Mr. Malcolm’s List and color-blind casting
Over the weekend, my mom, Dr. Feelgood, and I watched Mr. Malcolm’s List. The film, based on a novel and then a short film by Suzanne Allain, tells the tale of the machinations of a proud woman, Julia, who, after being spurned by wealthy and wildly handsome single Mr. Malcolm, decides to have her revenge. Julia’s hilariously chatty cousin Lord Cassidy tells her that Mr. Malcolm has a list of ten qualities he wishes in a wife–elegant family, musically talented, kind and honest to name a few. Julia decides to turn the tables on Mr. Malcolm by recruiting her lovely–inside and out–childhood friend Selina to, using the list, trick Mr. Malcolm into falling in love. The plan is, of course, for Selina to then reject Mr. Malcolm. It will startle no one who has ever read a romance to know that the plan does not go according to plan.
If you love period pieces, Mr. Malcolm’s List will suit. It’s awash with gorgeous gowns, elegant carriages, lavish gardens, and tea. It even boasts a masquerade ball. There are two love stories to propel the plot, both charming, and the film is exceptionally well cast. Sope Dirisu is a wonderful lead–his Mr. Malcolm is dignified, compassionate, and engagingly flawed. Freida Pinto’s Selina is almost too perfect but she gives her character just enough simmering impatience that her natural grace doesn’t grate. I adored Zawe Ashton–Julia may be overly entitled and remarkably clueless about her own heart, but as played by Ashton she is a woman you root for to overcome her mistakes and find her own happiness. Add in a very sexy, amusingly calm Theo James as Captain Ossory and you’ve four exceptionally winning stars.
We often talk about Bridgerton as having color-blind casting and while that’s true, it’s also true that race matters in Netflix’s Bridgerton. Kate is half-Indian and what that means for her acceptance in British society is part of the plot of Season Two. In Season One, Simon’s blackness along with that of Queen Charlotte is inherently important to the world of the show. The casting may be color-blind in that it cast actors of color in roles written for whites but it’s not blind to the color of the cast.
Mr. Malcolm’s List is genuinely color-blind. No one’s race or skin color is ever mentioned. The actor playing Mr. Malcolm may be black but that is irrelevant. Julia is black, her mother, played by Naoko Mori, is not but, again, it doesn’t matter. There is no racism in the world of Mr. Malcolm’s List.
Many argue that color-blind casting is actually a bad thing. Critics say such a view of the world is one of denial, that it whitewashes the sins of the past. I can see that argument but I’m still a fan. It’s a move in the right direction. The success of Bridgerton and of Mr. Malcolm’s List changes the way we see period pieces and who should star in them. And talking about it–there is a whole THING right now about Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman–is necessary as well.
My mother loved Mr. Malcolm’s List–she’s an 85 year old woman who grew up in a small Southern town. I did too. So did Dr. Feelgood. We felt the story was perfectly escapist and the leads dishy. And we loved seeing diverse faces on the screen. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend it. And if you have, I’d love to know what you think.
Dabney, have you considered closing comments on old posts? It’s rather odd that after two years, suddenly it’s been revived, starting with two comments from male-presenting names and similar opinions about inaccurate portrayals of history. I don’t always read the comments so I don’t know if these are regular commenters, but as far as I know this movie hasn’t been in the news recently so it’s weird to have new activity (which I spotted from the main page).
Hmmmm…. That’s a very reasonable suggestion. One thing I think happens is that people stumble upon AAR and comment on something they were Googling. And I always want people to feel welcome.
But your point is a good one.
Thank you.
Thinking about this–doing it for blog posts makes more sense. I don’t think I’d do it for reviews.
I second this. While it’s nice to get new and sometimes different perspectives about a blog topic years after it was first posed, the way this has devolved says to me, it’s not worth the hassle and if left unchecked can spiral to even worse lengths
For me, if the film or show is trying to accurately portray a period of time and if the race of the character is important to the story, then I think you have to cast the races as required by the role. If you had tried to cast anyone but black actresses in Hidden Figures, for example, the whole movie would have collapsed. The segregation those women faced is a large facet of the story.
