The Patient Creators Defend Casting Steve Carell As A Jewish Character
Television producers Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg explain their reasons for casting Steve Carell, a non-Jewish actor, to play a Jewish character on their new show The Patient. Fields and Weisberg have prior experience with people pretending to be other ethnicities, as they created the Emmy-winning drama The Americans, centered on a couple who were Russian spies. The Patient is a 10-episode limited seriesfor FX centered on therapist Alan Strauss (Carell), who is kidnapped by a serial killer named Sam Fortner (played by Domhnall Gleeson). Sam wishes for Strauss to cure him of his violent tendencies. Strauss is forced to keep his wits about him if he plans to escape alive.
Casting actors to play roles that fit their race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender expression has become a hot button topic in recent years. Hollywood has a long, terrible history of casting white actors in non-white roles, from the original West Side Story all the way to 2016's Doctor Strange and beyond. One particular subsection of this issue is the practice of hiring non-Jewish actors to play Jewish characters. The MCU has received a lot of flack for this when it comes to characters like Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Moon Knight's Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac). Now The Patient finds itself in a similar position.
Related: Bradley Cooper's Maestro Continues Hollywood's Whitewashing Problem
Variety reports that Fields and Weisberg have defended their casting of Carell to reporters. The writer/producer duo were speaking in a virtual panel for The Patient at the Television Critics Association summer press tour when the topic arose. They explained their reasoning for the casting and revealed the decision to make Strauss's character Jewish was apparently
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