From Black Elphaba to Bridgerton: Diverse Casting in Hollywood
Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in Wicked. Photo Credit: Universal Pictures
Wicked has been inescapable this fall – even if you didn’t join the legions of fans packing theaters to see the movie, promo has been everywhere from product partner commercials to Easter egg red carpet appearances to a weirdly emotional press tour. And with Part 2 (“Wicked: For Good”) hitting theaters next year, the buzz is far from over.
But even before the pink and green popcorn buckets, the movie was making headlines for a very particular casting choice – Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba.
On its surface, her selection seemed like a no-brainer. Erivo is a multi-talented actress with a long list of accomplishments on both stage and screen, cruising her way to an EGOT before 40. However – as is usually the case when casting directors deviate from the original (perceived) race of the character – her casting was not without controversy.
Jane Austen fans are no secret to the thinly veiled racism that rears its head when a diverse adaptation is announced. Casting non-white actors to play traditionally white parts holds space for new creative decisions…as well as an opportunity for anonymous social media accounts to spew vitriol about them.
Still, for both Wicked and recent Austen adaptations, diverse casting is potentially the best thing the directors could have done to breathe new life into the story.
Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba
In theory, the race of the actress playing Elphaba shouldn’t matter. After all, the character’s main feature is that she’s green. Any actress can be painted green and match Elphaba’s description.
In this case, however, it’s clear that Erivo and the rest of the Wicked team saw an opportunity to create a new interpretation of a beloved character based on the actress chosen to portray her.
As Cynthia herself said in an interview with Variety,
Erivo wanted to ensure the character’s greenness didn’t hide her Blackness. “I didn’t want to remove myself from Elphaba,” she said. “I wanted to connect the two.” So, she added a couple points of emphasis for Black women to relate, including the character’s long nails and a headful of microbraids.
Ensuring the character was perceived as Black also meant Black women saw experiences and emotions that are too often dismissed or looked over reflected back at them from an unexpected source. Elphaba (spoiler) going from the Wizard’s most prized potential asset to enemy number 1 has echoes of the “pet to threat” phenomenon, when a Black woman’s expertise is valued until she begins to question existing power structures. Or being ostracized until the office (or classroom) Galinda decides that you’re suddenly acceptable and gets the rest of the community to fall in line.
Erivo didn’t just want to be a Black woman playing Elphaba – she specifically wanted Elphaba to be read as Black. In a story that is already a clear allegory for racism and discrimination, that choice gifts the audience with an entirely new way to interpret both the character and the plot.
Diverse Austen Adaptations
Image Credit: Hallmark Media
Of course, Wicked is far from the first movie to experiment with race-blind casting. Fans of historical dramas in particular are familiar with the ongoing debate about casting and representation.
Austen adaptations like Sanditon and Hallmark’s 2024 Sense and Sensibility were intentionally diverse in their casting. Meanwhile, the massive success of Bridgerton and its spinoff, Queen Charlotte, shows that audiences are hungry for representation and new approaches to these stories.
In most cases, these shows offer familiar storylines or themes repackaged in a way that draws in a new audience. For the most recent Sense and Sensibility adaptation, led by a majority-Black cast, the creators aimed to both "respect the work and do something creatively refreshing."
NPR explains how the production team stayed true to the story while using the adaptation as a chance to highlight real-life POC whose stories are often lost:
Notable people of color in European history appear in art in the backgrounds of many scenes, on the walls of the homes the Dashwood live in and visit. That artwork includes a painting of the Saint-Domingue-born French Creole Gen. Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (father of the author Alexandre Dumas, who wrote Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo)....As described on NPR's Weekend Edition, Dumas was a hero of the French Revolution, "the son of a Haitian slave and a French nobleman" who became "Napoleon's leading swordsman of the Revolution, then a prisoner, and finally almost forgotten."
….This latest Sense and Sensibility adaptation also nods to 18th-century African-American author Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) with a special moment woven into the romance as Willoughby and Marianne bond over their shared love of her poetry.
Casting Black actresses to play the Dashwood sisters created an opportunity to introduce audiences to historical figures and realities they may never have been exposed to otherwise, dispelled the notion that people of color were virtually nonexistent in Regency England, and gifted Black audiences with the opportunity to see themselves in beloved characters for the first time.
#RepresentationMatters
Through both Wicked and Sense and Sensibility, fans have found new ways to connect the character to their own experiences or to modern contexts. One of the beautiful things about visual media is that the creative team has countless opportunities to tell a story – the setting, costuming, and cinematography all play a part in influencing the way the audience experiences the tale.
Diverse casting choices can change the way an audience experiences a character, in turn creating brand new interpretations and analyses of even the oldest texts. When there are new conversations and spirited debates about a piece of media, everyone wins.
Here’s to more old stories becoming new in 2025 – and if you’re looking for more discussions like this in your headphones, check out Reclaiming Jane, an Austen podcast for fans on the margins. New episodes are released every other Wednesday.