Why did a German casting director come to London?

Okay I was going to write this for a German friend in London who has helped me a lot with my audition today, but I thought I'd share this on my blog. So my German friend wanted to know why a German director would come to London to cast for a Chinese part on German TV - are there no Chinese speaking actors at all in Germany? And why London and not say Amsterdam or Paris instead?

I did pose that question to the casting director I met and he said that there are a handful of Chinese actors in Germany who are fluent in German - but literally, there about six of them and every time they need to cast a Chinese character, it is the same tiny pool of actors they choose from. When these German-Chinese actors appear on TV, people go, "oh it's him/her again - the token Chinese character." He said it was very frustrating for him as they really want to reflect more ethnic diversity on German TV, but it was hard to get any black or Asian actors in Germany as there simply aren't that many ethnic minorities in Germany to begin with - unlike say, the US, UK or France.

As this was a long running series that is into its fifth season, each and every single one of the six Chinese actors have already appeared in this series. Once you've appeared in the series, you're recognizable - you can't reinvent yourself and play a different character in a different episode. Hence when they decided to do another episode with a Chinese family involved in the main plot, they knew they had to look further afield to find quality Chinese actors.

Amsterdam and Paris might have been good places to look given the colonial connections of France and Holland with the Far East - there are plenty more Asian minorities in France and Holland, but the chances of finding a Chinese actor in France who speaks German and English (most of the team in Germany don't speak French, but they all speak English) is very low. Amsterdam may have been the best alternative to London as Dutch is a Germanic language and Dutch-speakers would probably find German easier than English-speakers; but given that the Dutch media market is very small (compared to the English-language media market), the number of actors in Amsterdam are a lot smaller compared to London. Hence they chose to come to London and do the casting in London.

Were they expecting to find a German speaking Chinese actor in London? The casting director told me that he was realistic in his expectations - no one he saw was totally fluent (there was a range of standards from decent to zero), but he met some Chinese actors who proved to him that they were willing to rise to the challenge. Some memorized the script, others didn't. Some made an effort to get the pronunciation right, others didn't. Take a word like 'zeichnungen' (drawings) - either you've done your homework and figured out how it is meant to be pronounced in German, or you pronounce it like it was an English word and get it completely wrong. The fact is, if you cannot even be asked to make an effort with 5 pages of German, how can the director rely on you to deliver on an 82 page long script for that episode? So the casting director was really looking for actors whom he could work with to produce the final product - rather then the finished product per se.

As for how I did at the casting, naturally I aced the German script, easily - but I am not holding my breath. They are casting for an entire Chinese family in this episode: father, mother and son. It depends a lot on the age of the mother and son. I am 37, so I could have say a 12 or even 15 year old son, but if the son is 21 then forget it, that's me done. They did see older Chinese actors as well, including some in their 60s. Now a 60 year old man can have a young wife and child, but a 37 year old man is highly unlikely to have an older wife and a son in his 20s! So I think the odds are stacked against me because of my age - but I also know that out of all the actors they saw, no one could match me in terms of my language skills in German. I'm not fluent but none of the actors at the casting were fluent either - so would it be the case that in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king?

We shall see. Wish me luck!