Alison Pill: 'If you don't have to cast a white person, don't.'
The new ABC political drama The Family hinges on a Machiavellian mother-daughter story. A politician and her campaign-managing daughter navigate a world of hidden motives and morally complex characters.
Canadian actress Alison Pill joins Shad to discuss her role in the tense, dark thriller about the Warrens — a prominent family processing the return of their kidnapped son and brother. Pill plays the mayor's headstrong daughter, Willa; a Catholic Republican from Maine.
Pill, herself a "liberal Torontonian", explains how she shed the hesitancy of past characters to play Willa.
Open casting is a good thing: Pill
Pill also reflects on the importance of diversity on screen, the number of roles opening up to non-white actors, and why she views the shift toward open casting as a good thing.
"I would say definitely, without a doubt, there's a newfound obligation to — if you don't have to cast a white person, don't," Pill tells Shad, adding that the industry appears to be moving forward on "this thing that you didn't have to notice" in the past.
In the future, "a young white blonde lady might be less needed," she says.
The Family premieres next week on ABC.
WEB EXTRA | Alison Pill is a shape shifter of the acting world. You may recognize her from the following roles.
In The Newsroom, she played a smart but inexperienced newshound.
She channeled literary muse Zelda Fitzgerald for Midnight in Paris.
And inhabited a young woman avoiding her cancer diagnosis on In Treatment.
She even learned drumming for her bandmate role in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
