Two shows, 12 leading cast members and not a Black woman among them. Ensemble comedy series Adults and Overcompensating both dropped on streaming services in May, following two young groups in their late teens and early twenties as they experience college and living independently for the first time in their adult lives.
The groups deal with love, sex, friendship and grief as they try to find their identities in a chaotic world – universal themes, right? Not, it seems, for Black women and girls, who are absent from leading roles in both of these shows, and more widely across the TV and cinematic landscape.
The Brat singer will also appear on the show.
Goosebumps, The Runarounds, Ballerina Overdrive, We Were Liars… the list of youth-focused shows with no Black female lead goes on. Nicole Ocran, author and podcaster, also points out that the new trailer for I Know What You Did Last Summer, famously starring Brandy Norwood, seems to have dropped this role for the reboot.
But that’s not to say casts aren’t ‘diverse’ at all – Overcompensating deftly explores queerness and the performance of sexuality, with a cast including the South Asian Rish Shah and Mexican-Syrian Wally Baram. Adults stars Lebanese actor Malik Elassal, South Asian Amita Rao and Owen Thiele, who is Black and gay.
Having a somewhat diverse cast makes the exclusion of Black women even more stark. Do Black women not fall in love and get their hearts broken? Do they not drink too much and make mistakes? Do they not dance, laugh and cry too? Do they not have friends? Even more telling is the fact that more Black women aged 18-24 go to college in America than white men in the same demographic – 39% versus 36%. The study, by the American Institute For Boys And Men, makes the casting of these two college-based dramas even further from reality.
You could argue that shows like these aren’t ‘about race,’ or that the casting reflected the creators’ real-life friendship groups and experiences, but representation is about more than that. Black women and girls deserve to feel connected to storylines on screen, to feel like their experiences are valid and important – something pointed out by X user @blkcomictwit.
As for authenticity, when Thiele shared in a Vanity Fair interview that he’d been cast in roles not written for Black gay men, it begs the question – when will this be extended to Black women? When I shared a call-out for comments on this issue on X, writer Jackson King replied: “Adultification and misogynoir is so real. Can't have a coming of age storyline if you've never been seen as a child,” referring to the oversexualisation of Black girls and how they’re often treated as older than their years.
As Kay, @jasimisinclair on X, explains, “there are a lot of young Black girls that are going through something, wanting stories that they can relate to and characters that look like them. Growing up, I watched actresses like Raven-Symoné, Keke Palmer and China Anne McClain on their own shows. Now, it seems like preteens don’t have that. When we do have those shows, they’re cancelled too quickly. Hollywood doesn’t view black girls as relatable.”
Kay promotes Black-led shows through her account, using her platform to also point out the glut of YA projects with no Black female leads. Her work started during the two industry strikes in the summer of 2023, inspired by Black-ish actress Marsai Martin, who pointed out the importance of Black storytelling and how the strikes would affect that.
She adds that “with the dismantling of DEI initiatives, production does not have to focus on being inclusive. Hollywood doesn’t produce a lot of Black young adult shows, and the ones they do will end soon. We need more diverse writers and crew members,” she argues, admitting that there’s always a worry Black characters will be written badly, struggle with white hair and make-up teams and also be dismissed or abused by the show’s fandom.
Across the industry, it’s the responsibility of writers, casting directors, producers, commissioners and more to advocate for Black female leads – not just supporting roles, but front and centre characters with nuance and depth. Recent examples include Lovie Simone in Forever, adapted from the Judy Blume novel, Ginny & Georgia (actress Antonia Bonea Gentry is mixed-Jamaican and white American) and Percy Jackson and the Olympians with Leah Sava Jeffries.
The short-lived Gossip Girl reboot starred Whitney Peak (mixed-Ugandan and white Canadian,) Netflix’s Dear White People ran for four seasons with several Black female leads and the hugely popular The Sex Lives Of College Girls, featuring Alyah Chanelle Scott, was cancelled after three seasons. In the UK, Everything Now was led by Sophia Wilde, while BBC comedies Boarders and Just Act Normal deserve special mentions. Although these shows can be seen as success stories for Black female representation, colourism and texturism are important issues, where lighter-skinned and looser-haired Black women are viewed as more palatable for audiences and more viable as love interests.
We need to be working harder for a world where all women and girls are as joyful as Swifties.
Casting director Ri McDaid-Wren shares that “there is still a huge amount of bias in the industry, both unconscious and conscious. Most of the producers and networks I work with do want to cast diversely, but may not think about the complexities or implications of certain casting choices. Colourism is still a major problem, and execs (who are usually white) often lean towards white-adjacent choices – light skin, Eurocentric features – for lead roles,” they add, noting that this makes execs feel like they’ve “achieved diversity.”
“Inclusivity and diversity are not authentic values for many in the industry,” they continue, adding that for some “it’s more about following trends or trying to boost a company's image, although this is by no means across the board. There are many people who push tirelessly for change, but it's still far from where it needs to be.”
As for who’s responsible to make change, McDaid-Wren replies that “casting directors are often the ones pushing for genuinely inclusive casting, but we don't make the final decisions – that comes down to execs and networks. That's not to pass the buck – it's still our responsibility to raise issues like colourism and keep championing underrepresented talent.”
Black girls deserve to see themselves come of age on screen, but with a lack of writers, producers and casting directors challenging stereotypes, when will representation become commonplace rather than something remarkable? Now that’s something I’d tune in for.
.jpg)
