it’s anthony mackie o’clock, please bear with me. (long post).
(again, i mean no disrespect or hate towards any of the white actors and actresses in tfatws, including sebastian stan!!)
but i was reading through the interview that anthony mackie gave for variety magazine (2021) and there was one thing he said that, in light of recent comments and takes i have seen regarding the unequal consideration of sebastian stan and anthony mackie’s acting and characters in tfatws, really resonated with me.
this? this is awful. this quote shows that not only does anthony mackie know that he is viewed in this light by critics and fans of the white actors whose fame he watched from the sidelines, it shows that this is normal for him.
anthony mackie is so used to being sidelined and looked over that it is normal for him to feel like that.
anthony mackie went to juilliard. juilliard. the legendary performing arts school. he worked his way through project after project, was forced to watch his white costars’ celebrity rise from the sidelines of many of them, but kept acting and taking projects that were important to him (ie. the banker, shelter, detroit, the hate u give). he is a very talented actor with excellent range, an actor who tries to understand every character he portrays and works to the peak of his ability to play them accurately.
and it is evident that in the mcu, in the case of sam wilson, he has done a fantastic job.
he took mcu sam wilson from a potentially two-dimensional cap sidekick to having a personality highly suggestive of the fleshed out, opinionated, reckless hero that he is in the comics, and that portrayal likely would not have come through in ca:tws and beyond from a lesser actor.
mackie has also mentioned in interviews that one of his greatest concerns is that of the success of tfatws, because he has felt that if the show flops greatly the marvel executives are going to see his casting as nothing more than a mistake.
that is also heartbreaking. he has done nothing to deserve feeling like that, yet he is so used to being kept in the shadows that that is honestly how he feels about his first lead in a major franchise.
so i hope i don’t see everyone talking solely about sebastian stan’s acting. and completely glossing over the fact that even from the trailers and clips, anthony mackie has had a magnanimous presence in the show and in the story.
because that is already, unfortunately, happening.
this goes back to what some people had mentioned on my previous post that i had noticed as well, where. it was sebastian stan’s tag trending after the big tfatws content day, while mackie’s was not.
that’s absurd. mackie is the other lead of this show, not even cast in a side role this time, and he is still being sidelined by fans in favour of yet another white man. and sebastian is an excellent actor in his own right, yes, but nothing warrants ignoring anthony mackie’s presence in the show, as he is the other lead.
as fans, we have the ability and therefore the responsibility to make this the show where mackie can have faith that he truly is a main character and the lead in what is going to be a very successful tv show, not just a prop for yet another white man.
we have the power to do that.
and mackie damn well deserves it.
i yield my time once more. <3
Simply for emphasis i might think to put it this way: Anthony Mackie isn’t the other lead in tfatws, he simply is the lead, or in the very least one of the leads.
It’s a small difference but i think, at least in the way it sounds to me, it does sound very different.
Maybe one could even just say he’s the lead, and Sebastian Stan is the other lead.
i don’t think we as a society appreicate anthony mackie’s acting enough. his comedic timing and ability to switch to being funny to more serious moments so smoothly is so well done and not talked about enough.
