Mixed Race Studies

Color Her Conscious: Nathalie Emmanuel Is the Latest to Advocate for Accurately ‘Melanated’ Casting

The Glow Up
The Root
2019-04-26

Maiysha Kai, Managing Editor

Nathalie Emmanuel arrives at HBO’s Post Emmy Awards Reception on September 17, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Emma McIntyre (Getty Images)

She’s already won hearts as the endearing Missandei on Game of Thrones, but actress Nathalie Emmanuel may have won herself a few more since last Sunday’s episode, all due to a simple tweet.

As Shadow & Act reported on Thursday, Emmanuel recently became the latest light-skinned actress to turn down a role for a darker-skinned character—even if only in a hypothetical sense…

…In disavowing a role intended for a darker-complected actress, Emmanuel joined fellow colorblind casting-averse actors like Amandla Stenberg in affirming that simply being of color isn’t the sole criteria for every black role. Stenberg (who now uses they/them pronouns) famously backed out of the casting process for Black Panther’s beloved Shuri because they felt it inappropriate as a light-complected, biracial actor…

Read the entire article here.

ABC Orders ‘Black-Ish’ Prequel ‘Mixed-Ish’ Starring Tika Sumpter, Renews Parent Series For Season 6

Shadow And Act
2019-05-02

black-ish has been renewed for Season 6 and ABC has also officially ordered a prequel series, mixed-ish.

The fact that mixed-ish has received an early series order ahead of upfronts shows the network’s heavy confidence in the second black-ish series following Freeform’s grown-ish. Initially set to air this season, the mixed-ish backdoor pilot will air as an episode of black-ish next season.

The official description for mixed-ish: Rainbow Johnson recounts her experience growing up in a mixed-race family in the ’80s and the constant dilemmas they had to face over whether to assimilate or stay true to themselves. Bow’s parents Paul and Alicia decide to move from a hippie commune to the suburbs to better provide for their family. As her parents struggle with the challenges of their new life, Bow and her siblings navigate a mainstream school in which they’re perceived as neither black nor white. This family’s experiences illuminate the challenges of finding one’s own identity when the rest of the world can’t decide where you belong…

Read the entire article here.

Zendaya to produce, star in thriller on Anita Hemmings, first black woman Vassar grad, passing as white to attend

Shadow And Act
2017-11-14

Zendaya (left) and Anita Hemmings (right).

Zendaya has booked what Deadline calls a hot pitch package on the street right now.

The film is called ‘A White Lie’ and it is a film adaptation of the Karin Tanabe novel, The Gilded Years.

The novel, a psychological thriller, “built around the true story of Anita Hemmings, a light-skinned African American woman. She is the daughter of a janitor, who passed as white so she could attend Vassar at the turn of the century.” She is treated as a wealthy and educated white woman and sparks a romance with a rich Harvard student.

Zendaya will play Hemmings…

Read the entire article here.

‘Get Out’ Is Now The Highest Grossing Film Domestically By A Black Director (But Not For Long)

Shadow And Act: On Film, Television and Web Content of Africa and Its Diaspora
2017-04-11

Sergio Mims

Jordan Peel – Get Out

It’s official! Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” is now the highest domestic grossing film directed a black filmmaker. With $163.3 million so far domestically ($177 million total worldwide), the film beats the previous highest grossing film by a black director domestically, F. Gary Gray’s “Straight Outta Compton”, which grossed $162.8 million, and another $40.4 million overseas at the end of its theatrical run. But “Get Out” is far from done, as it has yet to open in some of the biggest foreign markets, including European territories like France, Spain and Scandinavia, as well as across South America, so it could eventually do very well and match or even top “Compton’s” overseas numbers…

Read the entire article here.

Teaser: Documentary on Leone Jacovacci – 1920s Black Italian Boxer Who “Took a Swing at Fascism”

Shadow and Act: On Film, Television and Web Contents of Africa and Its Diaspora
2017-03-12

Leone Jacovacci

Leone Jacovacci (a.k.a. John Douglas Walker and Jack Walker) was born in 1902 in the village of Pombo in the then Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), the son of an Italian man and a Congolese woman. He was raised in Italy which was rough for him, given that he was bi-racial, and as a result, in his late teens, found himself in England where he reinvented himself as John Douglas Walker, added a couple of years to his age, and enlisted in the 53rd Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment of the British Army.