But when it comes to historical romance, something like Mr. Malcom’s List or Bridgerton, I’m fine with diverse casting. Why should actors of color be shut out of these roles, of playing the dashing male lead or the beautiful sought after female lead? I do wish Bridgerton had done colorblind casting. I get that they wanted to take the theory that Queen Charlotte was part black and run with it. But now the show is trying to build an alternate history of early 18thC England and I’m not sure this show is up for that challenge.
I’ve always been frustrated that so many talented actors only get cast for historical films when the role required someone who’s black, Asian, etc. Look at someone like Lupita N’Yongo. She won an Oscar, she’s talented, she’s gorgeous. But so much of her career post-Oscar has been as African characters or voiceover work. It was good to see her cast in The Quiet Place sequel. So more roles being made available to POC is all for the great.
Sometimes in life, there is no really good answer. Yes, seeing black actors play English aristocrats jerks me out of the fantasy, and yes, I sometimes think that casting black actors is overdone.
But the alternative is worse: shutting black actors out of playing Shakespeare or any role, except mostly slaves, in historical movie or plays.
The race, the gender, the weight, the physical disability or any other detail of actors always affect the audience. Sometimes, seeing unexpected casting makes the audience examine their own reactions and prejudice. Sometimes, it doesn’t,
For nearly 100 years, whites played all parts–even those of different races in black or yellow face–in movies and on the stage: Hollywood didn’t want to confront segregation or introduce much reality into its movies. Nobody protested when Yul Brenner played the King of Siam; we didn’t even notice. But If you can’t. suspend your disbelief, you can’t enjoy a movie, a play, or a book. Race is just one more detail that demands our suspension of disbelief.
This only happens in white Western countries. You will not see Africans, Indians, Asians, or any other people going overboard to maintain diversity quota because in their countries they have no problem with their heritage, culture, tradition, history, or skin color.
White women however can’t wait to replace their counterparts with someone who is not a white male. Rewriting history for the benefit of political activism is at its peak.
However, this only applies to where the characters have a certain moral stature. You will never see a white slave owner be replaced with a black one even though that is historically correct as there were black slave owners. You will also never see black slaves replaced by white slaves, ever.
The programming is deep and it is quite clear who it is aimed towards and how it is being propagated within movies and commercials, creating false narratives and history, and destroying our heritage, culture, and tradition.
Please, open your eyes for once.
I have to say something about this one point. I’m originally from Sri Lanka, and a lot of Sri Lankans absolutely do have issues with our past, heritage, culture and skin color. Even when I was a child living there, it was understood that light skin was considered more attractive than dark skin, the lighter the better. And many older people spoke nostalgically of all the good the British did when they ruled the country, one result of which is that I can name all of Henry VIII’s wives but never learned about any of my own country’s rulers. Because English was our official language, I’m fluent in it. I’m illiterate in Sinhalese.
I can’t say whether or not Africans, Indians and other Asians have any problems with their heritages, cultures, skin color, etc. but in Sri Lanka there are still lingering effects of colonialism.
Definitely not better in India. The number of Shaadi.com ads looking for girls with a “wheatish” complexion, my lord!
“Wheatish”? That makes me think of a color spectrum from oatmeal to golden brown.
The casting made no sense at all, so IT WAS annoying. Seeing something that in reality never existed (a black Earl, or whatever he was, at that time in England) made me wonder what his past was, how he could have got to that position. Was he adopted? Did he murder someone and take his role? Noooo, nothing like that. It was simply a STUPID POLITICALLY CORRECT CASTING CHOICE! A white nobleman is played by a black actor.
Have you seen Bridgerton?
