11/6/2006


Speaking Out


How are actors 'of color' really faring? Back Stage heard from minority actors around the country, who revealed their experiences, opinions, fears, and hopes about being in the industry. The actors represent the famous and the up-and-comers, stage vets and screen faves. Their quotes, printed here, reveal as much diversity as, well, the world can boast.

Keith Robinson Film: Dreamgirls
TV: Half & Half, American Dreams


I can count on one hand the major leading African American men in Hollywood, and I would like to see that changed. I want to be one of those leading men. If there's a role, I think it should go to the best person, as opposed to what stereotype or what race he is, as long as the project doesn't dictate that. I think that the issue of comfort is more overblown by the executives and the powers that be as opposed to the people; because if you look out into our society, it's a melting pot, and that melting pot expands more and more every day. I think the people who are at the controls dictate what they want to be seen or what they want to go out to the public. You can have an Asian American leading man, you can have an Indian leading man, a black leading man; whoever fits that role and can tell the story the best is what I would like to see Hollywood move towards. I think we've made those strides.

Certainly the quantity [of Asian American roles] is up, but I fear the roles are still pretty peripheral. I just want to see plurality in the way we're represented. I would like us to play problems and flaws versus under-five lines, a character who comes in and sets up a joke or delivers the critical information to the police captain or is in the forensics lab. I tend to view those characters as lacking dimension and a kind of humanity, really.


Michael A. Shepperd
Film: Pretty Dead Girl, A Cut Above
TV: Monk, Frasier, ER


I think Chicago is probably the best in terms of colorblind casting. I got to do some fantastic things. I got to play Sterling in Jeffrey, which is the role that's given to an older British gentleman always, typically. [But] I had to fight for it. The director pulls me aside after the audition and says, "I will give you whatever role you want besides Jeffrey and Sterling. You can have any role in the show. I cannot cast you as Sterling. There are people on the board of this theatre who are against it." I said, "You said this to me, you want me to play this? You said I'm the best person for the role, but you can't give it to me because I'm black?" I fought. I went to the board of the theatre, and I said, "There's going to be a problem." And they let me play the role.

I think we need to be more careful of the imagery that we are putting out. I turned down a role. I got called in and cast for a role on that now-defunct Snoop Dogg [show Doggy Fizzle Televizzle], and it was the hip rapper cool people making fun of the nerdy black guy because that's acceptable now because the nerdy black guy is, you know, de rigueur. That's not the image that young people want to see anymore. They don't want to see the educated black man. That's the one you want to make fun of. And that's odd, because now I'm turning down the roles that black people wanted, fought to have, and I'm turning them down because they're being ridiculed.


Velina Brown
Film: Bee Season
TV: Party of Five
Stage: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (American Conservatory Theater), Sarita (Lorraine Hansberry)


Once when I was playing a wife, I was supposed to be supportive of my husband. The [white] director kept saying, "Don't be so aggressive." I kept making it softer and softer. Then for a second he actually saw what I was doing and said, "Be tougher." I said, "But you kept saying, "Don't be so aggressive." He said, "Oh, that's what I have to tell all my black actresses." He had assumptions about black women and wasn't seeing me.

Maybe there's a black actor out there who hasn't had a white director tell them how to be blacker, but they're rare. Negotiating that is a challenge. A director once said, "You sound like you have a Ph.D. in urban sciences." Hmm, what could that mean? Apparently, he wanted something more funky. I can do funky. But the writing didn't suggest that was how that character spoke. For many white directors, all black characters sound the same in their heads regardless of that character's class or level of education. If what the director wants doesn't make sense for the character, or if you're using me as a tool to perpetuate a stereotype, then that's a problem. But I've been fortunate. It turns out my specialty is new work, so I've had lots of opportunities to help people see all kinds of characters in more depth and breadth, That's the gift that any actor can give to a writer. If there's a narrow view of what you are expected to do because you're in a minority group, then all the things writers can learn about their characters, all the treasures hidden within each actor, don't get to be explored.


Stephen McKinley Henderson
TV: Conviction, Law & Order
Stage: Six of August Wilson's 10-play cycle, currently appearing in Seven Guitars (Signature Theatre)


I'm a very fair-skinned African American. It has from time to time been less likely for me to get cast by directors of color or by white directors. I've had directors say, "Well, I don't know if I can cast you with this person as a member of that family, because everyone else is dark-skinned." My father was a very dark-skinned man; my mother was brown-skinned. They don't understand how color variation can exist inside of one family.

