Bryan Cranston - Wheelchair Controversy

[Deskdiary]

Should disabled character parts only be the preserve of disabled people?

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/bryan-cranston-the-upside-movie-disabled-character-kevin-hart-diversity-controversy-a8716641.html

Surely the point of being an actor is that you take on difficult and challenging parts, isn't it?

If disabled characters should only be portrayed by disabled actors, then presumably the specific disability should only go to actors with that disability - so in this particular case paraplegia. How many paraplegic actors are there? An actor without an arm is disabled, does that make him more qualified than Bryan Cranston to play the role?

[Peter Pedant]

does anyone in a wheelchair do?

In Breaking Bad they had a CP lad - who was er in a wheelchair - no ? Hey think of Oscar Pretorius ( he without feet for those um disabled with short memories) being asked why he played blind Tiresias in the Homer er poem
and him saying - because I am disabled....
but then admitting
" Ik kan de toekomst niet voorspellen"

hey look at that - nederlands - I cannot what to come not foresay - dutch is really easy

sozza readers I am trying to keep this discussion classical and yet trans-cultural - perhaps at the expense of perfect clarity

[Peter Pedant]

hey yeah - can you imagine the kapitan of Das Boot saying - the German filmn about a world war 2 sub "filming difficulties was not so much an issue of learning the words - but the fact that none of the crew had actually submerged in a submarine for any length of time"

and some not at all - any length of time

[Peter Pedant]

blimey the other gladiators in the film Gladiator would have had short lives
and slaves - they would all have to have been played by black african boys whipped by muslim .... teachers.. overseers .... trainers.....

[AuntLydia]

Roy Frank who played Walter White junior (Flynn) in Breaking Bad was not in a wheelchair. Although he suffers from Cerebral Palsy he actually had to act much more disabled in his role than he actually is in real life.

[Peter Pedant]

o Gawd as some on AB might exclaim as a thought crosses the mind,
in the film Van Gogh - getting an arteest is no difficulty

but handing him a cutthroat razor and telling him to cut his right ear orf....o gawd again and then finding an actress who is a prostitute for him to send it to....

Eek sidney carton ( it is a far finer things that I do ....) at the end of Tale of two Cities
and no takers for Marie Antoinette o OK perhaps the Young Marie
( I havent missed the point have I?)

anyway it makes a break from those awful samey Brexit threads

[Peter Pedant]

thank you Lidz - I er stand corrected

[Peter Pedant]

seven samurai

[ludwig]

There was a character in the American series ER that walked with a stick because of some disability. No mention was ever made of it in the story, and to this day I don't know whether the actor needed a stick or it was just the character. It was irrelevant, which is fine.

However, to say this character needs to use a stick to walk, so we need to find an actor that needs to use a stick to walk, is silly.

[AuntLydia]

To say 'this role is for someone who walks with a stick so lets see if we can find a suitable actor that walks with a stick' is not silly. It would only be silly if it HAD to be a disabled actor.

[Rockrose]

In Ben Hur whenever they showed someone missing a limb it was a person with a limb missing they used.

[QuizmasterG]

Hasn't Bryan Cranston already portrayed a one-armed colonel in Saving Private Ryan?
Presumably he has grown his arm back since then.
Actors play roles - that's their job!
Please! can anyone stop this PC nonsense!!!
There are more important issues to deal with in the world.

[ludwig]

// To say 'this role is for someone who walks with a stick so lets see if we can find a suitable actor that walks with a stick' is not silly. //

I didn't say it was.

// It would only be silly if it HAD to be a disabled actor. //

Agreed. That seems to be what some people want though.

[cassa333]

No you might have a disabled actor that is crap at acting.

It should always be the best actor gets the part. Sometimes it’s the most famous but that’s box office takings Winnie out.

Look at the Harry Potter stage play Hermaine is black but the films was a white girl.

[kvalidir]

Race rarely makes a difference to role unless it's vital and a plot point that someone is a certain race. I mean clearly it would matter if it was a film ABOUT Apartheid, but not at all Harry Potter for example, same in many cases with gender, men played all roles during Shakespeares time, now if you do a women only version of anything everyone loses their minds as though it's PC crap.

[Spicerack]

^No, just crap.

[kvalidir]

Why would having all men or all women doing Shakespeare for example necessarily make it crap though Spicey? Do you go to the theatre much to comment or is it just a kneejerk idea?

[dannyk13]

Kval, why do people wish to change the works of Shakespeare? His casts included both men and women.

[kvalidir]

...but originally all roles were played by men Danny (to pander to the PC crap of the day interestingly), so there are still quite a few all male Shakespearean productions and thus also now quite a few all female ones too, as it's interesting to see how the dynamics change creatively. It's not important, but neither is anything automatically 'crap' simply because it's an all male or all female cast.

[andy-hughes]

As kval points out, it is desireable to have an actor with the appropriate disability to play a role, but that does not mean that only a disabled actor can be cast - it's entirely down to suitability.

It would be a poor show - literally - if a substandard actor was given a role over and above a more suitable actor, simply because the former was disabled. That would be an insult to everyone involved.

[mushroom25]

//it is desireable to have an actor with the appropriate disability to play a role,//

if that were to be rigidly enforced, how would the Stephen Hawking biopic film had been made (without progressively disabling the actor)?