Bridgerton season 4’s production is in full swing, and new casting announcements have come out regarding new characters. Based on the book An Offer From a Gentleman, the season will follow second son Benedict (Luke Thompson) and his romance with Sophie Baek – changed from Beckett in the book – who will be played by Yerin Ha.
But it is not her casting which has raised questions regarding age. It is Harry Potter alum Katie Leung who has caused chatter on X/Twitter. For added context, she will be playing Lady Araminta Gun, who is debuting her two daughters on the marriage mart: Rosamund Li (Michelle Mao) and Posy Li (Isabella Wei). What’s more, Lady Gun is also the stepmother to Sophie, which will make the former Benedict’s stepmother-in-law.
Members of X/Twitter have complained that at 37, Leung is too young to convincingly play a mother to two adult debutantes (despite the fact that Wei is 20 years old, and Leung being 37, is plausible, assuming they and their characters are the same age). Additionally, the community has pointed out that Thompson is only a year younger than Leung. He is 36, while Benedict is supposed to be 28.
Similar to how young (and not so young) adults have been cast to play teenage characters in film and television for decades (known as ‘Dawson casting’ after the TV show Dawson’s Creek), there have been cases where actors have played characters which are 1) older than themselves, and 2) are at an age where it would be improbable that they would be young enough to be qualified and experienced to pursue certain careers/roles. Examples across media include a business executive, army officer, university academic, scientist or neurosurgeon.
Being a parent to teenage or young adult children also pops up, with an average gap of between one to 12 years between an actor playing the parent and the actor playing their on-screen child. Who are the casting directors and writers trying to fool, and how far can they suspend viewer disbelief? And what are the reasons for this?
Underage casting vs. Improbable age
The above phenomena can be divide into two types – underage casting and improbable age. The former refers to an actor being too young to fulfil the occupation or societal role of their character, and the latter is where a character has an implausible role because of how young they are. This often takes place due to ageism in Hollywood and casting – older women are seen as lacking innocence and appeal compared to younger ones, and there are a lack of roles for older women as well. The result: actors who are close in age playing a parent and child, and actors who are too young to be playing worldly characters in jobs requiring years of study, training and work experience.
Actors who were too close in age to be believable as parent and child
Ever looked up the ages of actors who have played a parent and child, and you’ve found out that their age gap is more suited to siblings than parent and child? Well, this is a common phenomenon in which Leung is far from the first to receive criticism for playing a ‘young’ mother who is too close in age to her on-screen children. Some of the most egregious cases include 29-year-old Angelina Jolie and 28-year-old Colin Farrell in Alexander (2004) and 72-year-old Cher and 69-year-old Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).
And in recent years, House of the Dragon features 30-year-old Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) as the mother of three children who are played by actors in their mid-to-late twenties. Not only this, but two of Alicent’s children, Aegon and Helaena (aged 16 and 17 respectively), have children of their own, making her a very young grandmother. Cooke has even commented on this, pointing out that the team could have made her look older through make-up and prosthetics, or cast a middle aged actor to make her character being a grandmother more plausible.
Actors who were too young to be playing older, worldly characters
And then there’s the issue of young actors being cast as characters in roles where they would have be to be in their late-20s at the earliest to pursue certain career opportunities. One of these is Jennifer Lawrence, who was 25 when she played Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur and a divorced mother in her 30s, in Joy (2015). This was far from the first time she was aged up; three years, before, she was in Silver Linings Playbook (2012), where she played a widower despite being 22. Not only that, her on-screen love interest was a 37-year-old Bradley Cooper. What was going on there? Seems like the casting team was unwilling to cast an older actor, preferring to give this opportunity to young up-and-comer Lawrence instead.
The takeaway
In some cases, the casting team has been able to suspend the disbelief of viewers to some extent by casting actors who are younger than their characters, and can pass for someone a few years older. However, the world of Hollywood still has some work to do regarding their favouring of younger female actors over older ones, and giving older female stars more opportunities to play mothers, grandmothers etc.
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