Off with their heads! Top director hits back in row over black Anne Boleyn
Scot at helm of TV drama defends controversial casting
THE Scots director of a new drama about Anne Boleyn has rounded on critics and defended the controversial decision to award the lead role to a black actress.
Despite accusations TV bosses are attempting to change history, director Lynsey Miller, 35, has stood by the decision to cast Jodie Turner-Smith, an actress and model, as the white Tudor Queen.
She will play Henry VIII’s second wife in a three-part Channel 5 drama – written from Boleyn’s perspective – which will follow her as she navigates the turbulent latter years of her life.
When the mother of one was unveiled as Boleyn last week, the show faced an onslaught of criticism on social media – with some people accusing its makers of trying to ‘blackwash’ history.
One Twitter user posted: ‘Doesn’t this defy their own woke rules of ethnic correctness in casting?
‘Or is the blackwashing of history an exception?’
Another critic wrote: ‘A black lady playing Anne Boleyn is blackwashing and needs to stop.
‘If whitewashing is not OK then neither is blackwashing! Equality.’
But for Ms Miller, who directed Channel 4’s hit crime drama
Dead-water Fell, casting TurnerSmith, from Peterborough, was the right move. She said: ‘I feel very strongly that we have the best actress for the role so I am happy to stand by it.
‘I’m very proud of what we’ve created together, so let them talk.
‘It’s really important to have faith to allow an actress like Jodie to bring that to a new audience.
‘There are going to be a lot of people who don’t like it, but I feel there has to be space for that and there are going to be a lot of people who love it. I’m one of them.’
So desperate was Henry VIII to be with Boleyn – the daughter of an English diplomat – that he broke from the Catholic Church in order to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. But he was also desperate for a male heir and when Boleyn could not give him a son, she was convicted of treason and beheaded on May 19, 1536.
She is believed to have been between 28 and 35 at the time. This will be the first time that the illfated queen – mother of Elizabeth I – will be played by a black woman on television.
Ms Turner-Smith, 34, has won acclaim for her work in the American series The Last Ship.
She also starred in the 2018 horror sci-fi series Nightflyers based on the short stories of Game of Thrones author George RR Martin, and in last year’s feature film Queen and Slim.
Ms Miller said so-called ‘colourblind’ casting was ‘becoming the norm’, adding: ‘It’s been happening in theatre for a long time and now it’s crossing over.’ The director, from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, is fully supportive of more actors from minority backgrounds playing white establishment figures.
She said: ‘It is still an industry for the privileged – so if you don’t have the connections and you don’t have that mindset, it is much harder to break in. The film and TV industry is dominated by people who went to private school and by people who have connections.
‘To make pieces that are supposed to be representative of society at large, we need diverse voices to tell those stories.
‘It’s important the progress being made in terms of getting women behind the camera and people of colour behind the camera, that we’re not just replacing your white privately educated male with a white privately educated woman.
‘Having different life experiences and bringing that to the table is important. Often you have the middle-class and upper-class actors delving into playing working-class characters, so why shouldn’t a working class actor be playing a king or a duke?’
‘Colour-blind’ casting ignores the race of an actor in favour of how suitable they are for the part.
It comes amid a push by TV and film bosses to be more inclusive.
In September, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decreed the Best Picture category at future Oscars ceremonies will only be won by films which have at least one significant character who is played by someone of an ethnic minority.
Under the new stipulations, it also said that 30 per cent of the secondary cast must be female, LGBTQ+, disabled or racially diverse and a third of the crew should be from under-represented groups.
‘It’s been happening in theatre for a long time’