All too old for the role: I say get a 15-16 year old girl (like Elle Fanning or Chloe Moretz) and you have it made. After all, Supergirl's supposed to be 16, not 23.
There is no "supposed to be." It's an adaptation, a word that literally means change. Adaptations are perfectly free to reinvent the characters and continuity as much as they wish. That's the whole point. Why bother making a new version if it doesn't offer a fresh approach?
The idea would be like casting a white actress to play the role of the daughter/cousin of a black character, and be just as foolish (and also just as despised.)
Except, again, this is a new continuity. They could just as easily cast a nonwhite actor as Superman, as
Lois and Clark did with Dean Cain.
Besides, they're Kryptonians. They don't have to have the same ethnic categories and differentiations that we do.
Also, it is deeply, deeply disingenuous to pretend that casting a nonwhite actor in an originally white role is equivalent to casting a white actor in an originally nonwhite role. The former is correcting a generations-old bias in favor of white actors, while the latter is perpetuating that bias. The scales are still tipped much too far in whites' favor to claim that moving the scale in one direction is equivalent to moving it in the other. They're actually completely opposite in effect -- one reducing the imbalance, the other increasing it.
As far as casting non-Caucasian goes, I can see Christopher's broader point and agree with it in principle, but there aren't a whole lot of KNOWN and available actresses in the right age range for the character that aren't Caucasian (sad, yes, but that's just the way that it is right now).
If they go with an unknown actress, I think the probability of getting a non-Caucasian (or mixed-ethnicity) actress in the role goes up.
Exactly. The reason they aren't known is because they aren't being looked for. Inequality doesn't change until people make an effort to change it.
That article linked above suggested
Star-Crossed's Aimee Teegarden for the role, but she was totally bland as the lead actress of that series; the real breakout actress, for me, was supporting player
Malese Jow, who was charming and talented and pretty and far more compelling to watch. I'd be happy to see her as Supergirl, since she seems to have a good personality for it. Or, for a more conventional blonde type, there's
Natalie Hall, who was Taylor on
Star-Crossed. Really, just about every supporting female actress on that show was more engaging than Teegarden.
