Dames clash over casting
Dame Maureen Lipman criticises casting of Dame Helen Mirren as Golda Meir; Dame Esther Rantzen calls it “cancel culture”
“JEWFACE” was the word Sarah Silverman used last year to describe the casting of non-Jewish actors as Jews, such as Kathryn Hahn in a Joan Rivers biopic.
Now the debate has taken a turn for the prestigious, with Dame Maureen Lipman weighing in on the BBC against the casting of Dame Helen Mirren in the title role of Golda, an upcoming biopic about Israel’s first woman prime minister.
To illustrate the alleged wrong done, Lipman compared it to a hypothetical casting of Ben Kingsley as Nelson Mandela.
A word like “Jewface” recalls a range of cringeworthy-to-dangerous depictions of different races throughout film history. So, does it matter that in this case, the casting was overseen by director Guy Nattiv, who is himself Israeli and Jewish? And does it matter if the actor said of the role, “I only hope I do her justice”?
In response, yet another Dame, Dame Esther Rantzen, has contributed a backlash to the backlash, arguing via the Jewish Chronicle in favour of freedom of casting, in cases where actors are creating “authentic characters rather than racial caricatures”. Rantzen protested against the criticism of Mirren as “cancel culture”.
The Joan Rivers project was scuttled in the end, which Showtime executives attributed to a lack of permission from the Rivers’ estate to use Rivers’ material.
Still, the ordeal makes Dame good reading.
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