Heroes star Leonard Roberts exposes Ali Larter and Racism on the show.

You, cutie, are an exception

 

Mostly all these actresses are heaux dating back to the silent era. I heard that the first wave of early Hollywood actresses from the 1900s were literally pulled out of local whorehouses. I've not bothered to research this, but seems legit.

 

My take on this:

1- I remember in real time back in the day when guys on this board were speculating that Larter "liked the brothas" because she had a few roles in which characters she played shared scenes with black men. And that's pretty much all her characters did with black men....shared scenes with them. Didn't matter if her character was married to a black man or attracted to a black man, there was never any intimacy on screen with black men. And, hey, that was fine. I'm not blaming her for all of that. But I found it laughable that some guys on here thought this somehow was enough to speculate if she was interested in black men in real life. It smacked of desperation.

2-I also recall the discussions had over a decade ago about the absurdity of the movie she did with Idris Elba. There was never any consummated affair, never any kissing and if I’m not mistaken Elba’s character may not have even be interested in her. It was such a fitting movie for a Hollywood (including black Hollywood) which wasn’t comfortable with straight black male sexuality. A white male character would get to fuck that loose woman, suffer temporarily disdain and scorn from his wife and then physically take down that woman he had an affair with if she proved to be crazy enough to be a physical danger to her family. The black male character in this film though did not sleep with the woman, got more shit for NOT sleeping with another woman from his wife than white male characters get even when they do have an affair and then had to step aside as his (black) wife took down the obsessed chick. And I wonder how that ended up happening. Was that influenced by Larter in terms of the no intimacy or was that the plan all along? Or maybe the question should be if the husband slept with the character in the initial script but that was all changed when the character became black with the casting of Elba. In other words were his balls cut off as soon as a black man got the role? If so I’d blame that more on Hollywood’s cowardice than I would Larter.

3- If it all went down as Roberts claims then Larter is a piece of garbage. But let’s not pretend that the whole thing about her “hurting her brand” wasn’t a legitimate issue. This is something that was speculated about on this site for years. The public not being supportive of female characters, especially non-black ones, when they are paired with black men has historically been a thing with a few exceptions. This is the result of an American society which has been often vocal against the pairing of black men and white women on screen. Such pairings on daytime soaps always led to hate mail. In porn the whole existence of dodgers came about because white men threatened rejection of white female porn stars who had sex with black guys. If YouTube allows comments on a commercial involving a black male and a white female it will likely be flooded with ugly, bigoted statements. That suggests a toxic atmosphere in which actors/actresses have to deal with. Larter may have been hiding her own racism behind this reality but she wasn’t wrong about the bottom line. In this culture we have made relationships with white men look as being desirable for all women. As being the default normal. Meanwhile such hookups with black guys in TV and film have been shaped to be seen as inappropriate, undesirable and even disgusting. Only recently has that begun to change so far as media representation is concerned, including the porn industry.

4-I am not going to hold a grudge against white women for what Larter did nearly 15 years ago or for the actions of the so-called Karens. Even if one thinks that’s how most white women feel the truth is there is no proof to back that up. The number of white ladies being caught red-handed in these situations make up only a minute number of their population. It would be just as racist as painting black men in general with a broad brush for the misdeeds of some within their ranks. Besides these acts by some ladies are countered by actions of other white women marching for the rights of black or championing such rights on twitter, white actresses who don’t reject increasingly intimate moments with black guys on screen, white female porn stars who now laugh off white boys who take issue with them fucking black dudes. I have a white Bachelorette who picked a black dude, something that hasn’t happened the two lone times a black Bachelorette was the ones making the choices. Also anyone who thinks that they ae going to necessarily find more open-mindedness from Asian women or Latinas are in for a rude awakening. As a guy who has been dating an Asian lady for awhile and am aware of the shit she sometimes go through because of it from people of her community, let me emphasize how much of a fantasy that is.

