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      Losing Control With Riz Ahmed

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on Netflix“The thing that doesn’t exist in culture is someone like me,” said Riz Ahmed, a British actor-rapper. “But that’s how you stretch culture, by bringing yourself to it.”Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexThe Great ReadThe ProjectionistLosing Control With Riz AhmedThe actor’s process is so intense, his “Sound of Metal” director refused to share dailies with him. But after all that overthinking, formidable instincts kicked in.“The thing that doesn’t exist in culture is someone like me,” said Riz Ahmed, a British actor-rapper. “But that’s how you stretch culture, by bringing yourself to it.”Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 28, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETTo call it the worst night of sleep Riz Ahmed ever had would imply that any sleep was had at all. It was the night before Ahmed began shooting “Sound of Metal” — an intense, critically acclaimed Amazon drama that has vaulted the 38-year-old into the best-actor Oscar race — and he could do little but stare at the ceiling as adrenaline coursed through his body, robbing it of rest.This wasn’t the first time Ahmed had dealt with preshoot paranoia: Before the British actor embarked on “The Night Of,” “Four Lions” and “Nightcrawler,” he found himself similarly sleepless, with an uneasy mind that could not be soothed. Still, every time he makes a new movie, Ahmed convinces himself that it’ll be different — maybe meditation will help, or even a glass of hot milk before bed.It’s never different. “Nothing’s going to put that animal to rest when it’s growling,” he said. “So I just don’t sleep.”Several restless nights into shooting “Sound of Metal,” Ahmed began to overthink things. Maybe it wasn’t the nerves that were keeping him awake, or the thrilling, terrifying challenge of embodying Ruben, a punk-metal drummer in recovery from heroin addiction who struggles with the onset of hearing loss.Maybe it was the mattress.The more Ahmed fixated on it, the more certain he became. He ran it by his director, Darius Marder, who seemed skeptical, but during a break from shooting Ahmed still peeled off to make a purchase. “I went and I bought a new mattress, man,” he said, laughing about it now.“We bought him two new mattresses,” Marder would tell me later.Did things get any better? Sort of yes, sort of no. The new mattresses hardly helped, but all that sleeplessness actually paid off. “When you’re too tired to think,” Ahmed explained, “you just have to let other things take over.”And that feeling of being so overwhelmed by a project that you’ve got to give in and allow yourself to be guided by pure instinct — well, as much as Ahmed may overthink the path that gets him there, he also knows that state is the exact thing he’s so often seeking.“It’s when you release control that the interesting things happen,” he said. “That’s when your subconscious will start speaking in tongues, when you can’t articulate the words yourself, when your body has an intelligence and wisdom that you hand the reins over to. Creativity is more physical than we realize.”Ahmed in a scene from the movie. He plays a punk-metal drummer facing both addiction issues and hearing loss.Credit…Amazon StudiosThis is the way Ahmed talks, in torrents of passionate philosophy. He offers a raft of ideas for every question he’s asked, then undergirds those answers by quoting from Tolstoy, Rumi and Pixar. When Ahmed’s big brown eyes widen and he really gets going, as he did early this month while we spoke via video, he can sound like a terrifically engaging podcast played at 1.5-x speed.“He’s a bit of a savant, like a supercomputer,” Marder said of his Oxford-educated star. When he met with Ahmed for “Sound of Metal,” Marder regarded that fearsome intellect as both an asset to the film and a challenge to be overcome.“I felt if he were to build such a solid foundation for this character that he could let go of that incredibly adept frontal lobe of his and just trust in his instincts,” Marder said, “then there was a performance in him that could be really transcendent.”After a series of supporting roles in “Venom,” “The Sisters Brothers” and other movies, Ahmed was eager for an all-consuming challenge, and he recognized a kindred spirit in Marder, who had spent 13 years searching for stars who could match his full-throttle commitment to the movie.“I basically was trying to scare actors and see if they were up for it,” Marder said. “I told one actress she had to shave her head, because I knew it was the thing she wouldn’t do.” (Though the female lead in “Sound of Metal” is played by Olivia Cooke, actors like Matthias Schoenaerts and Dakota Johnson were previously attached to the project.)Marder would dare actors to drop out, and most of them obliged. But Ahmed wanted a director who could push him out of his comfort zone. “I think we both like the intoxication of feeling overwhelmed by a creative obsession,” Ahmed said. “We like not being able to feel the bottom of the swimming pool.”Before filming, the director said, “Riz’s process was very intense. It was not a chill time.”Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesSo the London-based Ahmed uprooted himself to New York in 2018 to spend eight months preparing for “Sound of Metal.” Each day, he would spend two hours learning American Sign Language, two hours on drum practice, two hours sculpting his body with a personal trainer, and the rest of the day with his acting coach.“You prepare like an obsessive psychopath,” Ahmed said, “and then you turn up like someone who doesn’t know how to tie their shoelaces and you see what happens.”Still, his eagerness often ran up against his tendency to overthink things. “I have to tell you, the time leading up to this shoot was so thick with fear,” Marder said. “Riz’s process was very intense. It was not a chill time.”Marder would often refuse Ahmed’s requests for further script analysis, and the day before the shoot, as Ahmed began steeling himself for a sleepless night, Marder came to visit and said he wouldn’t allow the actor to watch dailies of his performance.“He absolutely lost it,” Marder said. “He said, ‘This is part of my process, I have to look at dailies, I have to analyze.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re not going to.’”The standoff was broken only when Marder said, “Riz, I’m not going to be your enabler.’” After having spent months immersed in the language of recovery, that idea made Ahmed laugh. They parted with a hug, and a tired but game Ahmed showed up on set the next day, ready to trust his instincts and give himself over to the character.The result is a career-best performance, intimate, persuasive and heartbreaking. And for all of Ahmed’s well-practiced physical verisimilitude — you’ll believe every drum solo and signed exclamation — it’s a performance he ultimately sells with those striking, vulnerable eyes. As an actor, he doesn’t need much more.“To Riz’s credit, he trusted me,” Marder said. “It was impulse. It was non-analytical. It was scary. But it was alive.”I asked Marder if he had come to any conclusions about the essential tension at the heart of his leading man. What does it mean when a self-described control freak like Ahmed feels such a strong gravitational pull to projects that he hopes will overwhelm him?Marder laughed, because something was occurring to him for the first time. “Well, I think that might actually be the definition of an artist,” he said.He took on so much in 2016, he started to lose his center: “I was willing to diligently train for the validation of others.”Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesHERE IS A PARTIAL INVENTORY of Riz Ahmed’s projects from his breakthrough year of 2016:— Two television shows, “The Night Of” and “The OA”;— Four feature films, including the blockbusters “Star Wars: Rogue One” and “Jason Bourne”;— One essay contributed to the best-selling book “The Good Immigrant”;— And two major musical moments, a guest appearance on the “Hamilton” mixtape and the album “Cashmere,” released by Ahmed and the rapper Heems as part of their hip-hop duo Swet Shop Boys.It was a lot, for good and for ill. In December of that year, Ahmed took to Instagram for a celebratory look back that sounded more than a little exhausted. “Only a year ago, for various reasons, I wasn’t sure I could carry on doing this,” he wrote. “I had a realisation through some really tough moments that we have no control in this life. And it got me down, but then, seeing no other way forwards, I had to embrace this helplessness.”Over Zoom four years later, I read the caption to Ahmed, who blinked twice. “When did I write that?” he said. “I have no memory of that. Wow. Wow. I had a bit of a burnout.”Ahmed has always been eager to pile his plate high. “Like Ruben, I rely heavily on being obsessively busy,” he said. A successful career as an actor practically demands an itinerant lifestyle and that came naturally to Ahmed, who grew up in Wembley, London, with a father who worked for the Pakistani merchant navy: “He was away from home a lot, so maybe I’ve internalized this idea that what you’re meant to do as a working man is go out of the house and cover as much ground as possible in the world.”Or maybe, Ahmed mused, a child of immigrants will always feel an innate sense of wanderlust. “There’s a constant narrative of home being somewhere else, home’s the next place you’re going to get to,” he said. “But if home is always the next place, then you’re building a tent on quicksand. The work itself is the place you can live, maybe.”So live there he did, working steadily then heavily, and in the process becoming the first Muslim and the first South Asian man to win an acting Emmy for his transformative role as an accused murderer in “The Night Of.” But around that time, after having been pulled in so many different directions, Ahmed began to lose his center. Worse, the creative spirit that animates him had come to feel less like a wild creature and more like a circus animal.Darius Marder and Ahmed on set. The director said of his star: “He’s a bit of a savant, like a supercomputer.”Credit…Amazon Studios“It was something I was willing to diligently train for the validation of others,” Ahmed said, “whether that’s the ‘bravo’ of an audience or the ‘well done’ of a director or the retweets of music fans or thinking about what the people in my community need from me.” Taking on too much had left him alienated from the things he loved doing, and guilty for even feeling that way.“I think that’s a byproduct of a lot of things,” he said, “like feeling a bit of a burden of representation on your shoulders, and realizing that you might occupy space that many others don’t.”In his essay for “The Good Immigrant,” Ahmed wrote about the toll of being racially profiled in airports and auditions, and the implicit instructions he felt to leave a part of himself at the door if he wanted to be waved through. “It’s being told you are not enough,” he said. “You are not the right shape, size, color, you’re not what people expect, you don’t fit into any of these archetypes.’”But why shouldn’t he have the opportunity to give all of himself to something, instead of contorting to fit into ready-made boxes? “The thing that doesn’t exist in culture is someone like me,” Ahmed said, growing animated. “Characters like Dev Patel don’t exist, bro! Dev Patel’s a 6-foot-5 black-belt Indian dude from northwest London, and I don’t see that character on the screen.”That’s why Ahmed found the overwhelming specificity of his “Sound of Metal” role so attractive. He knows that a man like Ruben — a deaf, heroin-addicted American with bleach-blond hair and a buff body covered in tattoos — might seem worlds away from a garrulous actor-rapper who studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford.“You prepare like an obsessive psychopath,” Ahmed said, “and then you turn up like someone who doesn’t know how to tie their shoelaces and you see what happens.”Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York Times“But that’s how you stretch culture, by bringing yourself to it,” Ahmed said. And the chance to pour every part of himself into this role paid personal dividends, too: “I feel more connected to me now than I’ve ever felt by going on a journey through space and time and inhabiting another body. You leave home to return home.”There were lessons learned from playing Ruben, as well as lessons he’ll keep having to relearn, Ahmed admitted. “Ruben is on a journey to try and learn the value of stillness and that’s something that I think I can get better at,” he said. His past year, though tempered by the pandemic, was still an eventful one: Ahmed put out a hip-hop concept album, “The Long Goodbye,” shot the film “Invasion” alongside Octavia Spencer, and married the novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza.There’s always going to be a lot going on with Riz Ahmed — that’s just the kind of person he is. Still, Marder sensed a change in his actor on the other side of making “Sound of Metal.”“I do think it marked this kind of crossroads in his life as an artist and as a person,” Marder said. “Maybe it’s not a mistake that he’s married now. He’s taking these big moments in life, these big changes, and giving himself to something else that is also out of his control.”Ahmed agreed. That desire to overwhelm himself, he said, is a reminder to live less in his head and more in the moment.“If we don’t control anything, then maybe every single thing in your life is a gift,” Ahmed said. “Wow! That’s amazing, you know?” And he wasn’t talking about the sort of gifts that awards season can bring, like the Gotham Award for best actor his “Sound of Metal” performance earned in early January.“I mean the bird on the windowsill, dude,” Ahmed said. “Or a tree. Or this breath.” He closed his eyes and sucked in all the air he could, then smiled. “Or the way it cools my insides when it comes in,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Sundance Film Festival Forges Ahead, Led With 'Warrior Spirit'

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixTabitha Jackson became director of the Sundance Film Festival early last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexWith ‘Warrior Spirit,’ a New Leader Pushes Sundance ForwardSince taking over as the film festival’s director, Tabitha Jackson has had to figure out how to hold a cinema showcase during a pandemic. Her virtual solution starts Thursday.Tabitha Jackson became director of the Sundance Film Festival early last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 27, 2021Updated 2:28 p.m. ETShortly after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Tabitha Jackson, then the director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, was hosting the annual opening reception for documentary filmmakers at the festival in Park City, Utah. The British Ms. Jackson, who is mixed race and gay, took the stage, knowing many in the audience were unsettled by what had happened and what was ahead.She struggled to find the words to convey what people were feeling. Instead, in a reverse Samson moment, she asked the filmmaker Sandi Dubowski (“Trembling Before G-d”) to start chopping off her dreadlocks, which she had been growing for 20 years. The crowd went wild.