British Invasion

The BBC video of the South Korean expert, Robert Kelly, discussing the recent political turmoil in the country with a BBC reporter via Skype who is interrupted by the arrival of his two young children is hilarious. The viral clip provided a welcome laugh to me and many others and a welcome break from the usual vitriol of the internet. Check it out if you haven't already.

In other British-related news, I read comments this week made by Samuel L. Jackson about British black actors taking roles of African Americans. Jackson faced backlash for his comments, but I think he was on point about this. So many movies it seems lately have British or non-American blacks playing American blacks. The latest is Get Out that has a British black actor playing the lead role. Others are Ruth Negga who played Mildred Loving in the recent movie Loving. Negga is a biracial woman of Irish and Ethopian descent. Selma featured a black British actor in the lead role as Martin Luther King, Jr., Twelve Years a Slave had a whole host of non-Americans (black and white) in feature roles (although the director himself is also a black Brit, so that may be why he chose to go with a largely European cast there). My feeling is that the directors and whomever backs these films financially just prefer to work with blacks who are European or just not American because they're cheaper to hire and because they think a foreign black person is a step above a black American. It's not just black Americans who are losing roles to foreign actors, it's white Americans also. There are plenty of white actors who adopt an American accent and ride it to stardom. Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams? Charlie Hunnan in Sons of Anarchy? Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl? Seriously, were no American actors qualified for these roles? I'm not saying actors should just play roles in their native country. I'm saying we need to recognize that American actors are losing roles to non-Americans and this is not a figment of Samuel Jackson's imagination. I'm glad to see actors of all shades working, particularly minority actors, but charity starts at home and these Hollywood directors and producers need to maybe take a look at the theater grad from the University of Michigan rather than the Royal Shakespeare Company. Charity begins at home.

I remember being in a flight to Detroit and I was seated in the aisle seat of three-seat row. In the middle was a white woman, and a black guy with some kind of skin condition was seated at the window. The white woman in the middle didn't seem at all pleased to be seated between me and the skin guy until he opened his mouth to speak to her and his British accent came out. Then she and the guy chatted away during the flight and became best friends. Would this have happened if he'd been a plain old black guy from Detroit? Not bloody likely!