5-Lets go after the showrunner of “Heroes” as well who allowed this to happen and then didn’t put a stop to it. Lets blame him for overseeing a staff which didn’t even try to make the black male characters compelling. Lets point the finger at him for falling back on the old tired and true bullshit explanation used every time a black male/white female onscreen couple is broken up : there was no chemistry. I wish more people would jump on this. This has been the golden lie to justify the breakups as I explained but for also the decisions to not pair certain people in the first place. That line by the showrunner ticked me off almost as much as Larter’s actions because he is being portrayed as the rational, non-racist of the two.

6-None of the articles or discussions on twitter about this story have addressed the elephant in the room: the lingering taboo of the portrayal of sexuality between black men and white women that is so engrained in our society in general that such incidents like this one involving Larter occur in the first place.

7- Is what Larter did that much worse than what Ellen Pompeo did?

 

Isnt Ellen Pompeo married to a Black Guy? What did she do?

 

She didn't want Isiah Washington as her love interest on Grey's Anatomy.

 

AH well u know Isiah can be an asshole so maybe it personal and not race related. She married her husband like two years later so I find it hard to believe it was a Race Issue lol.

 

Also its run by Shonda Rhimes lol she loves her IR and Ellen Pompeo wasnt so big the show needed her or she hire a racist I don't think. So yeah I need to see way more evidence before I bought Ellen Pompeo said no cause Isiah was Black.

 

Great post!! Very well presented @JamalSpunky especially point 2!!

 

She made the decision BEFORE she got to know the asshole Isiah would be. She balked at the idea of her love interest being black and the excuse she gave was essentially that she didn't want her TV life to mirror her real life (she was dating a black man who in time became her husband). That was some ignorant shit. So if she was dating white men in real life would she nix any casting of white actors for her onscreen romances? If you are a heterosexual actor would you want to play gay characters in order for your Hollywood relationships to not feel too close to home of your real world relationships? Pompeo's character adopted a black daughter a few years back. But Pompeo has an actual black daughter so why didn't she object to that bit of real life scenario seeping into her fantasy world?

How I interpret all of this was that she was willing to be in a relationship with a black man in her real world because she loved the guy and probably felt she could keep that more private. Whose business was it anyway? But as so far as her screen life was concerned, she may have been uncomfortable being part of such a presentation including the possible negative pushback that would come with it. And how would she be aware of such possible negativity coming her way unless she was made aware of the possibility, had been warned about the possibility, had experienced it already first-hand or knew of others who experienced it or was not aware of any other successful examples of such pairings to think that type of on-screen couple would be accepted. Or perhaps as a white woman living in bigoted America she simply put two and two together and imagined the backlash and didn't want to be Jackie Robinson.

I can be sympathetic towards Pompeo but I can't forgive her for ruining a black actor's opportunity when she made that call. She probably wasn't even thinking about the rare opportunities black men had as leads and especially as romantic interests in dramatic television. In my opinion Pompeo was a coward who cared only about her job security. Which is why I don't fuck with her.

 

Yeah I take it Ellen Pompeo had a change of heart after that whole thing. Because as @JamalSpunky is pointing out it makes no sense. The same could be said about Ali Larter changing from about 10-15 years ago, but then you read her PR apology and think maybe she does still think this way.

Things have definitely changed though. There are few women like Ali Larter nowdays and with so many onscreen IR couples having fanbases all those tired ass excuses are looking more and more like producers and performers projecting their feelings onto the audience and using them as a scapegoat. But it doesn't work anymore. Look at the show legacies and how Raf & Hope have more people within the fans wanting that "ship" than the ones that want to see her with Landon.

We are also seeing actresses themselves take the initiative in casting themselves in IR relationships in their own projects like Elizabeth Olsen in Sorry For Your Loss

Sandra Bullock in Birdbox


Mary Elizabeth Winstead in All About Nina



But I'm still glad to see this hit mainstream because black male and white female love and sexuality have been and in some cases still are a taboo in this industry. As @JamalSpunky pointed out; the other excuse they like to use is "Oh they have no chemistry"... yeah because they WROTE IT THAT WAY! lol. They tried that with Supergirl and Jimmy Olsen on the show. As I have shown with that article back in 1997 it has been something people are uncomfortable talking about. Hopefully not anymore.

