While The Simpsons, Family Guy, Big Mouth and Central Park made headlines over the summer for moving toward having minority actors in minority roles, white actors are still voicing Black characters like Cleveland Brown and Carl in other countries. “I think that the only thing that matters is that the voice fits the character,” says Peter Musäus, who is white and the voice of The Simpsons' Black power plant worker Carl for the German dubbing. “If you focus on the subject of race, it also has to be a Chinese actor dubbing a Chinese character, the same for Native Americans, Latin, and the characters in Bollywood movies need Indian actors.” Another white German voice actor, who works on one of the four shows but preferred to remain anonymous added that this is partly “due to the fact that there are only a few Black or mixed-race actors in Germany who work mainly as dubbing actors. Of course they can’t cover all Black actor roles.”
TOPICS: The Simpsons, Big Mouth, Central Park, Family Guy, African Americans and TV, Black Lives Matter