Michelle Krusiec + Taking Roles With Accents

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Caught this down at YOMYOMF and wanted to post a snippet of it up here.


I was in an audition for a big franchise film when the casting director who happened to be Asian sheepishly asked me, “Could you…did you see the note about doing it with an Asian accent?” She was a little apologetic and I detected her discomfort for having to put me in what she assumed was an uncomfortable situation. I’m not an actor who is uncomfortable with doing accents, but I have an Asian American actor friend who would have said, “Absolutely not.” It got me thinking, are we equating Asian accents with stereotypes because there’s a communal shame surrounding our lack of diverse representation for Asian Americans? When I appear on panels about AAs in the media, I’m almost always asked if we are moving away from stereotypical Asian characters, such as accented ones, and I’m torn because I want to say, there’s nothing wrong with accented characters. It’s how you portray them.
Read it in full.