Race is so, sometimes, a very surface-oriented thing as an actor. But sometimes it has to do with something very deep and emotional. That's what I like connecting to. The appropriateness for a role is what makes the choice for whether one gets work or not. But hopefully, you're being asked to bring something to bear that means something, not just because you look good in that suit or whatever. Race is always a factor. There's no place where you want to get blindsided by it. But anyone should be able to get meaning from anyone's journey. There's a producer in New Jersey working on an all-black version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Why don't we see an all-white version of Raisin in the Sun? We're all earthlings.

I'm very proud to be who I am, when I am, in this time in the world. We're doing some fabulous things. I'm proud to have been an actor when August Wilson was writing for the stage.

Now, I don't know if things are better or worse. I just know that material that utilizes and expresses the real panorama of American life is more accepted now. That's important, especially during wartime. The arts flourish, because now we're dealing with life-and-death stuff. We have to live together on the planet. So where people are encountering each other violently, it's important that they encounter each other culturally, so we don't shed more blood.

Creative artists, especially writers, they have to give expression to those life-or-death moments. They have to give life to those conflicts artistically, because we have to live with hope. After all, that's what drives every scene in every play: Someone wants something from someone else because they believe that thing will make their life better. That's hope.


John Cho
Film: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Better Luck Tomorrow, Smiley Face, West 32nd, Harold & Kumar Go to Amsterdam.
TV: The Singles Table


For me, I choose not to take a lot of Asian roles because of the way they're written, and I end up playing roles that were originally not written Asian. If I was to say something to actors in light of the topic, I think we have a lot more power than we think that we have. We tend to fool ourselves into thinking that people won't listen to us or that we can't effect change in this industry, and I absolutely think that we can, and I say it as a person who has effected small changes here and there. If playing an accented waiter offends [an actor] for some reason, then they shouldn't do it. If they're not offended, then go ahead and take the paycheck and have fun on-set. But we do have the power to say no, and furthermore we have the power to explain honestly why we said no. I think we tend to underestimate ourselves in this industry, and I hope that changes. I don't think the industry is filled with people who are trying to harm [minorities]. It's a situation where they'll continue with the status quo until someone educates them. I've come to believe that, ultimately, if we want change, we have to take responsibility for our part as minority actors.

I remember I ended up unsure -- and I hope [director Shawn Levy] doesn't mind me talking about this -- in Big Fat Liar, a kids movie I did with Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes. The part that I went in for initially was an accented Hong Kong film director. I didn't find anything particularly malicious about the script, but I personally thought it was a danger zone because the character was accented and it was a kids comedy. I thought children may have ended up inadvertently laughing at an accent. So I decided I didn't want to do that. I had my agent explain why, and eventually they offered me the role, and I said no, and I told them why, and Shawn came back and gave me a call and said, "Let's figure something different out then." We went in for a work session, and we did something different and put it on tape, and the studio approved, and we shot that version -- nonaccented. That's unusual. I think you have to be willing to say no and not get the role changed. Again, it's a matter of personal ethics. You have to be willing to live with yourself as an artist a year, two years, 30 years down the line.


Chandra Wilson
Film: Philadelphia, Strangers With Candy
TV: 2006 Emmy nominee for Grey's Anatomy
Stage: Caroline, or Change (Broadway)


When I did On the Town [on Broadway], I don't think that there was any particular type that they were looking for for that role, so that was kind of the nontraditional route. Or even with Dr. Bailey [on Grey's Anatomy], that I'm playing now, actually she was a short, blond, white female, I think -- that was her breakdown. And I ended up being cast for that role. If there are instances where race was an issue or I thought I wasn't getting cast or, you know, it was just hard, I never attributed it to that, because my agents have kind of always sent me out for things that went against what the breakdown said, and those were usually the roles that I got....

Working in New York is a completely different experience than working in L.A., and I spent 17 years in New York. I truly felt nontraditionally cast in New York. When you're working at the Public [Theater] and at Second Stage, and you're doing experimental theatre, none of that is usually based on race at all. In L.A. it's much more type-specific, and I could see where doors can get closed a little sooner here, because casting directors really are looking for type, not looking to go against type as much. So fortunately -- knock on a whole bunch of wood -- I've been working, so I haven't had to feel it. And even this role [on Grey's] was cast out of New York; I auditioned in New York. So to that extent I may have a different perception of what casting difficulties are because all of my experiences are out of New York....

In a way it's kind of all in the eyes of the beholder, because for the work that I've done I've felt like the right job has come along when it has needed to come along, and it has never been about [race].