BLACK IN FOCUS
AMON WARMANN chews over the main moment in Black film and TV this month
JODIE TURNER-SMITH AS ANNE BOLEYN IS THE KIND OF CASTING WE SHOULD SEE MORE OF
I LOVE A good period drama. The fashion, the colourful characters, the intrigue — when it’s well made, a period drama can be immensely satisfying. But one thing that’s always bothered me is how whitewashed they so often are. You could easily watch ten period dramas and conclude that Black and brown people simply didn’t exist in history.
That’s why the news that Black British actress Jodie Turner-smith, of Queen & Slim fame, will be playing Anne Boleyn is so exciting: she’ll star as the Tudor Queen in an upcoming three-part psychological-thriller miniseries that will explore the final months of her life. Between her tumultuous marriage, disputes with the patriarchy, and her ultimate beheading, King Henry VIII’S second wife didn’t want for controversy in her later years, and Turner-smith’s ingenuity and confidence would seem to make her a great fit for the role.
It’s a casting that should have elicited only excitement. But the usual suspects were up in arms, trotting out stale, bad-faith arguments like, “Why can’t a white man play Martin Luther King, Jr then?” Well, while Blackness is a key part of King’s identity, there’s no reason for the James Bonds, Anne Boleyns, or even (as Armando Iannucci and Dev Patel recently demonstrated) the David Copperfields of this world to be Caucasian, such are the universal qualities of their stories.
We still need to tell more tales that are focused on historical ethnic minorities.
But until then, this type of colourblind casting — an approach that has long yielded great success in theatre — is necessary to give diverse talent more opportunities. Moreover, telling old stories with fresh, modern perspectives on both feminism and race can yield great results, and the Boleyn miniseries is immediately more interesting for Turner-smith’s inclusion.
Boleyn was a forward-thinker and risk-taker: someone who defied those around her and didn’t mind making enemies. You need someone with the right skillset to play up those qualities while still telling a deeply human story, and Turner-smith has proven her magnetic capability on screen time and time again. We so often look to the past to better understand our present. The more a colourblind approach is embraced, the more the faces on screen will resemble the multiculturalism off it.