Identity & the Divergent Series: Examining Casting Choices

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Divergent series lately. For anyone who doesn’t know, the Divergent series is a book trilogy set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic Chicago. It’s somewhat divisive as far as opinions go; either you like it or you don’t. I’m not the biggest fan and I’ll readily admit the series has problems, but I still like it.

Now the Divergent series has recently been adapted into a series of movies. The first three movies (Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant) are out; the fourth (Ascendant) is on its way. (I reviewed Insurgent a while back.) While I’m a moderate fan of the books, I have some decidedly mixed feeling on the Divergent movies. As far as writing goes, they’re… they’re okay. They smoothed over some plot holes/rough patches in the books while still creating a recognizable adaptation. So it’s not really the writing I have a problem with; it’s the casting.

You see, a while back, Veronica Roth, the author of the Divergent trilogy, answered a fan’s question over at her blog. In the post, Ms. Roth said that she’d imagined Four, the series’ romantic lead and main guy character, as being biracial and/or racially mixed, with his father being white and his mother being an olive-skinned woman of color. According to Ms. Roth, Four is recognizable as the son of both his parents—basically, he’s got a mix of features from both of them. Roth also stated that Four’s skin color more resembles his father’s, which means he’s light-skinned and/or white-passing. For me, a light-skinned biracial kid, this is (or was) exciting news.

Now, almost none of these cool details were in the book. Four’s mother is described as dark-haired and olive-skinned, but Four himself is never really described in terms of skin color or race. On its own, that’s okay; it can be challenging to describe a biracial character in a speculative setting where you can’t use words like “biracial”. And though she didn’t clarify it in the books, Ms. Roth said in another blog post that should her series be adapted into movies, she would do her best to ensure that her characters of color—Four, Christina, and Tori, for example—would be accurately cast.

And… well, now we do have a series of Divergent movies. And I will admit that Christina and Tori were accurately cast. Four, however, is played by Theo James. Mr. James is darker-skinned than his co-star, Shailene Woodley, who plays main character Tris. But James isn’t biracial; he’s of English and Scottish descent, with a Greek grandfather. So while he looks racially ambiguous, he’s not biracial.

Theo James as Four is, on its own, something of a mess, but it’s unfortunately not the worst casting choice I’ve ever seen. But the problems continued in Insurgent when Naomi Watts was cast as Evelyn Eaton, Four’s mother, who, if you’ll remember, was a woman of color in the books.

I have nothing against Naomi Watts. She’s a good actress. But even setting race aside, I couldn’t see her as Evelyn. And adding race into it, let me just say: Naomi Watts is white. Very white. Blindingly white. I know some white people can be considered “olive-skinned”, but Naomi Watts isn’t one of them. She just straight-up didn’t seem at all like Evelyn Eaton to me.

So it was Insurgent that really got me thinking about the casting of the movie series. Soon after I saw it, I re-watched Divergent with my sister, and noticed that while there are a lot of non-white people in the background, and as supporting characters like Christina and Tori, all of the main characters were played by white actors. I started to wonder, as I have with so many movies: If post-apocalyptic Chicago has such a diverse population, why are all of the main characters in this story white?

I don’t have enough money or influence, yet, to make a lot of changes in the movie industry. But I can imagine how things might be in my perfect, idealized universe. Thus, without further ado, I present: Divergent, as I might have cast it. (Click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

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1. Chloe Bennet as Tris Prior

Tris is the main character of the Divergent series. In reality, she’s played by Shailene Woodley. It was while watching Insurgent that I realized that, in my opinion at least, Bennet and Woodley actually look somewhat alike. The difference is that Chloe Bennet is mixed (Chinese/white). Since she’s already proven that she can play an action heroine in Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, I think Chloe Bennet would be an interesting choice for Tris.

2. Tyler Posey as Tobias “Four” Eaton

At this juncture I would like to point out that I do think Theo James did a decent job with this role. But the fact remains that he’s not biracial. Tyler Posey, on the other hand, is. (His father is white and his mother is, I believe, Mexican-American.) Wow. Look at that. An actual biracial actor to play an actual biracial character. Look at that, Hollywood. It’s not that hard.

3. Lucy Liu as Jeanine Matthews

Confession time, here’s what I got: I have always imagined Jeanine Matthews, the villain, as East Asian, ever since I first read the books. The movies cast Kate Winslet, who plays the part pretty well, but is also blonde and white. I left the first movie a little annoyed by this (but not too annoyed, because I’m still not sure how Jeanine was described in the books). Most of this post was conceived after I saw Insurgent, but Lucy Liu has always been and will always be my top pick to play Jeanine Matthews.

4. Constance Wu as Natalie Prior

Natalie Prior is Tris’s mother, and she’s not a terribly important character, though she does get things done in the story, unlike some fictional mothers I could name. She’s played by Ashley Judd in the actual movie—but if Chloe Bennet were to play Tris, it would logically follow that one of her parents should be Chinese. I figured I’d keep her father (played by Tony Goldwyn) white and cast Constance Wu as her mother.

5. Kenny Leu as Caleb Prior

This is related to the above point. Caleb is Tris’s brother, so it follows that he would also be Chinese like her and their mother. That’s pretty much all I have to say here.

6. Esai Morales as Marcus Eaton

Marcus is Four’s father. When I originally thought up this alternate cast, I only included Four and Marcus (Four’s mother isn’t in the first movie)—so I figured, if I was going to cast a Latino actor to play Four, I should cast a Latino actor to play his father, too. Then, of course, Insurgent came out and I got involved in the whole mess surrounding the casting of Four and his mom. That led me to…

7. Rosario Dawson as Evelyn Eaton

After seeing Insurgent and reading up on the miscasting of Evelyn, Four’s mother, I just wanted to see a woman of color as that character. So, without thinking about it much, I added Rosario Dawson to my happy fictional alternate cast. It wasn’t until later that I realized why this wouldn’t work—namely, because Four is supposed to be half white, and neither Esai Morales nor Rosario Dawson are white. However, the movies cast non-biracial, but ambiguous-looking Theo James, and then made both of his parents white, so hopefully you’ll forgive me for casting actually biracial Tyler Posey to play Four, then making his parents non-white. (Morales is Puerto Rican-American and Dawson is, interestingly, also biracial, being black and Latina.) Were I to somehow do an actual reboot of the Divergent series, I’d probably do this differently, but for a fun thought-experiment blog post I’m not going to put that much effort into it.

So there you have it.

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Ultimately, the Divergent series is about two teenagers trying to find their way in a world where people are divided into rigid, divided groups by a self-imposed system. It’s about young people rising up against a world telling them, You can only be one thing. I think that’s a story a lot of biracial/mixed kids can relate to, and I think it’s a shame we’re not allowed to see ourselves play out that adventure on the big screen. Divergent is a story so heavily centered on the theme of identity, a story that says, You can be more than one. You can have multiple facets of identity. Trying to pigeonhole people is reductive and doesn’t work.

Shouldn’t biracial kids be able to see themselves in that message, too?