The Delicate Business Of Casting Black Leads

Lisa DeMoraes thinks it’s absurd to assume that the election of Barack Obama will cause Hollywood to start putting more black actors in leading roles. But she sees a glimmer of hope in CBS’s decision to elevate Laurence Fishburne to the lead in one of its signature dramas. “The bad news about the TV industry is that it assumes a failure is an indictment of the idea, when it’s usually just an indictment of the show.”