ethnicity and casting
One of the pleasures of the tv series “Numb3rs” is a character [Amita Ramanujan - played by Navi Rawat] who is not only a math whiz, but a woman of exotic beauty, not the standard blonde [as appealing as many blonde actors may be].
Navi Rawat was born to a German mother and an Indian father, and has admitted she felt self-conscious about that fact earlier in her life, but now feels ”it’s all fine.”
“Since I first started acting, I’ve found [my ethnicity] to be beneficial instead of something to overcome… If I wasn’t from a multi-ethnic background, I wouldn’t have had these great experiences. And one of the things that makes me a good actor is life experience”
Sheetal Sheth [currently in “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World”] finds some Hollywood attitudes about ethnicity strange and sometimes painful: “Whenever I hear people talking about actors of South Asian descent like me ‘crossing over into the mainstream,’ I wonder, ‘Crossing over from where?
“From Jersey? I’m an American girl! [Her hometown is in New Jersey.] And it hurts to hear that I’m ‘too ethnic’ when I audition for parts.
“I picked just about the only profession where it’s OK to be discriminated against because of your race - but this kind of rejection only makes me more determined to succeed.”
Rashida Jones has her own perspectives on attitudes and decisions that are still homogenizing rather than diversifying many casts. “I am very light-skinned and I don’t look like I have a black parent,” she has said, “so it makes people feel comfortable to say what they really mean around me.
“I’d show up to a casting and the casting director would be visibly relieved and would tell me: `You don’t really look that black at all.’ It’s really horrible. Or I’d be doing a casting for a black character and the director would be ignoring my audition and trying to figure out what race I am. There’s definitely some growing to be done in Hollywood.”
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