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Idris Elba says Racial Debate Over his ‘Thor’ Role is ‘Ridiculous”
Jackson is another up-and-comer who has benefited from colorblind casting, having played a Greek satyr in 2010’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.
But actors like Mackie and Elba still face a tough road in trying to emulate the statesman status of A-listers such as Will Smith, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington, who have succeeded — against tough odds — in transcending racial barriers.
Smith has become one of the world’s biggest box-office draws, debunking the commonly voiced notion that black stars can’t travel overseas. His films have grossed $2.52 billion worldwide, not far behind the $2.87 billion collected by Tom Cruise films.
“I think it’s interesting that the only lock in this business is Will Smith,” Cheadle says. “But he didn’t break out until [1997’s] Men in Black, when Sony put its full power behind him.”
Freeman fought for, and won, the chance to play the role of Red in Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption, which earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor in 1995. In Stephen King’s novella, Red was a middle-aged, balding Irishman.
Darabont has said in interviews that he always had Freeman in mind for the part because of the actor’s demeanor and voice.
In the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, Washington was cast in the title role of Maj. Bennett Marco, the character played by Frank Sinatra in the original. The casting raised eyebrows, but the film went on to gross north of $96 million worldwide.
Taraji P. Henson, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, says there is still a certain mind-set in Hollywood that keeps studios from casting a wider net and using actors of different ethnicities. And until that changes, opportunities will continue to be limited.
“We are petitioning in negotiations for a role they weren’t even thinking about. They’re just indifferent,” she says. “My people question why a character has to be black, or anything.”
Most say Hollywood needs to do a better job if it is to reduce the glaring disparity in terms of the number of blacks onscreen and behind the camera.
In an interview with THR, Singleton says that with expanding diversity in this country and a globalized consumer audience, he hopes that the entertainment industry will cultivate markets for performers of color — men and women — and take the same risks that are taken with white artists.
“I think if the playing field were, in fact, level, we would find that audiences around the world would buy good storytelling and consume good storytelling,” he says.
Television arguably has a better track record in terms of colorblind casting. Diversity became a popular story line about a year ago, when the tide turned at the broadcast networks. (It wasn’t a surprise when media outlets began to label it the Obama Effect.)
Although the five networks still carry a lack of programming specifically geared to an African-American audience — a void left by UPN’s exit and filled only on cable by TBS and BET — their slates increasingly feature minority leads.
CBS led the way with Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior (Forest Whitaker), NCIS: Los Angeles (LL Cool J) and CSI (Laurence Fishburne), while NBC backed the since-canceled Undercovers, which featured two black leads in Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Boris Kodjoe.
