Race + TV: NBC (And The Rest)–More Colorful!
While a show like Pan Am (fondly known as Carefree White Girls Explore the Third World) can fail to take off without consequence, it feels, at times, as if the fate of every black actor and actress on television rides on the success or failure of one show each season. Undercovers was NBC’s but, under Rhimes’ care, Scandal could be different and Washington could be looking at a few successful seasons on network television. While I’ve never seen or had much interest in Grey’s Anatomy or Private Practice, Rhimes seems adept in successfully navigating POCs successfully through the network-television puzzle for multiple seasons. Also starring Peruvian-Scottish actor Henry Ian Cusick (Lost), openly gay Cuban-American actor Guillermo Diaz, and African American actor Columbus Short (who, criminally, hasn’t been on television since 2007’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) in supporting roles, I’m hoping that Scandal drums up enough interest in its seven episode debut to continue into the fall.
Ms. Washington will be joined by Eve’s Bayou star Meagan Good over on NBC’s Notorious. Plot details for this one are sketchy, but the network is looking to recreate the nighttime soaps of the 1980s (think Dallas – which returns to TNT this June). Good will play a detective who returns to the rich family with whom she grew up (her mom is the family’s housekeeper) in order to solve the mystery of their daughter’s murder.
As more plot details come out (and assuming the show is even picked up) it’s going to be interesting to see where the show is set and how the housekeeping angle is handled–with the advent of The Help, these are, unfortunately, things we have to think about. That aside, it’s nice to see a Black actress cast in a lead role that isn’t necessarily coded as African-American or black. Much like Washington’s character on Scandal, Olivia Pope (Good’s detective character) seems as if could have gone to an actress of any race, a bucking of the trend that’s heartening to see in network casting. (It’s also heartening to know that more turns like Notorious in Good’s career could mean less turns in films like Think Like a Man. But I’ll leave that for someone else to deal with.)
FOX jumps into the casting frenzy with Cuba Gooding Jr. starring in something that does not involve Tom Cruise, cruise ships, or children on a sugar high. Lover of a good career comeback that I am, I’m rooting for Guilty this fall where Gooding will play an ethically challenged lawyer who’s stripped of his license to practice, yet continues to solve cases thanks to his bag of unorthodox tricks. There’s no question that Gooding has made some interesting career choices since his Oscar-winning performance in Jerry Maguire, and that Oscar pins him in the same group of black actors I spoke about before: they win awards and then seem to have to turn to television for quality work. I’m still not mad at them, though I do hope that this influx of POC actors on television isn’t because while the network casting process is becoming more welcoming, film casting is becoming less so.
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