“It was a release of energy,” she said in a recent interview. “A nonverbal expression of something needing to change around me leading this program and around us as a community. A little warrior spirit and also a slight howl, since we didn’t know what was going to come.”Ms. Jackson, 50, now finds herself as a leader in another moment of wider uncertainty. She took over as the director of the Sundance Film Festival in February, right before the pandemic truly took hold in the United States, and has spent the past year pivoting over and over again in order to get ready for the 37th edition of the independent cinema showcase.Set to begin Thursday in a mostly virtual setting (in-person screenings will happen in some art-house theaters in 28 cities with lower virus numbers like Atlanta, Houston and Memphis), Sundance 2021 is a lofty experiment. It will allow those who have never been able to share in the snowy ski-town extravaganza — because of either cost or the remote location — to experience it for the first time. With screening times set for each film, and live question-and-answer sessions to follow, Ms. Jackson and her team are trying to recreate the unique energy of Sundance, which has been the premier destination of American independent film for close to four decades.“It was initially depressing when we realized we couldn’t put on the festival in the way we had before,” Ms. Jackson said. “But as we began to plan, it became liberating when we thought, ‘Well, what can we do this year that we couldn’t do before?’”Ms. Jackson received roars of approval when she asked the filmmaker Sandi Dubowski to cut off her dreadlocks at the 2017 festival, when she led Sundance’s documentary program.Credit…Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Sundance Film FestivalThe decision to not hold the festival in Utah was made in June. But the organization had to change direction yet again in December when rising coronavirus numbers in California prompted the cancellation of a large number of drive-in screenings that had been set for the Rose Bowl.“It’s been a roller-coaster ride, but the rails that are keeping us stable and secure are our purpose around independent filmmaking,” Ms. Jackson said. “We know why we are doing this.”Ms. Jackson joined Sundance in 2013, after spending more than 20 years in London working for the BBC and Channel 4 and producing works like Nick Cave’s “20,000 Days on Earth,” a quasi-documentary that purported to show a singular day in the indie musician’s life, one filled with invented events filmed at fictitious locations.Those who know her often describe Ms. Jackson as curious, open and possessed of a quick wit. She is also committed to helping filmmakers.“She could actually host one of the top late-night talk shows, she’s that funny and witty,” said Diane Weyermann, chief content officer at Participant and a former director of the Sundance documentary program. This year, Participant will debut two films at Sundance: the documentary “My Name Is Pauli Murray” about a nonbinary Black lawyer, activist and poet who influenced both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, and “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the Warner Bros. film that chronicles the story of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party.The documentarian Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) is bringing three films to the festival with his Concordia Studio. He said Ms. Jackson was bringing welcome change to an institution that had not evolved much over the decades.“I like that it’s no longer just a festival for the few — the few people who could go, the few people who could get tickets,” he said. “It’s a brave new world, and she’s being brave.”When she took over the documentary program, Ms. Jackson recognized that she did not want the genre to become “the preserve of the elite,” open only to those who could spend years raising money and making films.Sly Stone in the opening-night film, “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.Credit…Mass Distraction MediaIn 2015, Ms. Jackson conducted a question-and-answer session with the first-time filmmaker Nanfu Wang in front of a slew of investors. Ms. Wang was looking for funds to complete her film “Hooligan Sparrow,” which follows activists protesting the case of six elementary-school girls who were sexually abused by their principal in China. Ms. Wang had been forced to film surreptitiously and smuggle the footage out of the country in order to complete the movie.Normally, filmmakers have a producer on hand to address the financial needs of their project, but since Ms. Wang didn’t have one, Ms. Jackson led the Q. and A. in order to introduce her to the proper financiers. The discussion led to her receiving the funds she needed to finish the work. Ms. Wang will debut her fourth feature documentary, “In the Same Breath,” which tracks the spread of Covid-19 from Wuhan, China, to the United States, at this year’s festival.“Tabitha speaks like a philosopher,” Ms. Wang said. “I felt like she saw me, not only because I was making this film about the Chinese human rights activists, but she cared as much about my background and how I became who I am today.”That ethos to try to give voice to those not always permitted to participate is personal to Ms. Jackson. A mixed-race girl adopted by white parents who later divorced, Ms. Jackson was raised in a village in rural England and learned to move between groups.“I’ve come to enjoy inhabiting the edge of things, the in-between space,” she said upon receiving an industry award in 2018. “What began as a survival mechanism is now my most comfortable place.”The programming of this year’s truncated seven-day festival illustrates those in-between places. With 72 features, down from the usual 120, Sundance will highlight movies from a diverse group of creators: 50 percent are female directors, 51 percent are filmmakers of color, 15 percent are directors who identify as L.G.B.T.Q., and 4 percent are nonbinary.“Passing,” starring Ruth Negga, left, and Tessa Thompson, is one of the more anticipated films that will debut at Sundance.Credit…Eduard GrauThe opening-night film comes from Ahmir Thompson, the Roots drummer known as Questlove. Titled “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” it is a documentary that tracks the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, an event held to celebrate African-American music that happened the same summer as Woodstock.“Twenty minutes after Tabitha saw the film, she said not only do we want the film, we want it for the opening night and we want it for the U.S. competition,” a producer, Jon Kamen, said. “Usually, you don’t know right away. Usually, it’s all a little wishy-washy.”Ms. Jackson said she and her team, led by the director of programming, Kim Yutani, had to re-pitch the festival to many creators who were wary that the virtual environment wouldn’t be a great way to debut their work. One person they didn’t have to convince was the producer Nina Yang Bongiovi, who with her partner Forest Whitaker has had movies in competition at Sundance five out of the last seven years.They will be there this year with “Passing,” from the actress-turned-first-time-director Rebecca Hall. The film, set in 1920 and starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, tracks the story of two African-American women who can “pass” as white.“When I looked at the screen and saw Tabitha and Kim — two inclusive, diverse women — telling me and my team that our film is loved and embraced and to please come be a part of this, that meant a lot,” Ms. Yang Bongiovi said of the Zoom call when the film was accepted.“I like that it’s no longer just a festival for the few,” one filmmaker said of Ms. Jackson’s leadership.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesDespite the challenges of the past year, there have been some benefits. Ms. Jackson has been able to quarantine for most of the time in Connecticut with the documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson (“Dick Johnson Is Dead”), whom she married last year at Sundance, on the first day of the festival. They recently bought a home with the filmmaker Ira Sachs and the artist Boris Torres, who co-parent Ms. Johnson’s 9-year old twins.That has given Ms. Johnson a ringside seat to Ms. Jackson’s process.“What’s interesting about Tabitha is she has so many perspectives given where she comes from and what her life is,” Ms. Johnson said. “She is endlessly curious about the permutations of racism around the world and the ways we struggle with identity. I think there is a real sense of how do we keep pushing for this new landscape and not be blinded by simple solutions.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity Officer

