match your favourite version (and without seeing it you will never know) is surely not a good reason for rubbishing it.

Sorry, trisher. Cross posted to say much the same thing ?

That's OK Doodledog Great to find agreement

....and is giving me something to laugh at?

There may be versions Doodledog, but not that she was black.
I repeat, it’s arty fartery and was probably done to grab headlines and viewers.

The day this question is not asked is the day that we will have left racism behind us where it belongs.

Doodledog However, what we do know is that she wasn’t black!!