The thing I always wonder when I see these comments is how much do you actually care about verisimilitude? Did you take issue with the non-accurate clothing on the show, or the fact that they didn’t talk in dialogue that matches the period or that certain technologies were out of place? Or is it just the idea of people who were deemed “inferior” for centuries (and still are in many places) being put in positions of power that makes you uncomfortable?
Personally, I don’t think either color blind or color-conscious casting is an absolute right or wrong. It depends on the show, its goals, its aesthetics, etc. Does it work or not is a subjective question, but generally, ALL romance from this period is pretty much escapist fantasist nonsense as women were chattel, few noblemen married for love, and they all would have had horrible teeth, died of typhoid or apoplexy or some 19th century disease and generally been way uglier than the people cast to play them.
When people complain about Black people getting to play against stereotype, that is usually a sign to me that you’ve got some underlying issue with people of color. From my perspective, I want Black people, Indian people, etc. to have more opportunity to play good, exciting roles. Villains, nobleman, dumb-dumbs, whatever! I don’t think there’s a particular ideology that leads to this, however.
Hey, can you just try and make sure you don’t veer criticizing the commentator? I prefer our readers to stick to discussing the words, not the people. Thanks!
You left a racebaiting comment filled with white supremacist dogwhistles untouched at the top of this comment section. A comment that suggests people are being hypnotized into dating people outside of their own race by media like Mr. Malcom’s list. And you’re scolding someone who’s asking a perfectly valid question and made an innocuous comment instead. Stunning!
As I’ve said before, here at AAR, people are allowed to have upsetting opinions. They are not allowed to criticize others.
So, one can say, I think breast cancer is caused by poor diet and lack of exercise. One cannot say, you have breast cancer because you make poor food choices and are sedentary.
Dabney, there is a thick line between someone making a dumb, uninformed opinion in public that can be argued with and literally allowing someone who is obviously trolling to come into your comment section spreading conspiracy theories about how race mixing is bad, presumably just so you can make ad money off of outrage clicks, making all of your non-white commenters feel unsafe. How would you feel if someone showed up here spreading nasty conspiracy theories about Jewish people? Freedom of speech is a fine thing, but not when it’s actionable hate speech. It has consequences, like JD Vance lying about Haitian immigrants. There are limits to what you can expect any of us to endure. It’s also what has driven multiple interesting people out of your comment section. The way you’re going pretty soon there’ll only be trolls and your staff members here. Bad enough you’re restricting comments on reviews.
This is why AAR has such difficulty beating back accusations that it’s a racist institution in the romance world. I defended some of your behavior during the #romancesowhite incident but now I’m really regretting it. There’s a thick line between having an opinion and trolling, and there’s no one on the planet who needs to read the ‘did you know black people owned slaves too?!’ canard in 2024.
for what it’s worth, I don’t consider that person’s comment hate speech exactly. That said, I also wasn’t intending the “you” to specifically address the commenter. It was the rhetorical “Whenever I see this type of comment, what I wonder is this…” type of argument with imprecise switching between 3rd person and second person. I’m not really sure the comment would hit differently if I had swapped “yous” for “that person” etc…Smart people can read the implied criticism even if everything is couched in 3rd person language :)
Hopefully, nothing here has reached the level of hate speech!
Oh, as a non-white commenter I assure you, it’s there, just comfortably cradled in dogwhistle talk.
I actually wasn’t talking about the reply you were replying to, but this post at the top of the comment section. I just found Dabney scolding you for something incredibly minor compared to that post, which they let stand with no comment.
Mr. Malcolm’s List was my second favourite new romance movie of the year, so I am happy with completely colour blind casting.
I was not as fine with the forced diverse casting of Bridgertons season 1… that was world building that didn’t really hang together, they should’ve either done a better job of imagining what this fork in the historical timeline would have led to, or gone colour blind like MML IMHO.
I agree that I really rather they just went with color blind casting.