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity OfficerMarcia Sells has been brought on to rethink equity and inclusion at the largest performing arts institution in the United States.Marcia Sells, who has been hired as the first chief diversity officer in the Metropolitan Opera’s history.Credit…Eileen BarassoJan. 25, 2021Updated 1:32 p.m. ETMarcia Sells — a former dancer who became an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and the dean of students at Harvard Law School — has been hired as the first chief diversity officer of the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts institution in the United States.Her appointment, which the Met announced on Monday, is something of a corrective to the company’s nearly 140-year history and a response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020. It’s also a conscious step toward inclusivity by a major player in an industry in which some Black singers, including Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman, have found stardom, but diversity has lagged in orchestras, staff and leadership.Since last summer, cultural institutions across the country have made changes as the Black Lives Matter movement drew scrutiny to racial inequities in virtually every corner of the arts world. The Met was no exception: The company announced plans to open next season with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first opera by a Black composer, directed by James Robinson and Camille A. Brown, who will become the first Black director to lead a production on the Met’s main stage. It also named three composers of color — Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery and Joel Thompson — to its commissioning program.But to make broader changes at the Met, an institution with a long payroll and a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the Met is turning to Ms. Sells. As a member of the senior management team, she will report to Peter Gelb, the general manager. The human resources department will be brought under her direction, and her purview will be broad: the Met in its entirety, including the board.“Sometimes horrible events like the killing of George Floyd catalyze people, and they realize this is something we need to do — at the Met and across the arts,” Ms. Sells said in an interview about her plans to make the Met a more inclusive company that values the diversity of its staff and the audiences it serves.Mr. Gelb described Ms. Sells as an “ideal” candidate. “Not only does she have a history of accomplishment, but she also has a knowledge of the performing arts, having been involved in them herself,” he said in an interview. “And she loves opera, which is definitely a plus.”Ms. Sells began dancing as a 4-year-old in Cincinnati, an arts-rich city where she found herself both onstage and in the audience of the storied Music Hall, and where she saw a young Kathleen Battle sing as a student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.“It had been part of my growing up to experience art,” she said.She later joined Arthur Mitchell’s company, Dance Theater of Harlem, then remained in New York to attend Barnard College and Columbia Law School. Ms. Sells described herself as “an affirmative action baby,” and said that as both a dancer and a law student she had encountered racism, both overt and insidious, that made her feel unwelcome.Ms. Sells recalled, for instance, a judge in the mid-1980s who told her that witnesses had to wait outside the courtroom. She said that she was actually an assistant district attorney, and he replied, “Wow, things have changed.”Diversity has been at the fore of her work as an administrator — at places including Columbia, the N.B.A. and eventually Harvard Law, where she has been the dean of students since 2015. Her mandate at the Met won’t be too far from that of Harvard, another institute often perceived as elite to the point of exclusivity.“It’s not just that you want to get it right,” Ms. Sells said. “There are a lot of eyes on you, but it’s a huge opportunity to show the way, as well as learn from other organizations that don’t have as big a name, are not as well known, and help shine a light on that work and on them.”She plans to start at the Met in late February. Among her early tasks will be to conceive a diversity, equity and inclusion plan that could be implemented across hiring, artistic planning and engagement; she will also examine structural inequities at the Met, and work with the marketing and development departments to broaden the company’s audience and donor base.The Met has been shut down because of the pandemic since last March, and most of its workers have been furloughed without pay since April. It is facing a major labor dispute with its unions, as well as more than $150 million in lost revenue from the theater’s closure. But Mr. Gelb said that the company hopes to receive assistance for diversity-related costs from foundations.What those costs are will become clearer as Ms. Sells settles into her new job. She said that she was ready, and motivated by the company’s recent recognition “of how structurally or historically the Met has not felt welcoming to people of color” and the range of possibilities for change.“I truly believe,” Ms. Sells said, “that this is the Met’s moment.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Theater

      ‘Bridgerton’s’ Approach to Race and Casting Has Precedent Onstage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Notebook‘Bridgerton’s’ Approach to Race and Casting Has Precedent OnstageThere’s been much discussion about the presence of Black actors in Regency England on the Netflix show, but performers of color have been playing historical roles in London theaters for decades.Golda Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte in the Netflix series “Bridgerton.”Credit…Liam Daniel/NetflixJan. 