The Cast and The Casting: Quantico

[Meredith Quill]

Here's the spot to discuss all things about the cast and on Quantico! Where have you seen them before, who you'd like to see in a role, why you think they cast certain players, and so on!

Edited October 21, 2015 by stacey

[amish40]

Priyanka Chopra -- in numerous Bollywood films.

[cissyboo1]

So Piggy Chops has made it to an American TV show, and as a lead no less!  Good on her!  Wasn't Anil Kapoor the last relatively big name from BW to appear on Ameican TV in a continuing role (24)?

 

May have to watch this, just to see how PC does.  I've enjoyed her in the few films of hers I've seen.

[mredlich21]

Rahul Khanna has a recurring role in The Americans, but he's not really a big star, although his brother is and his father is huge.  It was weird, because it wasn't promoted at all in India, but maybe that's because it was kind of a dark and violent performance.

[jaytee1812]

It was bugging me where I knew Josh Hopkins from, IMDb tells me it was as ADA Kite in the first season of Cold Case, he was also Lil's on/off boyfriend in the show. Also he was in an episode of Bones as Brennan's mentor that she had an affair with.

Jake McLaughlin will forever be Alex Karev's brother on Grey's Anatomy to me.

[St. Claire]

While most people know Josh Hopkins for Cougar Town, I recognized him most from being Roger Thompson in the short lived Swingtown as his stint on Private Practice.

[fakeempress]

I know Johanna Braddy (Shelby) from Greek, and still can't warm up to her. She subscribes to what I call the Hilarie Burton style of acting -- saying 90% of her lines with a smile regardless of the emotion. See also Dianna Agron, with whom Ms Braddy shares an additional tendency to whisper through semi-clenched teeth. But I have to say this acting style worked to her advantage in UnReal. 

[formerlyfreedom]

Anne Heche is coming on board.

[blackwing]

There have been some discussions about race and casting in this show since the beginning.  This show has a particularly diverse cast overall - we have an Indian woman, a Middle Eastern woman, a black woman, and a Hispanic woman in prominent roles.  The male cast is blindingly white.  We had a Hispanic male in the present day scenes but I haven't noticed him in the recent episodes.  All of the featured male recruits are white.

There was some discussion in the latest episode thread about colour-blind casting, so I have imported a comment here:

Let me put it this way.   I know more about Simon's Jewishness and Shelby's 'upper classness' than I do about Alex's background.  Has she even mentioned offhand what it was like to live for 10 years in India ?
   
And the same goes for the twins. They wear the Niqab but it might as well be for fashion as much as for religion. That's how little it seems to be part of them.

 

I appreciate the colour-blind casting.  I think it's great that roles like Alex Parrish, Annaliese Keating, and Olivia Pope are being played by minority women.  I like that the role could easily have been played by a white woman.

I see that the fantastic Marianne Jean-Baptiste disagrees.  Her character of Bethany Mayfair on "Blindspot" could also have easily have been played by a white woman.  In the "Blindspot" thread, she says she hates colour-blind casting because she thinks we need to see people for who they are.  I think I agree and I think I also disagree, if that makes sense.  I think I feel that I like colour-blind casting because it allows minorities the opportunities to get cast in roles that they traditionally wouldn't have access to (in the case of Viola Davis, the sole lead on a hit show).  But I also think that it would be nice every once in a while to have those characters acknowledge who they are, which I think is Marianne Jean-Baptiste's point.

On this show, we had Nimah saying that the early morning exercise was interfering with her morning prayers, so at least we got that.  But apart from a throwaway line that Alex lived in India for 10 years, there has been nothing.  And even then, since Alex is apparently half white, half Indian, I think the only reason why they said she lived in India is to try and explain away Priyanka Chopra's accent.  I get that police and news reports tend not to identify race of suspects (how many times have you read an article on a newspaper website that says something like "the suspect has black hair, brown eyes, and a dark complexion").  But this is TV.  You'd think they could have just said "the suspect is an Indian-American female".  Seems like it would narrow the suspect pool considerably!

