Auditions are hotbed of racist stereotypes, actors survey finds

ACTING auditions are “one of the most pernicious sites of institutional racism” in the film and television industry, a report has found, with actors frequently stereotyped as terrorists or immigrants.

In findings described by Sir Lenny Henry as “a stain against the entire industry”, British Asian actors said they had been asked to sound “more Asian” while black actors were told to “play it more sassy, urban and street”.

The survey of more than 1,300 nonwhite actors found that 79 per cent had been asked to audition for a role that potentially stereotyped their ethnicity, and 64 per cent had been asked to read their lines in an exaggerated accent.

A younger actress said that all the roles she had auditioned for were stereotypes based on her Middle Eastern heritage, from the daughter of a terrorist to an immigrant with “scripts written with broken English”.

An older British Asian woman said: “For my age group [above 50] it has been about eight out of 10 castings wanting a stereotypical Indian mother/ aunt with accent. Basically the mentality

is always ‘just got off the boat’, ‘oh my God, my son is gay’.”

The survey was commissioned by the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity at Birmingham City University. Sir Lenny said: “This report finally brings into the open what many of us talk about, and suffer, in private. We all work in this industry because we love it, but we must do better.”

The findings were announced at the Edinburgh TV Festival where Rakie Ayola, the actress, discussed the role of black characters in crime dramas.

Ayola recently played a senior investigating officer in BBC One thriller The Pact, and an assistant chief constable in ITV’S Grace. She said: “We’ve reached a place where we can have women in positions of authority now, but when it comes to women of colour we’ve taken the place of the big black guy that used to sit in his shirtsleeves in Seventies detective shows and thump the desk.

“She usually has a scene in the corridor where she interacts with the main character and says, ‘How’s the case going?’ The progress is there because the character has status, and that’s not to be underestimated. But we don’t actually care any more about her than if she were walking through with a mop and bucket.”