Sadly it DOES bother me to see almost every movie, TV serial and commercial these days being color-blind. In commercials, every white man must have a black wife with usually biracial children or every white woman must have a black husband. I understand it move with commercials as every business wants to be seen as open to diversity. Companies want whites, blacks, asians, latinos, etc. to buy their products, so all races are often pictured in their commercials. I get it, however America’s population is less than 14% black and it would appear to be 50% from watching movies and TV serials.
I did not enjoy Mr. Malcolm’s List, Hamilton or Bridgerton as it seemed “forced” and unrealistic. I wonder what the reaction would be if Roots would be re-done using all white actors? That would be seen as a travesty!
Every new movie now starts out with something like a white boy on a bicycle riding with his best friend who is black. Hocus Pokus 2 the two leads are a white and a black girl and very diverse compared to the original. In the new Enola Holmes 2 movie, Sherlock Holmes nemesis Professor Moriarty has been re-cast to be not only black, but a female. I guess you’d call it artistic license. The vicar in the BBC series “Grantchester” (circa 1960) would not leave the church to marry the long-term love of his life, but he later quit the church and moved to Alabama to marry a black girl he had recently met. Come on! Unlike the “Game of Thrones,” the prequel “House of the Dragon” now has many black actors in major roles. It is the same for the latest “Lord of the Rings” prequel “Rings of Power” where now elves and other major characters are now black. It’s different, it’s noticeable, it’s unrealistic to the original movies. Now most BBC productions have blacks in prominent positions (Belle, Sanditon, etc.)…even in their 1700s and 1800s TV series where, in reality, blacks were then slaves or servants and were not in the elite or wealthy class rubbing shoulders with white aristocrats.
The 2021 Emmy Awards were called out recently because there were no blacks in the main acting fields and complaints were made that the Emmys were racists for snubbing black actors. The 2022 Emmy Awards, however, were a complete turn around with blacks winning in historic numbers…and no one complained that the Emmys were racist that year.
As a white male, I never had a black best friend, although I’ve had many good friends and excellent colleagues and bosses who were black. I am not a racist and have never discriminated against a person because of their color, nationality, ethnicity, sex, etc. But it appears that now Hollywood and others are compensating for the lack of black representation in past movies buy assuring that now ALL movies and TV serials will have diverse characters…whether realistic or not. It just seems terribly overdone and forced. If Hollywood remade Lassie, would Timmy have to be black? What about Zorro? Where does it end…or does it end? There are endless great movies that have prominent black actors in starring roles, but can there be a movie in the future with all white actors that don’t get complaints that the directors, producers and others are racists for not having diversity in its key roles? I wonder if we’ll ever see another all white cast if they remade Caddyshack, Animal House, etc?
The world is a different place today and while I’m not resistant to change, but I’m having a hard time accepting the forcing of diversity in productions where it’s not realistic.
Is there a reason that these prequels must be faithful to the original series by having all-white casts? I’d like to hear what an all-white cast can bring to the Painted Table that a cast with people of color cannot.
Sure, it’s noticeable when major characters in LOTR are black. It’s noticeable because we’re not used to this. I’ll bet it was very noticeable when the original Star Trek had a black woman on the bridge, not as a maid but as a communications officer. And sure, it’s different, but those differences reflect some of the differences in the real world.
I think that as more characters are played by actors of color, more people will grow used to this. And since I read a ton of fantasy back in the day, it did bother me a little that evil was always associated with darkness and blackness (dark elves, Black Speech, etc). If movies and TV shows these days are growing beyond that stereotype, more power to them.
I am watching His Dark Materials which has color blind casting and which no one watching it would even notice. The hero, Will, is white in the books and, in the series, played by a black actor. The heroine, Lyra, is small and blonde in the books, and, in the series, is darker skinned and tall. Their looks don’t matter–which I like.
It’s been a while since I read the books, but I don’t recall Will ever being described as white – in fact I’ve always thought he wasn’t.
