Wolf Hall is back – but casting a mixed-race British-Egyptian as my ancestor Thomas Wyatt is absurd
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The late Hilary Mantel might have accepted a colour-blind Wolf Hall, but I don’t. Rather than a true account of King Henry VIII’s court, audiences are instead going to be spoon-fed yet more fake history driven by an on-screen representation agenda.
The new series, set to launch later this year or early next on the BBC, will see Jane Seymour’s mother, Lady Seymour (the grandmother of Edward VI), played by a mixed-race actress with Bahamian heritage.
I have enthusiasm for fictional series like Bridgerton employing diverse casts, but Lady Seymour was a real historical figure informed by her white privilege, as the woke cohorts would call it.
Colour-blind casting, or simply dishonest? Mantel herself seemed begrudgingly accepting of the practice, increasingly the new normal in the industry.
“It’s difficult for me, because to me they’re not characters, they’re people, and I have a very strong sense of them physically. But as soon as you move to stage or the screen, that must yield because you’re in the realm of representation. I think we have to take on board the new thinking.”
But Wolf Hall’s venture off the historical script arguably amounts to cultural appropriation in an era when white actors are no longer asked to play Othello.
Moreover, to portray English aristocrats as black or mixed-race is, conversely, an act of racism, as it suggests that ethnic minorities in Tudor Britain had the doors of society flung open to them, when in fact they led drear and oppressed lives.
Closer to home, or rather to my home, Thomas Wyatt, the first person to write sonnets in English, is being played by Amir El-Masry, a mixed-race Egyptian. Wyatt was an ancestor of mine and he was a Yorkshireman who had never been east of Calais.
I appreciate that it is the job of actors to act, and I have no theoretical quarrel with his being played by Mr El-Masry, who is a fine actor. But diverse casting, if it is to work at all, must have a logical grounding, particularly in an adaptation of a novel that prides itself on historical authenticity.
It must also work both ways. It must not be an up-ended seesaw.
If the logic of modern casting was followed across the board then white actors should also be given roles on the basis of colour-blindness. But in our cowardly new world there is no equity or freedom from moral indignation, no all-embracing tolerance, only snorts and objurgations. We have become incapable of imagining honourable intentions in those with whom we disagree.
Western society is more divided than ever as a result. Its distinguishing marks have become indignation, and resentment.
Such sentiments I do not like, and they advance the cause of minorities and racial harmony not a jot.