I think "Elementary" has done a good job with this issue.  Lucy Liu's character is supposed to have a white father and a Chinese mother.  The casting appears to have been colour-blind.  Her character could have been played by a person of any colour or gender, unlike, say, her role as the samurai lady living in Japan in the Kill Bill movies.  But having cast her, I think the writers have done a decent job of having her acknowledge her ethnicity.  I know I've heard her speaking Mandarin on several occasions in the show.  So it would be nice if the characters on Quantico could maybe have some kind of acknowledgement like that.  Particularly Alex, since she is lead.

[mredlich21]

I agree completely.  There was a lot of excitement about an Indian actress being cast in an American TV show, and it has been nice to see her public appearances in which she discusses her background, both the Indian film industry and India itself; it would be really nice to get some acknowledgement of that in the show.

 

The opening shot of the show is of her Om symbol bracelet, and that is the only acknowledgement of her religion that has been provided so far.  There isn't even an acknowledgement that her relationship to the twins might be different, since they both (well, she would think both, really all three) appear to be South Asian.  Or any sort of indication that her parents' different ethnic backgrounds might have played a factor in their marriage.

 

I am hopeful that the exploration of the "missing year" will fill in a lot of these gaps, but even so, there have been plenty of moments on the show that would already have been stronger if her ethnic identity was acknowledged.  Does anyone know if there are any South Asians involved behind the scenes?  Is there anyone on the writing staff who might be able to bring that perspective into script and story discussions?

[Ms Blue Jay]

Colour blind casting is great.

 

BUT THEN if you happen to hire a person of colour BE OPEN to changing the last name OR EVEN the first name to an ethnic one for Christ's sake!  Alex Parrish's name DID not have to stay that.  Obviously Watson is a special case so they couldn't really give her a Chinese name, but she also didn't have to be half white to explain it. If you can make Watson a female you can make her full Asian.  Don't know why they always have to have this White Father to explain away the last names.  I'm all for biracial and multiracial characters too, but not every character on TV has to be one.

 

I agree with you too.  The more they can touch on a character's ethnic background the better.  No matter who we are or where we come from our ethnicity is a part of our daily lives.  Colour blind casting is great but then BE OPEN to infusing that character with as much as his/her ethnicity as you can.  That doesn't mean the basic plot has to change dramatically.  But change it a bit to acknowledge who that character has become now that you've hired a person of colour to act for it.

 

They're doing gender blind casting now too, with Julia Roberts' new movie.  You can bet they didn't make her do a bunch of 'male stuff' and pretend she wasn't a female.  They made her a female character through and through and I'm sure that the story still works.

Edited October 21, 2015 by Ms Blue Jay

[formerlyfreedom]

Please keep the majority of your post about casting on Quantico. Discussion of other shows in regards to race and casting belongs in the Race and Ethnicity discussion in the Everything Else TV forum. Off topic posts may be deleted.

[jaytee1812]

The male cast is blindingly white.  We had a Hispanic male in the present day scenes but I haven't noticed him in the recent episodes.  All of the featured male recruits are white.

There is a biracial male recruit as of this Sunday's ep, but even with his addition the male cast is still way too white. I still can't believe the first black man we saw was in prison!

It's looks like they needed people of colour for the terrorist angle but didn't want to give up any white men to fit them in. I mean that's being really harsh but it is bizarre the female cast is so diverse and the male cast almost completely white.

[The Kings Foot]

I have  two different lines of thought running through my head. From the purile to the analytical. 

 

1. Did you know Simon was Jewish ?  I almost forgot but they remind us in every single episode. And he apparently has Jewish friends  and he speaks Hebrew or Yiddish. And did you know Shelby came from a wealthy family ? Even when they dont mention that fact they very helpfully show us Shelby's home as being some sort of faux Georgian mansion. So yeah she's rich.

