COMMENT NICOLELAMPERT

THERE IS a certain irony that the manwhoonce defended Mel Gibson’s antisemitic expletives and claimed Hollywood “is a town that’s run by Jews” is now playing the most Jewish of characters; a neurotic writer, Harman J Mankiewicz, in the critically acclaimed new Netflix film Mank.

Gary Oldman, who later expressed his “deep remorse” for his comments, is also a British man playing an American. The film, which comes out today, focuses on Mankiewicz’s real-life struggle to write the seminal movie Citizen Kane. It’s set in a time when Hollywood is attempting to deal with the threat of the Nazis and while it features several Jewish heads of film studios, few of them are played by Jews either.

Some would say this is what acting is; playing someone else.

But at a time when minorities are demanding more and more that the film world should show more casting sensitivity — and sensitivity in general — it is not surprising that a growing number of Jewish voices are speaking up to ask why more Jews aren’t getting Jewish roles.

This issue is particularly acute if the roles are going to people who don’t always seem that friendly towards the mainstream Jewish community. Much was made of Sacha Baron Cohen’s dreadful American accent in another Netflix film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, although he was that rare thing; a Jewish man playing a Jewish man. That, perhaps, overshadowed the raised eyebrows at the casting of Mark Rylance as Jewish man, William Kunstler, who had defended other Jews. Last year, a few weeks before the last election here in the UK, Rylance upset much of the British Jewish community by signing a letter which stated: “We are outraged that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong committed anti-racist, is being smeared as an antisemite by people who should know better.”

The issue of whether ethnic Jews need to play ethnic Jews is a complicated one. On one hand there is a Jewish ‘look’ and some of us could say we have very good ‘Jewdar’ — although sometimes that malfunctions and the person could be Italian or Greek. And there are always exceptions to the rule of who “looks” ethnically Jewish; Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Sophie Okonedo and Rachel Riley spring to mind.

But it is not surprising some people are asking why Jews aren’t getting any of the Jewish roles. Comic actress Sarah Silverman recently examined the issue on her podcast, saying it was particularly bad for Jewish women and she picked up on how a film about Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the TV series Mrs America had all been about prominent and important Jewish women, none of them played by Jews.

“I don’t mean to get into identity politics or any of that stuff; acting is acting and that’s what’s beautiful about acting,” she says. “But patterns are emerging and this is what I see. If there is a character that is courageous or a character the deserves love, you won’t see a Jewish woman play her. And that’s even if she is a Jewish woman.

“Jewish women get to play the bitchy or the sassy friend of the beauti

I slip through the gaps; not BAME enough but definitely not ‘English’