Lea Michele as Fanny - Funny Girl — Page 57

A.J. said: "Are there any other roles on Broadway where we find it acceptable to limit casting based on the performers’ religious beliefs?"

Being Jewish is not just a religious belief. It's an ethnicity/tribe with a corresponding religion.

Bruised egos masquerading as activism. I’m so over it.

P.S. I have Jewish heritage and have ancestors who were killed in the Holocaust, and no this casting is not “harmful.”

P.P.S. Lea Michele is CATHOLIC, but no one cares because she’s brilliant in the role."

And we have a winner!

Katerina is not Jewish Jorge. Drop it. Everybody knows she's not Jewish. The actresses calling out this casting (at least some of whom know her) would not be calling out this casting if they didn't know she wasn't Jewish.

While I have zero problems with her casting and hope she is great and can count this as a big break for her.......mazel tov on her casting!.........................it seems those always objecting about everything related to casting are NOT in this case, and I hope that is remembered. One does not HAVE to be actually bald to play Daddy Warbucks (though some will object if the actor is not REALLY bald), one does not HAVE to be a practicing witch to play the witch in Into The Woods (though some will object if that actress is not really a practicing witch), one does not HAVE to be gay to play the leads in La Cage Aux Folles (though some will object if the actors are not really gay), one does not HAVE to have suffered any kid of mental health crisis in their lives to play the lead in Next To Normal (though some will object if the actress has not actually suffered some sort of mental health crisis). One does NOT have to be really hunchbacked to play Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (though some will object if the actor is not really hunchbacked). One does not HAVE to be Jewish to play Fanny (though some will object if the actress is not in fact Jewish). So, in the future..........when a sephardic Jewish woman is cast in Evita somewhere..................when a thin man (who may or may not be asked to wear some padding) is cast for the role of Nicely Nicely Johnson somewhere....................when a light skinned latino actress is cast in In The Heights somewhere...................when a white woman wants to sing in her concerts songs sung by latino characters from famous musicals..............when a filipino actor is cast as a Japanese sailor in Pacific Overtures somewhere.................those same people who have clutched their pearls SOOOOO tightly over the past 10 years here could (if they choose) remember that allllllllll those actors who they objected to in the past (and we know will in the future) are...........actors.......... ACTORS, not bound by one drawer that some people here or on instaglam seem intent to restricting ONLY as it is relates to themselves. Best of luck to this young actress as she heads out on this show and to hopefully a long career playing any role she wants.

Sutton Ross said: "Bruised egos masquerading as activism. I’m so over it.

P.S. I have Jewish heritage and have ancestors who were killed in the Holocaust, and no this casting is not “harmful.”

P.P.S. Lea Michele is CATHOLIC, but no one cares because she’s brilliant in the role."

And we have a winner!

Lea's father is a Jew and she worked in his Jewish deli as a kid. Yes, she was raised in her mother's faith, but her family background is Jewish as well.

Putting aside whether Katerina should or shouldn't be playing this role, I think this was a horrible position for the production team to put her in. This is her first "big" role and most of the general public, as well as most people within the industry, probably have never heard her name before. The first "public introduction" she's getting to the world isn't as an extremely talented young woman getting her first big break, but as a non-Jewish person who auditioned for and accepted a role that many people think should have gone to someone Jewish. On a day that she and her loved ones should be celebrating booking her first national tour in a very well-known show, instead she is facing serious backlash for taking the role at all. This is a horrible position for her to be in as a young actress making her national tour debut, and the production team should have known better than to put her in this position.

From the conversations had around Lea Michele's casting (where many people were questioning whether she was connected enough to the Jewish community to play this role, among other things), the production team ought to have known that casting a non-Jewish Fanny would lead to backlash both from other actors in the industry and from the community at large, and they should have either prepared their team as well as Katerina for this likelihood (including putting out a press release that pre-empts people's concerns), or they should not have cast her at all.

Updated On: 7/11/23 at 04:51 PM

jkcohen626 said: "A.J. said: "Are there any other roles on Broadway where we find it acceptable to limit casting based on the performers’ religious beliefs?"

Being Jewish is not just a religious belief. It's an ethnicity/tribe with a corresponding religion."

But say someone is white/blue eye/blonde haired, but was adopted and raised Jewish. Are they then able to play Fanny? Or is that a barometer on how Jewish one should be?

Totally agree with you.

But I also don't think they can legally - nor should they - ask your religious beliefs in an audition room.

Why is it her fault when the casting team brought her in, the director cast her, the producers all saw her and agreed she's right for the part...she's an actress taking a high profile, well paying gig.

RippedMan said: "Totally agree with you.

But I also don't think they can legally - nor should they - ask your religious beliefs in an audition room."

True - nor can they legally ask about someone’s race or whether they are Indigenous or not. However, I think a lot of the people (not on this board specifically, but in general) who are saying, “It’s complicated,” re a non-Jewish actress playing Fanny Brice would have a very different reaction to a non-Indigenous person playing an Indigenous character - even though like many Jews, many Indigenous people are “white passing.” Even though a casting director can’t ask if a person was Indigenous, I think they’d face a huge backlash for hiring a non-Indigenous actor to play an Indigenous character. So whatever safeguards they’re using to prevent that kind of circumstance also should have been used here.

RippedMan said: "Why is it her fault when the casting team brought her in, the director cast her, the producers all saw her and agreed she's right for the part...she's an actress taking a high profile, well paying gig."

If she's not Jewish, and it explicitly said in the casting breakdown "seeking Jewish actor* , that's okay? Every single person involved said it's okay that she's not Jewish. Every singe person put aside the fact that Fanny is inherently a Jewish icon first, they essentially said "oh it doesn't matter, she doesn't actually have to be Jewish". Why is it so okay to push aside Jewish actors? Anti-semitism is so high right now and in casting someone who isn't Jewish, they're not helping that at all. Not in the slightest.

I’m so tired of these “only ___ people can play ____ roles” arguments. Half of it is because it defeats the whole purpose of acting (we’ve had amazing performances come out of people who aren’t exactly ‘true to character&rsquo and for a board that loves to bring of nepotism every now and then, I’m not sure how this stance is helping. Someone earlier literally said that Beanie’s casting made sense because she’s Jewish. If you’d rather have a mediocre performances for the sake of…I don’t know, a Playbill bio? Representation (thats already been crafted into the damn show itself)?

Sure, let’s not go for whoever is best for the role. Let’s just go with whatever person matches the character’s background as close as humanly possible, the actual performance itself be damned. We’ll see how that fairs for our industry.

You guys really think these casting agents have ten years to sit around and cast a damn show with a long running list of perfect people that they overlooked for a non-Jew making their leading debut. Do you even hear yourselves? It’s absurd.