Reply to S/O Surprisingly good Hollywood casting decisions

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption.  Before that, I figured he was just the goofy guy in Bull Durham and Top Gun.  [/quote]

Morgan Freeman too! He’s called Red because the character was a red headed Irish guy. They really went off script so to speak and the movie would not be the same without the two of them.[/quote]

This is so I retesting given the other thread’s discussion of casting actors of a different race than the character in a book.  I, personally, am not bothered by changing the race or ethnicity of a person between the book and the movie.  The movie is a new artifact and doesn’t need to stay true to the book.  [/quote]

It’s different when they actually change the character vs having an actor of one race play a character of a different race. In this case, they actually changed the character - that’s fine. They didn’t pretend Morgan Freeman was really Irish (although I loved that they did keep the line - ‘why do they call you Red?’ ‘Maybe it’s because I’m Irish’ - but said with such a dry wit that he turned it from a serious line into a really funny one. Great nod to the book’s character while showing the new character’s dry sense of humor)..  If they’d given him a red wig and had him fake an Irish accent, it would have been horrible.

It was surprising casting because they did have to change the character for him, but he was absolutely perfect in it. Not at all what I had in my head when I read the book, but I loved it. [/quote]

That’s a bit of a false equivalency.  Almost never do they have an actor of one race dress up as a character of another race (ie your red wig scenario).  For some roles, race is an important facet of the character, but for many it’s not.  That’s why colorblind casting works.  You can cast an actor of any race to play Eponine in Le Mis, but only a black actor can play the lead in Porgy and Bess.  Race is a character in Porgy and Bess but not in Les Mis.  The same is true for movies.  A black actress needed to star in Hidden Figures, but there was no reason why Emma Stone couldn’t play the lead in Aloha.  Race was not a character in Aloha.  It could easily be cast using colorblind casting.  I didn’t understand why people were upset by that one.  [/quote]

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