FX’s ‘The Patient’ Creators on Why Non-Jewish Actor Steve Carell Plays a Jewish Character
variety.comJennifer Maas TV Business WriterFor “The Americans” masterminds Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg’s latest series at FX, the duo decided to make one of the main characters Jewish — but have him played by Steve Carell, who is not Jewish.Amid an increase in scrutiny of casting choices like this made for film and TV projects, the producers explained their personal reasoning for the move to reporters during a virtual panel for “The Patient” at the Television Critics Association summer press tour Tuesday.“When we came up with the original idea, the character wasn’t originally Jewish,” Weisberg said. “And then you start, as you always do, looking for ways to add specificity and depth.
And we came up with that idea pretty quickly. But it allowed us to tap into things from our own lives … [it] added just certain dimensions and it became really a lot more fun to write in a certain way after that.
I’d say that was number one. And casting Steve, who is not Jewish, I think our feeling has always been, as television writers, that we’re kind of in an area where people are pretending to be other people.
That’s what everyone does all the time. And that’s just our main outlook on it. But we understand some people feel differently about it and that is also fine, too.
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