CUTAWAY
Black is
QUEEN On June 1st 2021, my interview with Jodie Turner-Smith for The British Blacklist about her upcoming role starring in Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn was shared on Twitter. The first comment: “You cannot rewrite history so don’t try.” Concerns about ‘rewriting history’ have circulated ever since, a year earlier, on June 7th 2020, Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. Their purpose was to challenge the way history has commemorated Edward Colston as a philanthropist, selectively editing out the atrocities he committed in the name of the British Empire. The protesters pointed out the core problem with history – that it is never objective truth, but subjective memory designed to reinforce existing structures of power. To challenge structures of power, then, requires a certain ‘revising’ of history. But, what does it mean to change the race of a
Queen Charlotte
historical figure – to cast Jodie TurnerSmith in the role of Anne Boleyn? For me, it meant that, for the first time, I empathised with this distant historical figure. I found myself fuming at how Henry could be messing around his missus right under her nose. While this attests to the humanity of Turner-Smith’s performance, I also realised it pointed to the long-standing failure of British period dramas to cast actors that looked like me. >> 15
