Have you ever seen a movie with such poor casting that you had to walk out of the theater or turn off the TV?
If you have, then I sympathize with you. It’s so painfully awkward watching the absolute worst person be cast for a role that they clearly aren’t fit for.
Like Ben Affleck with Batman or Michelle Yeoh with Madame Morrible. Although they could be good actors, the fact is, they just aren’t fit for the role.
A lot of factors go into choosing a good person for a role, including age, personality, and acting styles. Although the job seems easy, being a casting director is very complex. You have to dive into an actor’s background to see if they could potentially be the best fit for a role. When this job isn’t completed correctly, it feels like a betrayal of the story.
“I believe that it [casting the wrong actors] ruined some movies that I’ve planned on seeing, because they are casting off the broadest possible social appeal,” stated Mr. Beckler, one of our teachers here at LOHS.
Beckler believes that some actors are chosen solely based on their popularity to make the movie popular, and not because they were talented enough to play that role.
Sometimes, roles will even be crafted for a particular famous actor. This prevents the role from being written to its full potential without limits or boundaries. An amazing example of this is Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in the movie Spencer (2021). She was cast because of her popularity, and the directors knew it would gain a lot of traction, but the truth is, she did not portray her role as Princess Diana even remotely well.
Honestly, her acting seemed more like a disgrace to Princess Diana than a tribute to her.
Kristen Stewart portrayed her role as the Princess the same way she portrayed Bella in Twilight, all depressed and sad, and even though it’s true that Princess Diana’s life was like that behind closed doors, on the outside, she was a light and joyful person that everyone around the world worshiped her, and that wasn’t shown at all through Stewart’s acting.
This is just one example of a terrible miscasting in a movie or show. There are many more terrible portrayals of characters that are a disgrace to whoever wrote the role, and whoever the role was based on.
“I think it’s unprofessional, because despite their popularity, they still may not be fit for the role,” said Junior Zackary Whitacre.“Like Madam Morrible didn’t sing that well when she had a lot of singing scenes, and it made her character a meme and unlikable”.
Michelle Yeoh being cast as Madame Morrible in the musical Wicked (2024) is one of the saddest miscastings I’ve ever seen, because Yeoh herself admitted she was a bad singer, but Jon M. Chu, the director, persuaded her to take the role after her clear hesitation.
In an article by Capital FM, it states, “Michelle Yeoh has explained that she almost turned down the role because singing ‘terrified’ her”.
This must’ve been so upsetting for all the fans excited to see “Wicked”, for a movie to be squashed by one of the main characters played by someone who can’t sing, and even goes as far as to say she was “terrified” to sing next to Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
Audiences want to watch movies and shows they can enjoy, not a version of it made to fit actors who aren’t fit for that role at all.
Any amount of money poured into a movie will never take away the fact that some people just aren’t fit for certain roles, no matter the popularity they have.