21, 2021, 3:42 a.m. ETLONDON — As is so often the case, the theater got there first.I’m referring to the approach to race and casting in “Bridgerton,” the sartorially splendid Netflix study in hyperactive Regency-era hormones that everyone’s talking about. Much has been made of the presence across the eight-part series of Black actors populating a Jane Austen-style landscape that is usually shown onscreen as all white.In fact, as London theater observers of a certain generation can attest, this has long been common practice onstage here, across a range of titles and historical periods. That’s been true whether it’s been part of Britain’s pioneering interest in colorblind casting or, as with “Bridgerton,” when productions have played with audience expectations about race to make a point.Either way, the prevailing desire has been to fashion a theatrical world that speaks to the multicultural reality of the country. The idea behind casting a Black actor as a Maine villager (in “Carousel”) or a Viennese court composer (in “Amadeus”) isn’t documentary verisimilitude; rather, it’s to make clear that such time-honored stories belong to all of us, regardless of race.So it seems entirely logical that “Bridgerton” features Black talent — including regulars on the London stage — as nobles and royalty. Among them is Golda Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte, a casting choice intended to reflect the view of some historians that King George III’s wife was biracial.Regé-Jean Page as Simon Basset in “Bridgerton.”Credit…Liam Daniel/NetflixAdjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury.Credit…Liam Daniel/NetflixIt’s not long in “Bridgerton” before Simon Basset, an eligible Black aristocrat, announces himself with star-making swagger, and no shortage of naked flesh, in the sultry form of newcomer Regé-Jean Page. No less commanding is the Black actress Adjoa Andoh, who arches a mean eyebrow as Simon’s mentor of sorts, Lady Danbury. (She led the cast of a 2019 production of “Richard II” at Shakespeare’s Globe that was performed entirely by actresses of color.)Watching these performers swoop onto the screen, I was reminded of the comparable dazzle some decades back when the actress Josette Simon, who is Black, made her National Theater debut in a 1990 production of Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall,” playing Maggie, a character thought to have been based on Miller’s second wife, Marilyn Monroe. Gone was that play’s previously blonde-wigged heroine: Instead, the director Michael Blakemore’s production raised new possibilities about the relationship between Miller’s male lead, the liberal-leaning lawyer Quentin, and the singing star and seductress who becomes his wife.James Laurenson and Josette Simon in “After the Fall” at the National Theater in London in 1990.Credit…Alastair Muir/ShutterstockThat show removed the play from the realm of gossip — that’s to say, how much was Miller revealing about the famously doomed actress to whom he was married? Suddenly, a comparatively minor piece from the playwright seemed both more substantial and more moving, and Simon, who went on to play Cleopatra for the Royal Shakespeare Company just a few years ago, enjoyed a deserved moment of glory.The National Theater has kept pace with “After the Fall” in its casting ever since. Two years later, Nicholas Hytner’s revelatory revival of “Carousel” brought the clarion-voiced Black actor Clive Rowe an Olivier nomination for his role as the sweet, fish-loving Mr. Snow; in 2003, another landmark Hytner staging, “Henry V,” put the Black stage and screen star Adrian Lester in the title role.That fiery modern-dress production, with its evocations of the Iraq war, reminded audiences that combat can be blind to skin color — so why shouldn’t kingship? Lester triumphed in the part, as he had across town at the Donmar Warehouse in 1996 when he became the first Black performer to play Bobby in a major production of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical “Company.”Adrian Lester as Henry V at the National Theater in 2003.Credit…Ivan Kyncl/ArenaPALThese days, casting across the racial spectrum mostly passes without comment here. But it’s instructive to note the immediate retaliation, in 2018, when the theater critic Quentin Letts, then writing for the Daily Mail, questioned the Royal Shakespeare Company’s casting of Leo Wringer, a Black actor, in a forgotten restoration comedy, “The Fantastic Follies of Mrs. Rich,” written in 1700.“Was Mr. Wringer cast because he is Black?” Letts inquired rhetorically in his review. “If so, the R.S.C.’s clunking approach to politically correct casting has again weakened its stage product.” The company’s artistic director, Gregory Doran, shot back a statement comparing Letts to “an old dinosaur, raising his head from the primordial swamp.”Sometimes, as with a recent, and remarkable, “Amadeus” that featured the vibrant Black actor Lucian Msamati in the role of the Italian composer Antonio Salieri, the casting is colorblind, which means that the performer has been chosen irrespective of race. Elsewhere, as with the Young Vic’s “Death of a Salesman” in 2019, a conscious choice has been made — in that instance, to present the Loman family as Black to change our perspective on a familiar play.“Bridgerton” looks at first as if it may be taking the first route, only to counter that assumption later on, when a surprise discussion among the characters steers the drama toward the second. “Color and race are part of the show,” the series’s creator, Chris Van Dusen, told The New York Times last month.“Bridgerton” harks back to a vanished England of corsets and chastity, while nodding toward the diverse society of today. That dual focus — the ability, from its casting onward, to straddle two worlds at once — is something that has been long understood on the London stage. At a time when London playhouses remain closed, such memories are the stuff of enjoyable reflection. I only hope that, if the second season of “Bridgerton” that Netflix has hinted at ever arrives, I will be squeezing it in between visits to the theater.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Has a Black Hero. In Denmark, a White Actor Dubs the Voice.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPixar’s ‘Soul’ Has a Black Hero. In Denmark, a White Actor Dubs the Voice.The casting has fueled a debate about structural racism and fanned anger about stereotyping and prejudice in European-language voice-overs, even when films have main characters of color.Jamie Foxx is the voice of the main character in “Soul,” Joe Gardner. In some dubbed versions for European release, white actors have taken that role.Credit…Disney/PixarJan. 16, 2021, 6:09 a.m. ETCOPENHAGEN — Like most of their counterparts around the world, Danish film critics initially greeted “Soul,” Pixar’s first animated feature to focus on Black characters and African-American culture, with rapture, hailing its sensitive, joyful portrayal of a jazz musician on a quest to live a meaningful life.The film was described as “a miracle,” by one reviewer in Denmark, “beautiful and life-giving” by another.What the Danish press did not initially focus on, by and large, was the characters’ race. But that changed after the movie’s release on Dec. 25, when realization spread that the Danish-language version had been dubbed primarily by white actors. This is also the case in many other European-language versions of “Soul.”While in most countries, the film’s voice-over casting has barely registered with the public, in Portugal, more than 17,000 have signed a petition calling on Pixar to remake the local edition with actors of color. “This movie is not just another movie, and representation matters,” the petition states.Joe Gardner, the main character in “Soul,” is Pixar’s first Black protagonist. and the studio took steps to accurately represent African-American culture, hiring Kemp Powers as a co-director and installing a “cultural trust” to safeguard the story’s authenticity. The actor Jamie Foxx, who voices Joe in the English-language original, told The New York Times, “To be the first Black lead in a Pixar film feels like a blessing.”In the Danish version, Joe is voiced by Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who is white. When the national newspaper Berlingske interviewed