Mahershala Ali is asked about race 40 percent of the time, would like that number to shrink
Aux News Mahershala AliThough Mahershala Ali’s latest movie, Green Book, is a story about race relations in the civil rights era, Ali says that shouldn’t account for the 40 percent of the time he estimates that he finds himself discussing race in interviews.
Ali has been acting since 1993, and won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role in Moonlight in 2017. But, as he says in a joint interview for Variety with the star of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, John David Washington, that it wasn’t until he won the Oscar that he was able to focus conversations during a Q&A about his process rather than his race. “The audience gets to respect the approach of how an artist—who happens to be black—also takes a script and metabolizes it and transforms,” he says, adding “We spend so much of our time talking about color, that the transformation process of actors of color doesn’t get recognized. Not in a deeper way.” Ali also points out that white actors have more opportunities to discuss their craft, because they are never asked about race like how performers of color are.
Ali is slated to star in season three of HBO’s True Detective, where he’ll play Wayne Hays, a detective who’s investigating a crime involving two missing children in the Ozarks-set series. Ali, however, had to convince True Detective showrunner Nic Pizzolatto that the show’s lead cop could be black: “True Detective was written different[ly than how it turned out]. The lead was white, and the other cop was black … I could have played that second lead, the supporting character. But in my mind, I was like, ‘I’ve done this my entire career,” he says.
He then told Pizzolatto that “we don’t have to beat them over the head with the race element,” but that he encouraged him to think about how showing racism could serve the show and its viewers, who HBO is hoping will return after a less-than-well-received second season. “I came back to [Nic] and I was like, ‘I want to play that part.’ And he thought about it a couple of days, got back to me, and he was like, ‘Yo, let’s do this. I’m down.’”
Green Book is in theaters now, and True Detective season three premieres on HBO on January 13, 2019.
23 Comments
And he wasn’t even in that movie about Jesse Owens. That was Stephan James. Racist interviewers.
I’d like to ask him about The 4400.
Well, maybe make a movie like Snow Dogs 2 and see what they ask you about.
and get another oscar!
Yep. Dude isn’t a “black actor,” he’s an actor.
Exactly and an Oscar winning actor at that. I don’t often agree with the Academy (I find them horribly out of touch and no longer that relevant) however his win was just and deserving.
In a perfect world.. you are 100% correct.. the qualifier shouldn’t even be thought of.. since such qualifiers/descriptors invite negative evaluation..But we don’t live in a perfect world.. we don’t live in a world where race/gender are non-issues. So for many people he will always be a “black actor” (spoken aloud or not, the qualifier is always present)
*pop culture site frequently brings up race whenever discussing works of POC**same site thinks it can join in the snark when actor expresses umbrage at pop culture outlets doing this exact thing*
I feel for him, but it seems like a bit of a trap. If none of his interviews ever touched on race, he’d get beaten up for never addressing race, and interviewers would be taken to task for not giving him a platform to discuss race.
The interviewers could ask Viggo Mortensen or Peter Farrelly about race.
I assume they do already because of their role in this movie. Is that an incorrect assumption? I’m sure Viggo in particular would be happy to talk about anything outside the box of the normal celebrity questions, even if this were just some rom-com.
“Ali also points out that white actors … are never asked about race like how performers of color are.”
No. It just means they don’t have to ask solely him, the only Black person in the interview. There are plenty of times for him to have that conversation, but it should not be just on him per every Q& A he does for a film or show when other actors and actresses are in the room, preferably White, who need those questions asked to them.
The Frankfort School doesn’t care what he wants
Not really.. if you are interviewing Ali as a man (specifically a black man) (in hollywood or not) then the question is apt because its going to come upBut most of the interviews are about him as an actor and the roles he plays, but they focus on the racial element. We all like being acknowledged about what we DO (and the quality of that work) and being critiqued/judged on that work rather than it being about who/what we are.. since those are traits that are immutable.
I’m not upset at Ali, but this is pretty “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” reporting given the number of times media outlets have gotten reamed out around here or on sister blogs for allegedly failing to raise racial issues in connection with reporting on POC public figures. (And that’s to say nothing of the number of times POC public figures have gotten reamed out for allegedly failing to use their “platform” to discuss racial issues.)
On the blog situation.. that’s a little different since they are coming at the issue in a very narrow/specific focus.. (its like a food blog interviewing him on his latest role and asking about his eating habits/preferences.. well.. Duh.. of course its going to come up because its in the interest of the reader of that specific material/site. But when he’s interviewed by “generic” publications (Variety, Times, Hollywood reporter).. their focus should be about the part, his abilities as an actor, etc..
He is asked about race so often because identity politics is the dominant ideology of the Democratic Party, with which Hollywood, and broad sections of the upper middle-class and wealthy are aligned. It is surprising the author is not criticizing that Ali is not being asked about race enough.
Come to think of it, wasn’t McConaughey originally offered the Hart role in the first season? I don’t know who they had in mind for Cohle.
Too bad the Regressive Left, Intersectionalist religion zealots (the extremists currently destroying the left for all the sane people) want to do nothing else but talk about race, sex, gender, for infinity. They are making the world MORE racists with this garbage. It is the exact opposite of MLK. He would be disgusted by all their judging people by their skin and not their character as individuals. These Regressives have already secured Trump a second term. VOMIT!
How come there is no mention of his latest movie, Alita: Battle Angel, that just came to theatres?
The “left” managed to fed up even the people they were “helping”outstanding
The “left” managed to fed up even the people they were “helping”