One example of diversity being handled poorly did occur to me – in all three of the Atlas Shrugged movies, Eddie is played by a black actor. The cast changed with each film, so there were three different black actors, the only obvious people of color.
What made this cringeworthy, though, is that the story shows that Eddie works for the current heirs of the company just as his father and grandfather did for the previous owners. This sounded like a family tradition of loyalty when I read the book. But in the film, with each Eddie being black, it felt more like indentured servitude. I have no idea why the filmmakers did this, and an all-white cast would actually have been a less problematic choice for me here.
I find it humorous that this dude is complaining about a literal fantasyworld having too many black characters. Like, there are whole nonhuman races in these worlds. There are freakin’ dragons? But having Black people is a bridge too far???
I can’t see the problem with colorblind casting, but I especially don’t understand why having a black actor in a story with elves, dwarves and other fantasy creatures is somehow “not true” to the story? How the heck do we “know” of all dwarves are fair skinned? All people aren’t white so why in the (fantasy) world should anyone assume all other people groups don’t have diverse amounts of melanin? I think if colorblind casting in fantasy settings bothers someone, then the protestations of “not being racist” ring hollow.
Oh I thoroughly enjoyed Mr Malcolm’s list! It is such a wholesome and sweet story, with very attractive leads. I too LOVED Zawe Ashton and her portrayal of Lady Julia. Both the primary and secondary romances, were very well-done, and I feel as though the movie served as an ode both to period dramas and romance novels.
I sincerely agree that when it comes to works set in the current world or in fantasy worlds, the role goes to whoever does it best regardless of their race.
If we need someone to play, for example, a calm and sweet woman or a fearless and grumpy woman, I think it is more important to have the actress who captures the essence of the character and not that “she was supposed to be blonde”.
However when it comes to historical dramas it’s different…I don’t watch a historical movie just for the cute dresses and good manners I like to feel like it’s a window to the past so if I watch a movie that is supposed to be set in regency England Watching colorblind casting actors takes me out of the movie by reminding me that I’m only seeing people in costumes.
However that goes both ways… I’ve always had problems with the idea that Jesus was white, with blue eyes for example, simply if it’s something historical I would like the actors to look like the people you would actually meet at that time in that place.
For me, if the acting is great, then it works no matter what the cast looks like. This film worked for me but I can see it might not work for everyone.
I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the recommendation.
I loved Julia’s love story. That kiss!
Although it may some day come to pass, I think that at present “color-blind casting” is something of a misnomer. It applies only to casting actors of color in roles that would traditionally be considered white, not the other way around. In the past, white actors have often portrayed people of other races. Laurence Olivier as Othello? Jeff Chandler as Cochise? John Wayne as Genghis Kahn? Walter Oland as Charlie Chan? Truly color-blind casting would work in both directions.
Totally agree.
To be fair, most of those portrayals would be widely derided as racist today, and rightly so.
Because of the casting or because of the character?
likely both.
We are currently watching Dark Winds and the show’s very strong sense of place comes from casting Native Americans in the Native American roles. But it’s tough to ever get casting perfectly, today, I think. Some Navajo feel the way the Diné are portrayed isn’t authentic enough.
I haven’t seen this, but I may watch. The color-blind casting doesn’t bother me a bit. I can see where some of the critics calling it whitewashing are coming from, but I don’t think I agree for entertainment purposes.
Right now The Ring of Power is getting slammed online for having black hobbits, and I’m so over people. You’re watching a show about elves, dwarfs, dragons, etc., and you’re worried about a black hobbit?? Give me a break. They’re not worried about it not being “canon.” (and ROP isn’t canon because of the rights restrictions on The Silmarillion, but that’s another issue), they’re just racist. They’re completely okay with the whitewashing of characters from Jesus to the characters in the new Bullet Train movie, but a black hobbit gets your goat. Right.