 

As for Alex they are very careful not to show her doing anything "unusual" . Like rejecting a hamburger. Or having a Hindu devotional image. Or even spouting a curse word in Hindi. (She lived there for 9 years. She knows the language).

 

Also apparently Alex has no friends from before she entered the FBI. Both Simon and Shelby get to speak to someone from their real lives.  I guess Alex doesnt have one.

 

 

2. Now I actually do get why this is. The network is taking a very big risk casting Chopra and so they would have done everything to make her  as bland and uncontroversial as possible.

 

 Also I suspect the writers simply dont know enough to write a character who has any sort of racial or religious complications.  I'm told that they messed up with regard to Simon's Hasidim friend, combining a bunch of contradictory stereotypes.  

 

To compare. Why does the character of Divya exist on the show Royal Pains ?  Because the writer apparently based Divya on a real person who works with his brother.  Writers  write what they know. These writers dont even know what the FBI does so  I guess I should be glad they steered clear of trying to fill on Alex's character.

 

.

Edited October 22, 2015 by The Kings Foot

[Bort]

Re Rick Cosnett. He was actually wonderful on The Flash. He also played a rather fey evil Dr on the Vampire Diaries

THAT'S what I'd seen him in before. Though, I can't say I liked him any better on Vampire Diaries than I do here. I was glad that show has a high turnover for tertiary characters.

[jaytee1812]

It was bugging the crap out of me where I'd seen this kid on Code Black this week, until I realised it was the guy who plays Miranda's son.

Edited November 5, 2015 by jaytee1812

[formerlyfreedom]

Marcia Cross is joining the cast in a recurring role.

[thuganomics85]

Eliza Coupe will be joining the show starting in episode 10, with the possibility of becoming a regular.  Since I know she is known for that Happy Endings show, maybe she can inject some humor into Quantico (well, intentional humor.  There is already plenty unintentional humor.)

[mredlich21]

If this is incorrect, please remove the post, but I wanted to put up a link to my blog since I have started reviewing Quantico there, partly inspired by the discussions here:

 

http://dontcallitbollywood.com/category/global-india/quantico/

[Scamp]

Anybody else think that Caleb looks a lot like the Texas teen in the "affluenza" murder case?

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4c3c4e9211c0461589990cc6ea8519b4/qa-look-search-texas-teen-affluenza-case

[Just Here]

Priyanka Chopra has been cast in Paramount's Baywatch film as the "villain" (EW.com). The film has already begun production, with Chopra apparently re-arranging her Quantico filming schedule in order to accommodate her role in the Baywatch film (EW.com).

[Dowel Jones]

Does she commute between sets using the Ober car service?

[romantic idiot]

So I came to post about something else but in catching up in the thread found a couple of old posts I wanted to respond to. 

As for Alex they are very careful not to show her doing anything "unusual" . Like rejecting a hamburger. Or having a Hindu devotional image. Or even spouting a curse word in Hindi. (She lived there for 9 years. She knows the language).

 

So there is no reason to believe that Alex is a Hindu. She might be Christian (Catholic or otherwise) and been brought up as one, and the Om symbol could be from her mother, or a random friend or reminder. So then there would be no reason for her to reject a hamburger. For that matter, there are Hindus who eat beef. Happily. Especially this generation.  Unless of course I missed them stating that she was Hindu.

 

And, though this is based more on my knowledge of some folks in Bangalore, she may not actually know curse words in Hindi. (Or any Hindi). (Okay fine, unlikely in Bombay) but you can have your instinctive first language as English and you tend to curse in your first language. Alex's first language, born as she was in the US, would be English, and I'd expect that to be her go to language to curse in. 

 

Anyway, so I came to complain a little about Alex's look, and I couldn't find a better place to put this. I don't like how they emphasise her lips. I think they make her look more generic. I think Priyanka looks a lot prettier when they play it down, like below: 

 

 

Edited March 7, 2016 by romantic idiot