scholars and activists who expressed their disappointment about this and suggested that the casting was an example of structural racism, a fiery controversy erupted, prompting Lie Kaas to issue a statement about why he had accepted the role.Nikolaj Lie Kaas, a Danish actor, voices Joe Gardiner’s part in the Danish version of “Soul.”Credit…Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images“My position with regards to any job is very simple,” he wrote on Facebook. “Let the man or woman who can perform the work in the best possible way get the job.”Asta Selloane Sekamane, one of the activists who criticized the casting in the Berlingske article, said in an interview that no one can claim there wasn’t enough Black talent to fill the main roles, because actors of color were hired to voice some of the minor parts. “It can’t be the constant excuse, this idea that we can’t find people who live up to our standards,” she added. “That’s an invisible bar that ties qualification to whiteness.”Mira Skadegard, a professor at Aalborg University in Denmark who researches discrimination and inequality, said the resistance to accusations of structural racism was unsurprising. “In Denmark, we have a long history of denial when it comes to racism, and a deep investment in the ideal of equality,” she said.“We don’t really understand this as a critique of institutions and structures; we see it as a critique of who we are,” she added.In Denmark and Portugal, dubbing is generally reserved for animation and for children’s programs. But in other European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, most mainstream films from abroad are dubbed, and the practice is seen as an art in its own right — one that rests on the practitioners’ ability to make themselves unobtrusive.“The best dubbing should pass by completely undetected,” said Juan Logar, a leading Spanish dubbing director and voice actor.“My job is to find the voice that best matches the original,” said Logar. “Black, white, Asian, it doesn’t matter.”Charles Rettinghaus, a German dubbing artist, expressed a similar sentiment. In his 40-year career, he has been the voice of actors including Jean-Claude Van Damme and Javier Bardem, but he said he felt a special connection with Jamie Foxx, whom he has covered in more than 20 films, including the German version of “Soul.”Although he is white, Rettinghaus said he had not felt pressured to step away from any Black roles, adding that the same opportunities should apply to actors of all races. “It doesn’t matter if you are Black, you should be and are allowed to dub anything,” he said. “Why shouldn’t you play a white actor or an Indian or an Asian?”Kaze Uzumaki, a Black colleague of Rettinghaus, said it was more complicated than that. Uzumaki dubs the character of Paul in “Soul” and has lent his voice to the German versions of dozens of other American films and television series. Almost without exception, his roles were originally played by actors of color.“At first, I really didn’t like it,” he said. “But I figured I was more comfortable with me speaking the role than a lot of other white colleagues who don’t have a good knowledge of the English language, and can’t really tell what a Black person sounds like.”The German actor Kaze Uzumaki voices the role of Paul in the German version of “Soul.”Credit…Kaze UzumakiUzumaki said that he had dubbed doctors of color in hospital shows, only to be told by the director that he sounded “too educated.”“They don’t even realize that they’re being racist,” Uzumaki said. “But every time a director says something like, ‘No, you sound too polished; you know how they talk, right?’ I feel like I’ve been hit with a stick in the face.”The discrimination is often double-edged. Ivo Chundro, a Dutch actor of color who dubbed the part of Paul in “Soul” for distribution in the Netherlands, said, “Directors will only cast white actors for white parts, and tell actors of color, ‘No, your voice isn’t white enough.’”Some directors say that demographics limit who they select. “In Spain, we don’t have a second generation of immigrants yet,” said Logar. “Except for a few very young kids, there aren’t a lot of Black actors who were born here and speak Spanish without an accent.”Actors of color like Chundro and Uzumaki contend that those directors simply aren’t looking hard enough. But there are signs that things are starting to change. In 2007, a dubbing director in France told the actress Yasmine Modestine that, because she was mixed race, her voice wasn’t right for a part. Based on her complaint, the French equal opportunities commission investigated the dubbing industry as a whole and found a culture of prejudice and stereotyping.Fily Keita, right, dubs the voices of many famous actresses — both Black and white — for their movies’ French releases.Credit…Yan Coadou/Thibaut MicheSince then, the opportunities for voice actors of color have expanded there. Fily Keita, who voiced Lupita Nyong’o in the French-language version of “Black Panther,” said that she didn’t feel held back as a Black actor working in the industry. She has also lent her voice to roles played originally by white actresses, such as Amanda Seyfried and Jamie-Lynn Sigler.“I love dubbing precisely because it’s a space of freedom,” she said. “Where you’re not limited by your physical appearance.”Chundro, the Dutch actor, said that the Black Lives Matter movement was starting to shift the conversation around race and representation in the Netherlands. He cited a demonstration in Amsterdam in June as helping open eyes to enduring racism.“I used to have a lot of discussions about racism where people just didn’t get it,” Chundro said. But the protest “was like a bandage being ripped off a wound, and since then, it’s been much easier to talk about,” he added.With that greater awareness has come more opportunities, he said. “There’s more work out there, and I’m getting cast a lot more.”Sekamane, the Danish activist, also credited the movement with changing attitudes. “I’m 30 years old, and my whole life I’ve been told racism is in my head,” she said. “It’s only in the last year, thanks to Black Lives Matter, that the conversation has started to change.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Former Youth TV Star on a Mission to Transform the BBC

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Former Youth TV Star on a Mission to Transform the BBCJune Sarpong has been a familiar face on British screens for two decades. Now, she’s in charge of bringing greater diversity to the country’s public broadcaster.June Sarpong, the BBC’s director of creative diversity, says the broadcaster has been “incredibly successful in terms of what you see, but in terms of below the line, behind the camera, certainly not.” Credit…David M. Benett/Getty ImagesJan. 6, 2021LONDON — When June Sarpong was 21 and an up-and-coming presenter on MTV in Britain, she walked past a newsstand and saw a magazine in its racks. On the cover was a story about successful women at the music station.She grabbed a copy, only to discover she wasn’t featured. Sarpong — who is Black — hadn’t been asked to go along to the cover photo shoot with her white colleagues, even though she was the co-host of one of the station’s most successful shows. She wasn’t mentioned in the article.