Casting & Movie Musicals: Our First Step To Redeeming The Genre
Movie musicals have struggled to find their film industry footing since the golden age of Hollywood. Ever since Hello, Dolly(1969), movie musicals haven’t quite hit the “right note” (like they used to besides some strong outliers here and there). For years, the question as to why this is has been raised plenty of times. I would argue that while each decade of film sees different overall reasons for the genre’s lack of redemption, I think there is one overarching factor we need to address before it can return to the prior glory: the casting.
Film genres typically have a single prime time and later struggle to find their footing after the fad fades. Westerns, science fiction, vampire/supernatural, and apocalypse/dystopian films are widespread examples of genres that’s have gone in and out of style within the past century of cinema. Many predict superhero and psychological thrillers could very well be the next to go (just ask Steven Spielberg, he’s been predicting this for years). When a genre completely overexploited its storytelling capacity, usually we can only see it return to that success again if it has some form of mainstream topic relevance in pop culture. By the time that happens, it morphs into a whole new thing— science fiction and action films combined into superhero films, psychological thrillers are a new form of horror, etc. Movie musicals might be struggling to get into the spotlight again, but now could also be the best time for them to return. Considering how much Broadway‘s audience has expanded over the past few decades, and also by how much it’s changed and developed as a genre. I’ve noticed that one of the main things hindering it from finding any major strides is that we have ignored addressing the issues it once had over fifty years ago.
I am going to disclaim before we get into this: when I discuss the casting within these films, these are not issues to run directly to casting directors with. They are the ones constantly advocating for new talent and voices in the industry and the final casting decisions do not fall on them, but rather fall on the director and producers of these projects. While they play a major factor in the process, we should always be sure to cross-check where the root of these systemic issues come from and where opportunities for improvement lie.
When bringing up the topic of how movie musicals are cast, our minds will split off in a few different directions. I’d like to first address the issue that has always been present in the genre, as well as in the history of both film and musicals, which is colorism. Movie musicals have been around since the beginning of film, but particularly were born with the talkies of the 1920’s. We had been using live pianists while silent films were shown and had eventually found a way to synchronize music recordings to play alongside the films that were being watched to avoid awkward silences while watching. During the late 1920’s, there was a race to the finish line among production companies, over who could produce the first working synchronized sound film. Warner Brother’s Studio took the cake with The Jazz Singer. It was considered the birth of the movie musical. While it was a super groundbreaking film that launched a new era of cinema, one of the first musical scenes with synchronized sound featured in this film was a blackface performance. A good amount of the early pieces of film, musicals, and movies that were created used blackface, yellowface, and horrendous racist stereotypes. This industry has come a long way since then, but we’re still experiencing systematic fallout. Harmful typecasting, lack of opportunities, inappropriate offensive comedy, and toxic media representation only begin to illuminate the colorism running rampant in the entertainment industry.
In The Heights (2021)
A recent example of this: the movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical, In The Heights. The movie was heavily criticized for colorism. Lin-Manuel Miranda apologized after the movie’s release for not featuring any dark skinned Afro-Latinx actors within any of the leading roles (Besides Benny, who is a Black character played by a non-Latinx actor in the film). It was an incredibly responsible move on Lin’s part and set a wonderful example for other producers in the industry. The entire film’s cast (besides a few background dancers) was entirely light-skinned or even white-passing actors in these roles. While they are also a large portion of the Washington Heights community, the cast did not reflect the community accurately as it is in New York City and did not represent the nuances of Washington Heights visually in a realistic manner. The director, John Chu (also the director of Crazy, Rich, Asians), spoke to how they tried to cast the roles solely on who was best suited to play the characters without acknowledging how darker-skinned actors might have missed out on creating a longer resume of experience in comparison to their lighter-skinned peers— due to colorism that exists within the industry already. John Chu has been previously criticized over the colorism in Crazy, Rich, Asians for excluding dark-skinned Asians from any major roles in the film. While this all makes major strides for the movie musical community, we still have a lot of work to do.
Stunt casting is also a major topic to be discussed in movie musical casting. Stunt casting is when someone is cast in a role for publicity's sake. We see this most commonly here with casting major Hollywood actors in musical roles with little to no singing/dancing/stage experience. The first one that comes to mind for me is Emma Watson as Belle in the live-action Beauty and the Beast (2017). For years, fans of Watson discussed her likeness to Belle since she was known for her other bookworm character, Hermione Granger. However, she left audiences disappointed and taken out of the film as her singing was over auto-tuned and her performance didn’t achieve the success of her costars. Had they cast an actor to lead this film with comparable experience in theater to Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Dan Stevens, Emma Thompson, and Josh Gad, I think the film’s reception would’ve been a lot more positive (not to mention this role would’ve been phenomenally portrayed by a women of color).
Dear Evan Hansen(2021)
If you want to talk about some recent issues in relation to stunt casting, then we need to talk about Ben Platt and James Corden. After the trailer for Dear Evan Hansen was released, Ben Platt caught a lot of fire for playing the title role he originated on Broadway. . . again. . . considering he is now 27 years old and Evan is 17 years old. Some might say that the dark and mature themes in Dear Evan Hansen make the role mentally dangerous for an actual 17-year-old to portray. However, adults playing teens feed into the constant unhealthy adult standards pushed onto minors by the media.
On top of the age range conversation, it’s important to note that the film is produced by Platt’s father, Marc Platt. This might’ve cheated many phenomenal actors who were way better suited for the role, purely due to nepotism. It didn’t help that Ben’s response to the overall criticism of him playing the role was that ‘it wouldn’t be the show without him’, which in my opinion is just a whole other can of worms we won’t get into but needless to say, it isn’t an appropriate response here.
Lastly, it feels as if Hollywood picked a group of screen actors deemed musical theater enough, and recycles them. James Corden, for instance, starred in the 2012 film adaptation of Into The Woods, where he played the Baker. Most people enjoyed his performance in that film and he started his talk show thereafter. However, ever since then, it feels like James Cordon has been in any movie musical to come out. He starred in Cats, The Prom, Yesterday, and now he’s in Amazon Prime’s Cinderella coming out Sept. 3rd. While he produced the newest Cinderella film, it does raise the question: why we are seeing so many of the same faces in these recent films? Meryl Streep, Hugh Jackman, Anna Kendrick, Christine Baranski, Tracy Ullman, and even Emily Blunt live in this circle of Hollywood’s most commonly cast actors in movie musicals. While there is an astronomical amount of talent in that group, it starts to make movie musicals feel repetitive.
On the other side of that coin, I’m very happy to see that movies like West Side Story, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and Tick, Tick…Boom (three upcoming movie musical releases) have broken the mold by casting….not James Corden, and some Broadway actors who have never been seen on screen in such substantial roles before.
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie(2021)
As I look at all of the problems this industry faces, I see various individuals taking initiative to seek change in the process. Now that we can address and admit the obstacles here, the important thing is that we push to solve it and better the art we are creating. While I wrote this, I’ve noticed the theme of accountability and innovation taking place, which makes me optimistic for these upcoming movies. Broadway is seeing major change right now as it reopens, including the Black Theater United’s New Deal just being introduced— read up on it. All eyes are on the stage right now and I can only hope that the film industry is taking notes. The entire entertainment industry is one that tends to grow together and I can’t wait to see where we’re going.
