Stop depicting black people as victims, Fellowes urges
TELEVISION must stop portraying black people as victims, according to Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, who said he is redressing the balance in his new period drama.
Fellowes has created The Gilded Age, a lavish production set in New York in the 1880s and chronicling the clash between old and new money.
His most celebrated show, Downton Abbey, prompted criticism over its lack of black characters. The Gilded Age is more balanced and features Denée Benton as a young, middle-class black woman who aspires to be a writer.
Explaining the character, Fellowes told Radio Times: “I suppose I do feel, not with a woke hat on but with a slight hat on of some sort, that it’s not good for the younger black community to constantly watch black people being portrayed as victims.
“I think it’s why sports people and people in the entertainment world are so important because it’s about positive achievement. I think it was fun for Denée to play a dynamic part in a costume drama. Well, she found it interesting enough to take the part, which is what matters to me.”
Fellowes said he had researched the period and learnt that there was a thriving black middle class in New York in the late 19th century.
The Gilded Age stars Louisa Jacobson, daughter of Meryl Streep, in her television debut as a young woman who moves into the Fifth Avenue home of her aunts, played by Emmy-winning actress Christine Baranski and Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon. The series launches in the US on HBO and in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Jan 25.