A new BBC Drama written by Malorie Blackman is set to hit the screens that also stars Stormzy. In the opening episode of the series, where Europe has been colonised by Africa and the ruling classes (the Crosses) are black and the white population (the Noughts) are the slaves, the white characters’ names are mispronounced, plasters are dark brown and white people serve people of colour at a party.
Blackman said:
Now, there’s the realisation that diverse stories do make money, like the films Black Panther and Hidden Figures – it would once have been much harder to get them off the ground.
There’s an audience desperate for new content and new voices and I think a lot of people are waking up to that.
It’s all based on true stuff
The things he [Callum] goes through particularly in school happened to me, like asking my teachers where the black scientists were on the curriculum and being told there weren’t any. Or my first time in first class on a train and being accused of stealing the ticket.
Of course it doesn’t mean that, it just means that one of the things you are being judged on is not your skin colour. In my life when I’ve flown, only once in the last 40 years have I not been called over by customs to search my bags.
The Guardian is also reporting on this:
She revealed she had made a note of all the headlines comparing Kate Middleton to Meghan Markle and was frustrated and saddened at denials that race has played a part in the media’s differential treatment of the Duchess of Sussex.
When Kate was pregnant she was “tenderly touching her baby bump”, she said, “but when Meghan did it, she was ‘just doing it for attention’. Kate wore an off-the-shoulder dress to an event and was described as stunning, but when Meghan wore one – and as far as I could see the only difference was the colour [of the dress] – she was called vulgar … It was nasty.”
Asked her thoughts on racial fluidity and whether somebody could just “feel black”, she said: “It’s a tricky one. I believe in gender fluidity and that you can be born in the wrong body. With race, you can admire someone’s culture, but if you’re not born into it …
“Can I, for example, just turn around and say I am an Inuit because that’s how I want to identify? There’s more to it than that, it’s about being brought up in the culture. It’s an interesting thing to explore, maybe I’ll try and write a story about it!”
Blackman’s autobiography is due to be published by #Merky Books, founded by Stormzy, who has a cameo in the series. In one episode he plays a newspaper editor, a role created especially for him.
She felt positive that sensibilities like colour-blind casting in TV and film were beginning to catch up with the times. “That’s why I loved the recent BBC adaptation of A Christmas Carol when Mary Cratchit was played by Vinette Robinson.
“Some people complained that a woman of colour was playing her – they had no problems when Miss Piggy played the part though, did they?”
Meanwhile the BBC is coming under scrutiny for its move to ‘diversify’ period dramas as alluded to above. The BBC have said that it is their duty to see BAME actors appear in roles from novels and stories that were written where the characters in them were white in order to ensure BAME representation.
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