“It was heartbreaking,” she recalled in a recent interview.Soon, viewers noticed her absence too, and started calling MTV to ask why she had been left out. “It was this real teachable moment for the network,” Sarpong said.Now 43, Sarpong is still trying to improve the diversity of British television — just at a much larger, and more politically fraught, level. In November 2019, she was named the BBC’s director of creative diversity, a high-profile role in which she is responsible for making Britain’s public broadcaster more representative of the country.In recent months, she has announced her first policies to achieve that. Beginning in April, all new BBC television commissions will have to meet a target requiring 20 percent of jobs offscreen to be filled by people of color, disabled people or those from lower socioeconomic groups.She has also secured 100 million pounds — about $136 million — of the BBC’s commissioning budget for new, diverse programming over three years. (The total commissioning budget is over £1 billion a year.)Sarpong speaking at the release of her first report in her new role last month.Credit…Hannah Young, via BBCAt first glance, the BBC might already seem to be making strides. Some of its biggest shows last year were led by and focused on people of color, such as Michaela Coel’s “I May Destroy You,” about a Black woman confronting hazy memories of a rape, and Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” series of films about Black British history. The BBC has also beaten an internal target, set before Sarpong took up her job, for people of color to make up 15 percent of its on-air talent.Away from the spotlight, however, Sarpong said, the picture was far less encouraging. Last month, Sarpong issued her first major report in her new role, highlighting some of the challenges ahead.“The BBC has been incredibly successful in terms of what you see,” she said, “but in terms of below the line, behind the camera, certainly not.”The job also places Sarpong at the center of a political battlefield. The BBC is funded by a compulsory license fee for all television owners, and, though less ubiquitous than it once was, the corporation plays an enormous role in national life, with dominance in everything from online news to toddler cartoons to orchestral music. The average British person spends well over two hours a day with BBC output, according to an estimate by an official regulator.It is also, increasingly, a political punching bag. Over the past year, conservative politicians have repeatedly criticized the organization, claiming that it was promoting a “woke agenda,” including when it proposed omitting the lyrics to jingoistic songs traditionally performed at an annual classical concert.Left-wing commentators have been equally critical, especially when a story emerged claiming that the broadcaster had barred employees from attending Black Lives Matter protests or Pride marches. (The BBC said its rules had been misinterpreted.).Sarpong said she’d gotten “a few more gray hairs since starting” her role, but added, “Whatever criticism I get is worth it, as there’s a bigger mission here.”Sarpong, center, in 2017 on “Loose Women,” a British discussion show akin to ABC’s “The View.” She was an occasional contributor for over a decade.Credit…Ken McKay/ITV, via ShutterstockSarpong was born in east London to Ghanaian parents. She spent her early years in Ghana, until a coup forced her parents to flee back to London, where she lived in public housing.As a teenager, she was involved in a car accident that left her unable to walk for two years, she said. While she was in the hospital, she watched Oprah Winfrey on television and it made her realize she could work in TV, she added. Her school reports had always said she “must talk less,” Sarpong said. “I remember watching Oprah thinking, ‘Oh my God, you can be paid to talk!”Sarpong soon got an internship at Kiss FM, a radio station specializing in dance music. She turned up wearing a neck brace, and recalled what it was like to have to explain her accident to every person she met.Sarpong at an awards ceremony organized by the men’s magazine Maxim in 2001, when she was making her name as a youth TV host.Credit… William Conran/PA Images, via Getty ImagesHer rise from that small role, then MTV, was swift. Sarpong became a youth TV star in Britain after moving to a more mainstream network, Channel 4, where she presented a popular weekend show and interviewed the likes of Kanye West and Prime Minister Tony Blair. She was known especially for her laugh — “An irresistible elastic giggle,” according to The Guardian.But she hit problems when she tried to move further up the TV ladder, she said. She went to meetings about “shiny-floor shows,” a reference to big Saturday-night entertainment programs, but was told their audiences weren’t ready for a Black host, she said. She moved to America, and, increasingly, into activism.Friends and acquaintances of Sarpong said in telephone interviews that she has the character to change the BBC. “They’ve actually hired an attack-dog who will not let go,” said Trevor Phillips, a former TV news anchor who was also the chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, in a telephone interview.Lorna Clarke, the BBC executive in charge of its pop music output, described her as charming, but firm. “I’ve seen her in action here and it is impressive,” she added. “She’s there saying, ‘We can do this, can’t we?’”Some of the BBC’s critics say the most alarming area in which the corporation lacks diversity is not in terms of race, sexuality or disability, but in the political outlook of its staff. Ministers in Britain’s Conservative government, and others on the right, have used the language of diversity in criticizing what they claim is the BBC’s liberal bias, with the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, saying the broadcaster needed to do more to reflect “genuine diversity of thought.”Simon Evans, a self-described right-leaning comedian who sometimes appears on BBC radio shows, said in a telephone interview that the BBC’s comedy output was dominated by left-wing views. “You have to get people in who have diversity of opinion, and views, and skin color as well,” Evans said. “That will crack the ice cap over the culture of the organization,” he added.Sarpong said diversity of opinion at the BBC would increase if her policies succeeded. “If we’re doing our job, you will have that,” she added.Hosting a 90th birthday concert for Nelson Mandela in London’s Hyde Park, 2008.Credit…Gareth Davies/Getty ImagesSarpong has mingled with stars throughout her career, but she said she’d also gone to every corner of Britain while making TV shows. She knew what made the British people tick, she said, and that would help her succeed. “You’ve got to be looking at how to bring the majority along with you,” she said, and convince them that diversity isn’t a zero-sum game where one group benefits at the expense of others.“Everybody has their role to play, and it’s very important to know what your role is,” Sarpong said. “I’m very clear about what mine is.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      In ‘Soul’ on Disney+, Pixar Has Its First Black Lead Character