 

To be fair, there really wasn’t much chemistry between them. At least that I could see. And, it didn’t have anything to do with the writing. At least to my eyes.

The writing took a huge dip when it moved to the CW, though. Which made him very unlikable. So, that didn’t help matters.

 

Even if you think that is the case I am hard pressed to think of examples in when TPTB did such a relationship turnaround like this when the male half of the relationship was white. You just don't see that no matter how lamely the white guy may connect on screen with his female lead.

In fact unless the white dude is competing against other white dudes you don't hear that complaint about "lacking chemistry" with his onscreen female love interest. It is language reserved for black male characters as is this whole thing about being "unlikable." White dudes are NEVER unlikable under these circumstances. They are instead bad boys who are unfairly misunderstood by the society they find themselves in.

By the way there have been consistent proclamations of a lack of chemistry between Barry Allen and the black Iris Allen on the Flash since day one. And from the little of the show that I've seen there is nothing particularly interesting regarding their chemistry. But TPTB never broke them up or killed her off. This is probably because it didn't receive nearly as much backlash. First of all even if white girls disapprove of the pairing of a white male with a non-white female they still tend to support him by continuing to support the show. They aren't like white dudes or even black gals who promise to take viewership hostage if they don't get their way. Secondly, black female viewers, 99.9% whom I'm certain never picked up a Flash comic before, really rallied around that relationship. They were very loud about it on social media and shot down anyone who didn't like it by calling them racist. It kinda work. They even kept up the campaign to such an extent that when a movie version of The Flash was greenlit, black women started the #KeepIrisBlack movement. And while I may disagree with their methods I at least have to give those ladies credit for championing their IR causes, something black male viewers do not do under similar circumstances.

That said Mehcad Brooks had some drawbacks from what I could see in that first season of Supergirl. 1-He was a black actor playing Jimmy Olsen. Comic book fans don't care for race-bending overall but they really hate it when its a white male character suffering such a slight. So they can overlook Iris Allen being black, but Jimmy Olsen being black is another story (Zendaya got some pushback for being MJ but it was nothing compared to what Michael B Jordan received for playing Johnny Storm). 2-While Supergirl in the comics had black love interests including one who was a journalist, she was never romantically tied with Olsen.. TPTB should have made Brooks one of those black guys from the comics instead of tying to increase household name recognition with the whole Jimmy Olsen thing. 3-Kara/Supergirl only had eyes for Jimmy that first season. Her being so head-over-heels for him not only ruined any idea of a romantic buildup between the characters. But even more it drove white dudes nuts. Here was this gorgeous, powerful lead white female character who was picking a black man over white males. That meant showing her caring for Olsen's well-being more than she did for white male characters. And that was an affront to the white male ego. Many fans were hating on her for not paying more attention to her nerdy white male colleague who was desperately in love with her. 4-Brooks was arguably the least impressive actor of the cast. He wasn't horrible, just not as gifted as the other actors and that may his uphill climb all the harder in terms of gaining the audience's sympathy. Oh, and by the way black chicks weren't going to waste capital supporting Kara and Jimmy because supporting that type of IR hookup on TV is not what they are passionate about. 5-This may sound strange but hear me out....having the planned love interest of Supergirl be a man with a shaved/bald head was never a smart idea, something I thought from the start. The main people who would be driving the shipping fanaticism of the show would be female viewers in their teens to mid or late 20s. And they typically like their romantic idols to be guys with a full head of hair. A bald dome represents being "old" in their eyes. Can anyone think of a white good guy love interest of a young white woman on a TV series having a similar shaved head?

 

There are and have been black male groups of viewers out there it's just that unfortunately the whole sellout, snowbunny chaser, disrespectful to black women labels have overwhelmed the support for bm/ww relationships. To the point that we are lame or irritating if we show support for bm/ww coupling.

 

Very, very true.