History Main / ColorblindCasting

* In {{opera}}, voice and acting ability have always had top priority. Thus, Korean soprano Sumi Jo has sung roles like Lucia (a Scottish lady) in ''Lucia di Lammermoor'', and [[Theatre/LaTraviata Violetta]] (a French courtesan). Likewise, world-famous African-American soprano, Leontyne Price, has sung the roles of Leonora (a Spanish woman), Liu (a Tartar woman) in ''Theatre/{{Turandot}}'', and Tatiana (a Russian) in Tchaikovsky's ''Eugene Onegin''.

* ''{{Series/Galavant}}'': Sid was broadly written as Jewish and Isabella's casting call was for a "Jennifer Laurence type." As it turned out, Sid's actor is black, while Isabella's is Indian/Chinese/Jewish. Yet Sid's parents are white, and Isabella's lighter than she is. However, Sid is explicitly adopted, and though the specifics in Isabella's family are not clear yet, her cousin is also Indian. There's also a gag that even she isn't quite clear on her ethnicity, saying it's "hard to pin down". Actors were encouraged to play around with dialogue on set, so there are several quips about race that wouldn't have been in the script.

* ''{{Series/Galavant}}'': Sid's actor is black, while Isabella's is Indian/Chinese/Jewish. Yet Sid's parents are white, and Isabella's lighter than she is. However, Sid is explicitly adopted, and though the specifics in Isabella's family are not clear yet, her cousin is also Indian. There's also a gag that even she isn't quite clear on her ethnicity, saying it's "hard to pin down".

* In 2016, the movement [[http://starringjohncho.com/ "Starring John Cho"]] began as a commentary about poor diversity of leading roles, showing how many prominent films could easily star non-white actors like Creator/JohnCho.

* Theatre/SixTheMusical: The casting call explicitly welcomes "all self-identifying female and non-binary performers", whilst the Queens were all white cisgender women in real life. Then again, Henry VIII's wives were also never pop stars in sparkly outfits.

* ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' has dealt with some mild controversy regarding FiveTokenBand, but almost all of their characters are up in the air in terms of casting. It isn't perfect, with occasional slips (the [[Series/PowerRangersSamurai Red Samurai Ranger]] was required to be white, due to already having cast [[spoiler:his sister]], and an actress was turned down from ''Series/PowerRangersMegaforce'', the only reason given being that they already had a black actor.) That being said, the show has always taken a small amount of pride in its diversity. In fact, most characters are originally written with no last names, only getting them ''after'' the actor has been cast.

* ''{{Series/Barry}}'': InUniverse, Sally plays Theatre/{{Macbeth}} for their staging of the play.

* WebVideo/ShipwreckedComedy never uses their historical settings as an excuse for MonochromeCasting. This was taken to its logical extreme in "Little VVomen," which had the four [[Literature/LittleWomen March sisters]] played by actresses of three different ethnicities.

* ''Series/LivAndMaddie'' has Parker, the youngest son who is clearly Asian though his whole family is Caucasian.

Historically, this was far more common in theatre than you would believe. In the Elizabethan Theatre of Creator/ChristopherMarlowe, Creator/WilliamShakespeare, Ben Jonson and others, it was common for actors to play both male ''and'' female parts,[[note]]This might explain the abundance of cross-dressing jokes in Shakespeare plays - cross-dressing was a matter of course for theater and having a man (the actor) pretending to be a woman (the role) pretending to be a man (some shenanigan the character gets up to) was guaranteed to draw laughs then as now[[/note]] since women weren't allowed to act on stage in this period. It was only during the Restoration that you had actresses playing female roles. In the 19th Century, with the greater professionalization of the stage, it was common for women to play male roles, such as when Sarah Bernhardt played Theatre/{{Hamlet}}.

[[caption-width-right:350:The King, the Queen and their son...]]

* On ''Series/AndiMack'', the casting for Andi was colorblind, leading to mixed-race Peyton Elizabeth Lee being cast in the role. This led to her having one Asian and one white parent and for her sister [[spoiler:[[FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo (actually her mother)]]]] to be mixed-race as well.

* The Hulu series ''Series/TheGreat'' is set in the court of Peter III of Russia in the 1700s and includes several courtiers played by Black and Asian actors, including primary castmember Sacha Dhawan portraying Count Orlo.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': A variation in "Paladin of the Lost Hour". Gaspar is played by the white Creator/DannyKaye while Billy Kinetta is played by the black Glynn Turman. In the short story by Creator/HarlanEllison, it is mentioned that one of the two men is white and the other is black but does not specify which one so it could have been Gaspar who was black and Billy who was white.

* When ''Film/Cinderella1997'' was cast, the casting was colorblind, leading to a ''very'' diverse group of actors. There was a black queen (Creator/WhoopiGoldberg) and a white king (Creator/VictorGarber), and their son was played by a Filipino man (Paolo Montalban). In addition, the role of Cinderella herself was given to a black woman (Music/{{Brandy}}). Cinderella's stepmother is white (Creator/BernadettePeters) and her daughters are both black (Natalie Desselle-Reid) and white (Veanne Cox).

* Possibly one of the most notable examples was when Audra [=McDonald=] was cast as Carrie Pipperidge in ''Theatre/{{Carousel}}'', and ended up winning her first of a record-breaking six Tony Awards.

* A rather notable example occurred with ''Theatre/HarryPotterAndTheCursedChild'', which cast the black Noma Dumezweni as Hermione. While Hermione's race technically was never mentioned in the books, she's been consistently depicted as white in book illustrations and the films.