BLACK IN FOCUS
AMON WARMANN chews over the main moment in Black film and TV this month
IT’S TIME FOR NON-WHITE ACTORS TO BREAK BAD AGAIN
IN RECENT YEARS, the number of Black and brown heroes on screen has risen, and I’ve watched with gleeful excitement as Shuri, Miles Morales and more have taken centre stage and saved the day. But Black and brown villains are few and far between. It’s a point raised by Kumail Nanjiani, who recently described his desire to play the baddie, referencing Sebastian Stan’s creepy cannibal in Fresh. “He does these big Marvel movies, and then he’ll play a psychopath,” he said. “I was told that’s going to be hard because people don’t want to cast non-white people as bad guys.” Nanjiani has now got his wish, as slippery Somen Banerjee in Welcome To Chippendales. And with hype for Jonathan Majors’ big bad Kang in Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania at an all-time high, Hollywood seems to be coming back around.