After being discharged, he took up amateur boxing and was mostly successful, bouncing between England and France, racking up victories. In 1922 he returned to Italy, pretending to be an American named Jack Walker until he found it too burdensome to maintain the fake persona (he occasionally slipped and spoke fluent Italian). His surprising confession in 1925 that he was Italian presented complications in a nation that was then ruled by Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party…

Read the entire article and watch the trailer here.

Sophie Okonedo Is Queen Margaret in ‘The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses’ (On PBS Dec 11-25)

Shadow And Act
2016-11-17

Sophie Okonedo

“The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses” is a lavish three-part follow-up to the BAFTA winning “The Hollow Crown,” which aired in 2013 on THIRTEEN’s “Great Performances.”

The first series of “The Hollow Crown” covered the so-called Henriad comprising Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I and II and Henry V. Now, “The Wars of the Roses” – which comes to “Great Performances” on three consecutive Sundays beginning December 11 at 9 p.m. – picks up the story with epic film versions of Henry VI (in two parts) and Richard III…

The new series aired to great acclaim on the BBC this May. A Neal Street co-production with Carnival/NBCUniversal and THIRTEEN for BBC Two, the series was filmed in locations around the UK. Award-winning director Dominic Cooke (former Artistic Director of The Royal Court theatre) makes his TV directorial debut with the three films.

The series features some of the UK’s finest acting talent including Sophie Okonedo who has been cast to play Queen Margaret.

Okonedo joins Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III, Tom Sturridge as Henry VI, Hugh Bonneville as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Judi Dench as Cecily, Duchess of York, Sally Hawkins as Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, and Keeley Hawes as Queen Elizabeth…

Read the entire article here.

Crucifying the White Savior (Film)

Shadow and Act
2016-06-29

Andre Seewood

We no longer have to forgive them, for they know exactly what they are doing.

The new film by Gary Ross, “The Free State of Jones” is uncontestably a White savior film. Laid bare, “The Free State of Jones” is a simplistically constructed tale of a Confederate army deserter who eventually lives in a polygamous relationship with a Black former slave named Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) with whom he has a mixed race child and his White wife and their White child. The film’s story is a heroification of the 1862 true story of Newton Knight a real Confederate deserter from Jones County, Mississippi, who ironically didn’t actually “save” anyone, but instead merely prolonged the inevitable suffering of those Blacks and his mixed race progeny who were trapped within the White supremacist power structure of the United States of America.

The film builds its White savior character not in the broad conflicts between Confederate and Union soldiers, Free Black men and the KKK, but in small scenes of selfless heroism and demonstrative yet intimate “White-man- taking-charge- and-directing- the-actions- of-others” scenes that accumulate over the course of the two-and- a-half- hour film until there is no doubt about who is saving whom in a battle and who desperately needed to be protected from whom in a White supremacist society. Yet “The Free State of Jones” is an oddly racially segregated film that separates its Black token characters from its White fully developed characters, even as they fight (presumably) together to protect their illegal territory. There are certain battle and robbery scenes where no Black token is shown and others where Black tokens fight next to each other but are segregated from their fellow White fighters, revealing that Knight’s Free State was conditional at best. Moreover, the film never manages to convince the skeptical spectator that Knight’s higher ideals of freedom, autonomy, and “Every man is a man” equality were not simply rooted in his adulterous lust for a Black woman’s body.

However, if we take off the metaphorical rose colored glasses that director Gary Ross has placed in front of the camera, it is not too difficult to see that Newton Knight was merely a Confederate deserter who wanted to have his cake and eat it too- a Black mistress and a White wife – and through the benefit of his White privilege, he was allowed to do so with peculiar impunity until the end of his days…

Read the entire article here.

Dwayne Johnson – “Race Shifter” in a “Post-Racial” World?

