Why it matters that FX’s ‘Tyrant’ didnt cast a Middle Eastern actor in its lead role
Why it matters that FX’s ‘Tyrant’ didnt cast a Middle Eastern actor in its lead role
Check out this Hit Fix article on new FX show Tyrant and the writer’s concerns about the lead actor, playing a Middle Eastern character, being cast as white.
That, friends, is why it is important that FX is premiering a new drama on Tuesday night in which the main character is an assimilated Middle Eastern man who leaves behind his life in the West and returns to the fictional nation ruled by his family.At least as a log-line, the part of Bassam “Barry” Al-Fayeed in FX’s “Tyrant” may not be unprecedented, but it represents a big enough deviation from the Hollywood norm and from the mainstream TV norm that it’s notable and worth discussion. And that’s why it’s not an insignificant problem that this role, this trailblazing step in Middle Eastern representation is being played by Adam Rayner, an English-born actor who is half-British, half-American and not Middle Eastern in the slightest.
[…]
In “Tyrant,” Al-Fayeed’s mother is, indeed, played by Alice Krige. That the potentate of a fictional Middle Eastern country was married to a white woman and had multiple children with her seems like something at least semi-worthy of discussion to me, but it’s never addressed in the first four episodes of “Tyrant.” Her mere presence is mostly an excuse for allowing Adam Rayner to play Bassam Al-Fayeed, as if casting an actor with no Middle Eastern heritage in TV’s only top-of-the-call-sheet Middle Eastern role would be bad, but casting an actor with no Middle Eastern heritage in TV’s only top-of-the-call-sheet *half* Middle Eastern role is totally halal.
#sigh Even when roles are written for diverse characters, they find a way to make it acceptable to cast white instead of searching for someone with a more ethnic background.
You should definitely click through for more, because if I copy and pasted all of the really good points, I would just be copying the whole article. Check it out.
via Why it matters that FX’s ‘Tyrant’ didnt cast a Middle Eastern actor in its lead role.
06/27/2014 @ 4:50 PM
So true. Though, I couldn’t even get through the first episode (it failed to grab me), I totally get why this is a problem. Happens across so many racial backgrounds. The struggle.
06/27/2014 @ 4:54 PM
And the article even says that the show is really boring and the lead doesn’t carry the show the way he should. And the two articles I linked, just from the title alone say that it doesn’t hold up. Sigh. It really is a struggle that projects about ethnically diverse characters are either (or both) not cast properly or are written terrible. The struggle continues to be real.