Can a Black Woman Portray Helen of Troy?
Last Friday on the livestream, John and I addressed the mini-controversy surrounding Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. Some online critics—Elon Musk being the most prominent—have taken issue with Nolan’s decision to cast a dark-skinned woman as the legendarily beautiful Spartan. In this clip, John and I talk about race-conscious casting and ask when or whether we’ll reach the point where race is simply not considered a relevant factor in casting. Will we one day see an Asian actor play Barack Obama or Nina Simone in a biopic? It’s difficult to imagine that happening today, tomorrow, or any time in the near future. But as the continuing relevance of The Odyssey shows us, great art lasts.
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Fascinating question
The short answer: Sure, a Black woman can definitely play Helen of Troy.
But could we equally say a White woman could play Lena Horne in some sort of bio-pic? Again, I believe we'd have to say 'Yes, absolutely'. What about playing Rosa Parks? Or Harriet Tubman?
Why not?
The point being, acting is acting. And what is acting? It is 'portrayal'; it is the performed behavior whereby an individual who has been trained in the art, pretends to be someone they are not (whether real or fictional). More than that, acting, good acting, is the process by which the performer so thoroughly inhabits the role they are asked to play that the audience completely and thoroughly believes they were indeed, that character (even to the point of being unable to imagine anyone else in that role). A great actor ensures the willing, indeed, the enthusiastic suspension of disbelief as we all watch the drama unfold.
So yes, any given actor -- of enough talent -- can portray any given character (given a great script and a great director). That's why we can watch a 36 year old, New Zealander become both Bud White, a rough-hewn LA cop in the midst of the Night Owl murders...and Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the Colosseum, and the disturbed mathematician, John Nash...and not even blink.
But, and this is a large 'but', they must look the part...or rather, their own individual 'look & sound & behavior' must not distract from the part. It's why John Wayne as Genghis Khan never worked. Wayne wasn't that kind of actor, and the audience already knew him as the Cowboy, the Marine, and the Quiet Irish boxer...not as the leader of the Mongol Horde, saying: "Well, pilgrim!"
So, to the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen.
Personally I think it's a stretch. She's certainly attractive (and maybe she's a great actress...I haven't seen enough of her work to say one way or the other). But if I were Casting Director I would struggle with the question: Is she attractive enough, beautiful enough (in any kind of objective sense) to convince the audience that this was the 'face that launched a 1000 ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium'. I'd say no. But that's not the first time I've disagreed with casting choices. I also wouldn't accept Sydney Sweeney in that role either.
The point is, I would disqualify Lupita not because she's Black but because I do not see her as heart-shatteringly beautiful as Helen should actually be (at least in my version of the Odyssey). Entire armies of warriors would not die to bring her radiant glory back home. Could Helen be played by a Black actress. Sure. I'd cast the young Halle Berry if I could. But if I couldn't I'd cast the young Catherine Deneuve. And if that didn't work, maybe the young Greta Garbo. Sophia Loren was an excellent Dulcinea but would not be an excellent Helen. Thus the vagaries of casting & acting.
Gregory Peck played an outstanding Atticus Finch but I think he'd be terrible as Elmer Gantry or Bill Starbuck (roles inhabited by Burt Lancaster). Denzel could play Atticus, but I think he'd struggle to play Mel Gibson's role in The Year of Living Dangerously.
We could spend weeks debating casting choices, successes, and abysmal failures and have a great time doing it. But truly we need to move beyond the continued insistence that a role must be filled by an actor/actress whose demographics somehow either match the character as written or the audience's pre-disposition as to that character's look.
Of course that's easy to say. Once we see Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter it becomes impossible to see anyone else in that role (who doesn't at least look like Daniel Radcliffe looked as he played Potter).
John, however, quibbles and says, essentially 'Yabbut, not now' when it comes to more racially radical casting choices. I say if not now, when. And of course there's no defensible answer to that question other than the quibbling, 'I don't know...just not now because NOW would make me feel uncomfortable. I say to heck with it. Feel uncomfortable. Sometimes uncomfortable is a very good thing.
But...and again, a large 'but': if the strangeness or misfit nature of the casting choice is so disturbing that we spend the entire movie being silently appalled (Costner is NOT Robin Hood!!!), then off-type casting would seem to be a huge mistake. In the case of The Odyssey, i would think that Helen's role would be small enough that Lupita's Helen becomes a non-issue. However, there is always the risk that the choice is jarring enough that the audience says, 'Why her? Is she the one to 'make me immortal with a kiss'. Right now I'd say no. We'll see what the audiences say.
One final point: beauty, almost always, is in the eye of the beholder. And I would agree with John's relative indifference to the big-haired beauty of Farrah back in the 70's. But the eye of the beholder is also almost always incredibly idiosyncratic. There have been actresses with incredible careers that I, personally, found absolutely forgettable (speaking only of beauty). And equally, there have been actresses (easier to talk about public faces than private) whom I find breathtaking that many do not. So what? To look at that list (the one in every man's head) and say your list is racist because 13% of those on the list are not Black is insane. And it's insane because our own individual judgement of beauty has nothing to do with race and everything to do with what particular collection of features make our hearts beat faster, our palms sweat, and our breath to catch, just slightly when she walks this evening into Rick's cafe in Casablanca and asks Sam to play it once, for old times sake. Rick, of course, remains gobsmacked (as do all the rest of us, pretty much forever).
We know from the beautiful Minoan paintings on Crete, contemporary with Troy, exactly what these people looked like. It's just a historical fact. They didn't look like Halle Berry let alone Lupita Nyong'o. They looked like Gal Gadot. Or Margaret Qualley. This is a historical travesty of the first order, done purely for reasons of "woke".