Puzzling when black actors in the UK moan about lack of opportunities, then move to the US to deprive others there of opportunities….

The latest is said to be Ncuti Gatwa, the fellow currently playing Dr Who. His parents fled violence in Rwanda to solace in Scotland. You can’t carry on looking for a better place! Sometimes worth putting up a bit and trying to make where you find yourself, a better place? You see a spate of black actors who were fortunate to receive their training here in the UK, got given opportunities to become whoever they are, then suddenly the UK is no longer good enough! Yes, I can fully understand that if all we keep making here is ‘period drama’ (Wolf Hall, Downton Abbey and the like…) there is only so many slots black actors can be cast in, but waltzing off to America to put on some dodgy American accent and snatch roles that actors in America (in particular, the black ones, as Samuel L Jackson once pointed out) is akin to doing the same thing to those folk!

I am not asking immigrants and their descendants to stay in a corner, but for goodness sake, a bit of gratitude won’t go amiss! Yes, we have so many issues at so many levels in the UK, a good example is the recent outcry when supermarket adverts at Christmas featured black folk and some people threatened to boycott those supermarkets. Quite ridiculous, yes. But, to think leaving the UK for America is some move to a place that provides more opportunities for black actors, is quite frankly, pathetic. Stay here in the UK, take the roles you can get, play them well and do the best you can!

Nothing wrong with people going off to work abroad, many people do. But it should not be about dumping on the UK. Working abroad is fine. Nothing wrong with it. The reason can even be, that there are more options out there, but to turn it into a colour thing and say black actors get fewer options in the UK, and then go off to a place where you go and deprive some other black actors, is laughable!
It’s similar to a tennis player born to Hungarian parents in Australia, gets trained in Australia (Johanna Konta), moves to the UK at age 14, few years later, ditches representing Australia, starts representing the UK (good for us of course), but what of the young British tennis player who may have been deprived of that slot?
Some folk just want it all?!
Want a better life? found it? Well, stay there are make it even better….

It’s perhaps the same criticism people are levelling against the migrants risking their life to row across the English Channel to enter the UK illegally from France. Is France less safe than the UK?