which relies on personal contacts, previous performances, and experiences of working

together. The casting of Dev Patel as David Copperfield has been described as ‘a landmark
instance of “colour-blind” casting’ (Clarke) but it does not seem to have come about
by ensuring that a wide range of diverse actors have been seen, as the BBC criteria advises. ‘In
all our conversations, we never spoke about another actor to play our lead than
Dev’ said producer Kevin Loader. ‘We often have lists for parts, but we never had a list
for David Copperfield’ (qtd. in Clarke). For Iannucci casting on merit depended on personal
knowledge: ‘[y]ou just want to cast the best person, and I honestly couldn’t think of
anyone more appropriate to play David Copperfield than Dev’ (qtd. in Hedges-Stocks).
Despite these doubts about policy at the macro-level and the different experiences of
actors at the micro-level, there are examples of colour-blind casting in British film and
television over the last decade which might seem noticeable to the audience. Changes
are taking place at the level of individual films/programmes and it is important to take
into account how they are offered to audiences who are not necessarily going to adopt
the mantra that ethnicity and race are not supposed to have an impact on the production. To
consider this in more detail, I will look at three films to demonstrate how this
new approach to casting might be understood. They offer examples of how BAME
actors are being cast in stories that are being adapted or retold and how that casting
shapes and is shaped by possible interpretations.
CASTING IN PERIOD DRAMA
‘I feel very disheartened’ Carmen Monroe told Stephen Bourne in 1996, ‘every time
I look at the screen and see something like Pride & Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility that will
exclude . . . minority ethnic artists’ (49). Twenty years later, Parminder Nagra had the
same feeling. ‘All those British period dramas are really well done’ she told Dickson, ‘but
there’s a yearning there: “Can I please just see somebody like me on TV?”’. Attesting to
the dominance of period drama in British screen production, Dickson concludes his call
for colour-blind casting by asking, ‘[i]s it so difficult to imagine a Jane Austen production with
performers of black or Asian heritage?’ It is difficult perhaps because whiteness has been a
generic marker of the classic adaptation. Certainly, Rachel Carroll, one
of the few British academics to have looked at BAME casting, wrote in 2014 that classic
adaptations still presented ‘the British Isles as exclusively populated by white men and
women’ and operated as ‘a significant branch of often prestigious cultural production
in which the exclusion of non-white people is naturalised’ (27).
The BFI, however, refused to make an exception for period dramas and adaptations
in its diversity standards. One response in its Frequently Asked Questions leaflet concerned
onscreen representation in films with a ‘historical setting’ or ‘based on a traditional narrative’.
The answer makes it clear that change is expected: ‘If your film is based on a
familiar literary/historical narrative, when we consider your request we will ask: what
is the purpose of re-telling this story? We are looking for unfamiliar and perhaps unexpected
approaches’. Producers are therefore advised to
provide complex representations of characters normally relegated to two-dimensional roles;
tell the story from a different perspective that aligns with, or sheds light on, the focus areas
of the Standards;
revise traditional elements to increase representation and alter frames of reference. (FAQ 6)