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Soul’ Features Pixar’s First Black Lead Character. Here’s How It Happened.Mindful of animation’s history of racist imagery, the studio aimed to make the jazz pianist at the center of the film as specific as possible.The movie centers on Joe Gardner, a jazz pianist with a day job as a middle-school music teacher.Credit…Disney/PixarDec. 22, 2020, 3:15 p.m. ETAll Pixar features arrive with technical innovations, but “Soul,” opening Dec. 25 on Disney+, breaks important new ground: The movie centers on the studio’s first Black protagonist, Joe Gardner, a jazz pianist on what might be the biggest day of his life, and the creative team includes the company’s first Black co-director, Kemp Powers.In general, Black stories and talent remain underrepresented in American animation, onscreen and off. You can hear Black stars in supporting roles (Samuel L. Jackson as Frozone in the “Incredibles” movies) or voicing animals (Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith in the “Madagascar” series). But “Soul” is only the fourth American animated feature to make Black characters the leads, following “Bebe’s Kids” (1992), “The Princess and the Frog” (2009) and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018).“To me, Joe represents a lot of people who aren’t being seen right now,” said Jamie Foxx, who provides Joe’s voice. “Joe is in all of us, regardless of color. To be the first Black lead in a Pixar film feels like a blessing, especially during this time when we all could use some extra love and light.”Knowing their work on “Soul” would be minutely scrutinized, the director Pete Docter, the co-screenwriter Mike Jones and the producer Dana Murray, who are white, set out to create a character who would be believably Black while avoiding the stereotypes of the past.The journey of Joe Gardner — and “Soul” — began four years ago, when Docter felt at loose ends after winning his second Oscar, for “Inside Out.” Murray recalled, “Pete had this feeling, ‘Is this it? Do I just do this again?’ I don’t know if it was a midlife crisis as much as a midlife what-am-I-doing? moment.”Docter began wondering about the origins of human personalities, and whether people were born destined to do certain things. Jones added, “In our first meeting, he told me, ‘Think about an idea set in a place beyond space and time, where souls are given their personalities.’”Docter said he and Jones worked for about two years to develop Joe, a Black middle-school music teacher and musician from Queens. But something was missing. “We wanted somebody who could speak authentically about this character and bring some depth to him,” Docter said. “That’s when Kemp Powers came on,” as the film’s co-directorPowers’s background is in live action and journalism; he adapted the coming film “One Night in Miami” (also due Dec. 25) from his own play. But he felt at home in the new medium. “Animation is a very collaborative, iterative form, which felt very akin to live theater,” he said. He was initially hired for 12 weeks as a writer, but his contract was extended. “Later, I got promoted to co-director, because Pete really wrapped me into the process.”Nevertheless, Powers understood the pitfalls of his role: “Some people might relish the idea of saying they speak for Black people, Black Americans, whatever: I am not one of those people,” he said, adding, “I’m absolutely a Black man, and I know my history; at the same time, I can’t speak for all the Black men who are from New York; I can’t speak for my generation.”Kemp Powers, co-director of “Soul,” said the filmmakers were aware of animation’s history of racist imagery. “At the same time, we didn’t want them to be white characters who happen to be brown-skinned. We had to give them distinct looks.”Credit…Texas Isaiah for The New York TimesMurray said Pixar recognized that “if Joe’s going to be Black, we’d need a lot of help,” She said Britta Wilson, the company’s vice president of inclusion strategies, helped build an internal “Cultural Trust” made up of some of the studio’s Black employees, a group that was diverse in terms of gender, jobs and age. “We also talked to a lot of external consultants and worked with Black organizations to make sure we were telling this story authentically and truthfully,” Murray added.Powers said they were all aware of the specificity needed for Joe’s character. “Treating the Black experience as a monolith makes things a lot easier: You can have one Black person rubber-stamp something and use that as your excuse for not having tried harder to get it right.”He recalled that the individual consultants brought a range of viewpoints: “We’d have 20 Black people in a room: We’d ask a question and get 20 different answers.” Their debates sometimes “broke along generational lines, which was interesting: Things I think are fine may seem offensive to the younger generation. Everyone had a different take, which made the job exponentially harder, but that care was needed.”Further complicating their work was the fact that animation is a medium of caricature: No human is as squat and angular as Carl in Pixar’s “Up,” yet audiences accept him as a crabby old man. For “Soul,” the Pixar crew strove to create characters who were recognizably Black while avoiding anything that recalled the racist stereotypes in old cartoons, from Mammy Two Shoes, the Black maid in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, to George Pal’s stop-motion Jasper.Docter, who has written about animation history, acknowledged, “There’s a long and painful history of caricatured racist design tropes that were used to mock African-Americans.”He recalled that when he was making “Up,” he worried about how the design of the Asian-American scout Russell might be perceived. Docter said his fellow Pixar director Peter Sohn, a Korean-American artist, advised him, “‘Korean eyes are shaped differently than Caucasian eyes. Look at me and draw what you see: The truth isn’t racist.’”Powers agreed that there was an important difference between “leaning into and taking pride in those features and making fun of those features.” Pixar, he said, was mindful of the sorry images from animation history. When it came to designing appealing but stylized characters, the artists “took care not to make them insulting. At the same time, we didn’t want them to be white characters who happen to be brown-skinned. We had to give them distinct looks, so they’re not just boring, monotone characters.”To create those looks, Pixar artists and technicians needed to capture the textures of Black hair and the way light plays on various tones of Black skin. Murray said they brought in the cinematographer Bradford Young, whose work includes “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” to consult as well.Finding the voice that fits an animated character is as challenging as finding the best performer for a live-action role. “You have a voice in your head that you can write to,” Jones explained. “We needed Joe to have ambition, to want to play music at the highest level, but we also needed Joe to be excited to teach what he loves — jazz — to his students, all of which Jamie provided.”Although Foxx has voiced animated characters before, he still had to adjust his performance. “When I got in the recording booth, I was delivering the lines with all kinds of facial expressions and gestures,” Foxx said. “They were like, “Uh, Jamie, let’s try that again and remember … we can’t see you.”During the film, Joe argues — and bonds — with a recalcitrant soul known as 22, who refuses to enter a human body. As 22, Tina Fey found the purely vocal performance liberating. though she too has done other voice-overs before: “I could let go of any worry about how I looked. Even as a comedy person, you’re always thinking a little bit about finding your light and standing up straight. It’s so freeing to not have to do that.” (The relationship between Joe and 22 grows increasing complicated, but neither actor wanted to say anything that might spoil the plot twists.)Reflecting on the creation of “Soul,” Powers said, “When someone told me I was Pixar’s first Black director, I said that can’t be right. Pete said — and my hope is — this is an indicator of changes that are going to be pretty rapid.” There are more animators of color and women in the business than there were 15 or 20 years ago, he noted. “It’s sad it’s taken this long, but I’m glad it’s coming finally.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More