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June 3, 2021

Wokeness comes to British history

By Andrea Widburg

Laurence Fox, a British actor, is one of the few people in Britain standing for liberty and pushing back against political correctness.  Most recently, he challenged a docudrama show that took Anne Boleyn — a straight, white woman — and turned her into a black woman with lesbian tendencies.  It shouldn't be controversial to point out that this is erroneous, but in 21st-century Britain, it is.

The popular Bridgerton TV series that aired last year used Black and White actors to play characters in a story set during the early 19th century in England, right down to making England's Queen Charlotte a Black woman.  Everyone who viewed it understood that it was a romantic comedy played for laughs and lasciviousness.  It was the romcom equivalent of a "what if" novel in which Lincoln is not assassinated.

The new Channel 5 production, Anne Boleyn, is something different.  (A subsidiary of Viacom, CBS owns Britain's Channel 5.)  This show purports to be an accurate retelling of the doomed queen's final months of life in 1536 before her husband, Henry VIII, had her executed so he could marry Jane Seymour:

You may know the history, but you don't know her story. Anne Boleyn is a new three part intimate psychological thriller, told from a new perspective — hers. The show explores Anne's final months as she struggles to secure a future for her daughter and to challenge the powerful patriarchy closing in around her. Filmed on location in Yorkshire in 2020, Jodie Turner Smith (Queen & Slim) leads the cast as Tudor Queen Anne Boleyn. The ensemble cast includes BAFTA Nominated Paapa Essiedu (I May Destroy You, Gangs of London) as Anne's brother and Tudor nobleman George Boleyn, Mark Stanley (White House Farm) as Henry VIII, one of the most famous Kings in British history, and Lola Petticrew (Three Families, Dating Amber) as Anne's love rival, Jane Seymour.

To the extent the show is a "thriller," some license is forgivable.  That license began with casting Jodie Turner Smith, a Black woman, to play Boleyn.  While admittedly weird, given that Anne really lived and was indubitably White, if she's a good actress who shows fidelity to the character's essence, well, that's acting.

That fidelity failed when the first episode had Boleyn engage in a passionate kiss with Jane Seymour, the woman who supplanted her in Henry's affections.  It's one thing to "act" as Boleyn, no matter one's color.  It's another thing entirely to strongly imply to the audience that a show is historically accurate (although with some license) and then to turn the main historic character into a lesbian.

This isn't dramatic license.  It's part of the left's relentless push to make every historic character, from Abraham Lincoln to Norman Rockwell and, now, to Anne Boleyn, "queer."

Enter Laurence Fox.  A well known actor in England, American conservatives became aware of him in January 2020, when he appeared on Question Time, a show that allows the audience to ask questions of well known people.  During the show, a feminist attacked Fox for refusing to acknowledge that racism drove Meghan Markle out of England.  Fox struck back hard, denying that modern England is racist.  He also challenged climate change hypocrisy and alleged sexism in politics and argued that the fear of racism encourages serious crime.

One year later, in January 2021, Fox launched a campaign for mayor of London and created a new "Reclaim" political party, based on freedom.

Fox garnered only 1.9% of the vote, with Londoners again supporting the leftist Sadiq Khan.  Notably, in 2011, long before the most recent population shift, only 44% of Londoners were White British, and 37% were born outside of England.  Indeed, 24.5% weren’t even from Europe.

While he may have lost the mayoral election, Fox is still pushing for liberty and sanity:

He's right.  An actor can override skin color through acting, but to lie about the essence of a historic person is wrong.

What especially offended Fox, though, was the hypocrisy:

Bravo to Fox for standing against the madness.  And best wishes to him as he continues his efforts to return Britain to a country defined by liberty, the rule of law, and sanity.

Image: Anne Boleyn by Hans Holbein the Younger.  Public domain.

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