{"id":94059,"date":"2025-07-27T23:55:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T06:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=94059"},"modified":"2025-07-27T23:55:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T06:55:25","slug":"diverse-emcees-and-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2025\/07\/27\/diverse-emcees-and-robots\/","title":{"rendered":"Diverse Emcees and Robots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s been a bit of hoopla about <strong>Darren Criss<\/strong>\u2019 replacement in the Broadway musical <strong><em>Maybe Happy Ending<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; The show takes place in Seoul, Korea, and the new guy, <strong>Andrew Barth Feldman<\/strong>, isn\u2019t Korean.&nbsp; I know what you\u2019re thinking \u2013 neither is Criss.&nbsp; True.&nbsp; But his mother is Chinese, Filipino and Spanish, which I suppose makes him Asian-ish.&nbsp; Still, I\u2019d think we can agree that all Asians don\u2019t look the same.&nbsp; I\u2019m calling <em>Bullshit <\/em>on this story for one big reason \u2013 the character in the show is a robot!&nbsp; Would Koreans have Korean-looking robots?&nbsp; Maybe.&nbsp; Maybe not.&nbsp; But if Criss could play it and he\u2019s not Korean (or a robot), why can\u2019t Feldman?&nbsp; This got me thinking \u2013 Darren\u2019s biggest success has been playing gay roles.&nbsp; But I don\u2019t believe he\u2019s ever sucked a dick (although rumors abound).&nbsp; Still, he\u2019s convinced enough producers out there that he could \u2013 or at least looks like he could.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s move onto <strong><em>Cabaret<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; <strong>Billy Porter <\/strong>is going into the <em>Broadway <\/em>revival playing the Emcee, a role he has coveted for years.&nbsp; He lobbied hard to play it in the 1998 revival.&nbsp; He says he was denied the opportunity to even audition.&nbsp; \u201cI was told, \u2018That\u2019s not the story we\u2019re telling.\u2019&nbsp; I found that odd, and I did some research, and I found a book called <strong><em>Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; I sent it to the entire creative team, signed, \u2018We were there.&nbsp; We were always there.\u2019\u201d&nbsp; Needless to say, that didn\u2019t get him an audition \u2013 \u2018cause who wants some actor telling producers what to do.&nbsp; Still, I\u2019m going to say <em>Bullshit<\/em> because the people who played the Emcee in that production were <strong>Alan Cumming<\/strong>, <strong>Neil Patrick Harris<\/strong>, <strong>Jon Secada<\/strong>, <strong>John Stamos<\/strong>, <strong>Ra\u00fal Esparza<\/strong>, <strong>Michael C. Hall<\/strong>, <strong>Matt McGrath<\/strong>, and <strong>Adam Pascal<\/strong>.&nbsp; You know what they had in common?&nbsp; They were all more famous than Billy Porter \u2013 who was fifteen years away from winning a <em>Tony <\/em>for <strong><em>Kinky Boots<\/em><\/strong>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s been a bit of hoopla about Darren Criss\u2019 replacement in the Broadway musical Maybe Happy Ending.&nbsp; The show takes place in Seoul, Korea, and the new guy, Andrew Barth Feldman, isn\u2019t Korean.&nbsp; I know what you\u2019re thinking \u2013 neither is Criss.&nbsp; True.&nbsp; But his mother is Chinese, Filipino and Spanish, which I suppose makes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94060,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94059\/revisions\/94060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}