This foreign actor issue is way more layered than ppl make it out to be.

And ppl have written about and discussed it, extensively and with nuance. So this is just frustrating and annoying that we continue to go in circles with this convo.

I'm longwinded so mute me in advance: ppl focus on Black leads but we forget just how many leads *in general* come from across the pond until they switch their accents on.

there are yearly lists of white actors that you didn’t know are British - ppl are reminded every 3 years that Christian Bale is from the UK, Tom Hardy, Tom Holland, James McAvoy, ppl have been trying to tell me for years that Benedict Cumberbatch is attractive

we can make a list of 50 UK white men right now that are booked, busy, and getting leading roles. The reason why it is magnified in Black media is because of this *artificial scarcity* that is created by the studios. Only X amount of “good” Black movies are made a year...

not because of a lack of available financing, because there’s always (mob/scam) money to sink into projects. But ppl act like they have to wait for A24 to drop their 3-5 fancy projects, and that’s the cap. Everything else is Tyler Perry or Kevin Hart’s studio or whatever...

(And now, Netflix and Amazon here and there). So when someone gets cast over them, its felt more acutely like jobs are being “stolen” from them. Folks are focusing on the wrong enemies 65 percent of the time.

Also - there *is* a level of elitism from casting agents about the training that UK actors get if they go into arts education, even in just high school, vs American studies and our gutted arts programs that is overly fetishized

it even trickles down to the inability for many to tell the difference between a British accent of someone that grew up in the hood/on road and someone that is a bit more refined. And many admittedly do use that to their advantage.

Thandie Newton for example has talked more recently about how she would have made some more thoughtful decisions about some of the roles she was cast in if she was aware of some of the implications of why she was selected for certain things (especially being biracial).

Of course that applies across racial lines, but like I said, false scarcity model in Black roles means that it is augmented in this part of the industry.

Lastly - there is a minimization and misunderstanding of what Black Brits go through in the UK; both from the vantage point of institutional racism (windrush generation, civil rights and the aftermath, etc) and the size of the film market and available roles after training

the plain fact of the matter is that, no matter how you slice it, Hollywood is the largest film market in the world, closely followed by Bollywood, Nollywood, and Korea (might have 3 and 4 mixed). Like…that’s just reality. People come to LA to make it big across the world.

So while all of the above is important to parse apart (and tactfully )when we talk about casting - and it’s really important that both directors and casting agents think about all of this with intention when they go about filmmaking & cast a broad net of people for screening…

that is just not going to change. America is the center of film & will be until this house of cards falls apart. And BAs who go too heavy on the “taking our jobs” to the point of dismissing disaporas start to sound very heavy on how YT ppl sound with Latinx at some points.

It can get very disappointing. But it’s all tough to reconcile if people don’t all come to to the convo with empathy (and people on ALL sides get very crass and dismissive - when you have hurt feelings it’s very easy to just lock in on that and forget everything else).

To that last point…it’s a big part of why I think what Steve McQueen is doing with the Small Axe series is so critical and important.

It’s not just the fact that he’s doing amazing film work; it’s a reclamation of Black British & Caribbean history in a way that has rarely (if ever) been done before, and I don’t think many (white) film critics are unfortunately grasping that, which is disappointing to see.

It’s him using his well-earned capital in the film industry to give Black Brits their own space that they’ve never been granted before in a very real way.

FIN. (If you suffered through that entire monologue of mine, I am truly impressed).

TL;DR - ITS WHITE PPLS FAULT ALWAYS.