Some years back, I read an interview with members of the CalShakes creative team. CalShakes is a theater company in the San Francisco Bay Area that has a “color-blind" casting policy. One of the issues that has arisen for them is the realization that when you cast a non-white actor in a traditionally white role, you still have to consider how that choice will play to your audience. The director of a Shakespearean play said he regretfully passed on a fantastic black actor to play a particular role because in the script, that character (a grown man) is repeatedly referred to as “boy.” When a black man is called boy, it has a different impact on the audience than it would if the actor was white. They could not rewrite the script for three reasons: 1. Changing the word “boy" would change the meaning of the line, 2. Rewriting well-known lines of Shakespeare to accommodate the fact that the actor is black only serves to underscore his skin color rather than ignore it, and 3. Rewriting the Bard’s lines would hurt their reputation as a serious Shakespeare company. As your critique of Bridgerton’s casting demonstrates, as much as we would like the audience to be “color blind" we have to deal with the fact that they are not. There’s also the problem of money. Production companies and networks need to produce successful shows to stay in business. If their marketing research pinpoints their most likely demographic to be young white women, they’re going to choose the star they think will be most relatable and the storyline they think will appeal most to that group. There’s no easy answer to the problem, but even though recent attempts have met with mixed success at best, we should be encouraged that at least attempts are being made. As long as movies and TV shows keep trying to be inclusive, eventually, someone will get it right and show others how to move forward.