Source: The Guardian
In an interview with The Guardian, Zoë Kravitz details her racialized experiences in Hollywood through the casting descriptions for big movies and TV show productions. Coming from an African American and Jewish family, Kravitz knows what it’s like being in a multifarious environment. Her qualifications as an actress, paired with her diverse background, make her a valuable asset in Hollywood. But Hollywood is too fixated on labels for Kravitz to handle.
“You will read a script, and a character description will say: ‘Jane, 26, beautiful and outgoing.’ and you’re just supposed to assume that person’s Caucasian. And then it will say: ‘Sarah, 27, African-American, funky.’ That has always been shocking to me, the idea that unless I’m being told someone’s ethnicity, I’m supposed to assume that everyone else in the story is white.”
To her amusement, Kravitz’s latest role as down-to-earthy, yoga instructor mother Bonnie in the latest HBO mini-series Big Little Lies was missing the emphasis of ethnicity: “Her race is just not a thing.” As with casting, descriptions remain crucial to finding the right actor or actress for the job but tend to typify the races associated with the characters – Jane, in Kravitz’s example, is “beautiful and outgoing” whereas Sarah is “funky.” This classification system uplifts or degrades characters by distinction of their race, which is only mentioned on casting lists when they’re not white.
The established normality of white characters in Hollywood productions leads to the seeming “eccentricity” of minority characters. Where role descriptions are intended to define the character being portrayed, race becomes grouped in as an interesting, distinguishing factor of the characters. This further dismisses the seriousness of implementing diverse actors and actresses like Kravitz into widely streamed online series, televised productions and box-office hits by creating a need to spice up the cast list.
As Kravitz mentioned in her interview, the lack of an ethnic description for her character Bonnie puts her at ease because of its refusal to construe the role as an ethnic entity needed to diversify the show and instead adheres to a description that can be filled by appropriately qualified actors and actresses, regardless of their physical appearances.
See my Face, Not my Race 