Shadow and Act: On Film, Television and Web Content of Africa and Its Diaspora
2016-06-13

Sergio Mims

Dwayne Johnson

With “Central Intelligence” hitting theaters this weekend, starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, a conversation worth having…

I’m sure we’ve all privy to all the chatter about how we’re now living in a so-called “post-racial” society. Though I think most of us would respond to that with a “Yeah right!” But things are changing, albeit slowly. And it dawned on me, with Johnson becoming one of Hollywood’s most dependable actors today, starring in blockbuster after blockbuster, and carrying some of them almost alone, that he’s the one person who could be an example of this “post-racial” utopia we’re supposed to be living in.

It should be very obvious by now that Johnson has been positioning himself to become a major movie star. He easily could have gone on to be a B-movie actor, content with taking supporting roles in action/exploitation films, and starring in direct-to-video movies, like some of his former WWE cohorts. But Johnson has much higher aspirations. And it’s not just the film projects that he’s attached himself to; either by design or by happenstance, it’s also how he’s been perceived racially by the public. He has become a “race shifter” for lack of a better word.

Through his obviously ethnic, but not clearly defined looks (he’s black Canadian/Samoan), he has managed to become “identified” as it were, by different audiences, as different things, and has used that to his advantage, whether intentionally or not. I should say that, of course, we identify him as a black actor here on S&A, or else we wouldn’t be covering him at all. And Johnson has never obscured, or refused to acknowledge his bi-racial heritage, unlike let’s say Vin Diesel, who has seemingly gone out of his way to not publicly acknowledge his mixed heritage, preferring to instead let people think he’s, perhaps, Italian…

Read the entire article here.

Tonight: Syfy Premieres New Alien Terrorist Series, ‘Hunters’

Shadow and Act: On Cinema Of The African Diaspora
2016-04-11

Tambay A. Obenson

Britne Olford – HUNTERS

Tonight, Syfy premieres the first season of “Hunters” it’s new fantastical procedural thriller produced by Universal Cable Productions (in association with Valhalla Entertainment and Atlas Entertainment, respectively).

Britne Oldford (“American Horror Story“) plays the female lead in the 13-episode loose adaptation of Whitley Strieber’s best-selling novel “Alien Hunter,” which tells the story of a brilliant police detective’s obsessive investigation into the mysterious disappearance of his wife, which he eventually concludes wasn’t at all voluntary, even though it initially appears that way. Somebody is taking people and making it look like they walked out on their own. As the detective gets closer to the truth, his work comes to the attention of a Special Agent, a member of the most secret police unit on the planet, tasked with seeking out the most brilliant and lethal criminals, but from another world – alien terrorists. The Special Agent leads the detective into a hidden fantastical world of extraordinary challenge and danger, as they take on the most difficult police assignment ever known to man…

Read the entire article here.

Tribeca 2016 Preview: Nelsan Ellis, Armani Jackson, Melanie Lynskey in ‘Little Boxes’

Shadow and Act: On Cinema Of The African Diaspora
2016-03-31

Tambay A. Obenson

Nelsan Ellis, Armani Jackson, Melanie Lynskey in “Little Boxes“

The 2016 Tribeca Film Festival kicks off in a couple of weeks, running from April 13-24 in New York City.

Leading up to the event, I’ll highlight a few films or note, given this blog’s specific interests, starting with this one…

Directed by Rob Meyer, written by Annie J Howell, and executive produced by Cary Fukunaga, the drama feature “Little Boxes” stars Nelsan Ellis, Armani Jackson, Melanie Lynskey, Oona Laurence, Janeane Garofalo, and Christine Taylor.

Synopsis: It’s the summer before 6th grade, and Clark (Armani Jackson) is the new-in-town biracial kid in a sea of white. Discovering that to be cool he needs to act “more black,” he fumbles to meet expectations, while his urban intellectual parents Mack and Gina (Nelsan Ellis and Melanie Lynskey) also strive to adjust to small-town living. Equipped for the many inherent challenges of New York, the tight-knit family are ill prepared for the drastically different set of obstacles that their new community presents, and soon find themselves struggling to understand themselves and each other in this new suburban context…

Read the entire article here.