Why Can't Fat Actors Play Fat Characters?

The Malevolent Supernatural Force that I live with has insisted that I must read most Stephen King books before seeing adaptations. Not all, just most, and one that I absolutely have to read, according to her, is The Stand, which is almost 1,200 pages long. I haven’t finished, don’t tell me how it ends, but I have gotten quite far enough to judge that the most intriguing character, as far as arc, as far as motivations, as far as actions, is Harold Lauder.

That is merely my opinion, I’m sure there are those who would disagree. I won’t write much about him, that’s not what this is about, and I don’t want to give too much away to anyone who might want to eventually read it or see one of the miniseries that has been made from it, for instance the CBS All Access series set to debut on December 17th. There’s one thing about him, though, that I already know has been left out of the original and impending adaptations: Harold Lauder is fat.

I first had the thought, “What exactly was the point of that actor gaining all that weight?” after seeing Christian Bale in American Hustle. He played a con man named Irving Rosenfeld, who was based on a real-life con man named Mel Weinberg, a man who had less hair and more weight than Christian Bale does most days. Bale was fine, but I remember thinking, why didn’t a chubby, balding actor play that role?

There are plenty around, they’re in supporting and background roles all the time. I don’t know the names of many, because they never play, for instance, Batman, or any of the other superstar roles that make actors famous. I thought it again when I saw Bale as Dick Cheney. The Cheney look was a mix of weight gain and prosthetics, and I admit, he made himself look and sound a lot like the former Vice President, but to me the performance didn’t warrant that opportunity being taken away from an actor who isn’t getting half the opportunities Bale does because he looks so classically attractive. 

Bale’s not the only actor who has been put in this position by directors and producers, and I don’t mean to pick on him, but as Hollywood’s representation issues are finally kinda sorta being dealt with in many directions, I don’t hear or read people giving this one too much thought. There was a controversy over the casting of one of the actors in the new The Stand, that of Henry Zaga, who can hear and speak, as the deaf-mute character Nick Andros.

The director, Josh Boone, justified this by pointing out that in the book, in his dreams, Nick can speak and hear, so it makes sense to cast the role the way he did. It occurs to me, though, that a detail like that could be left out of the adaptation quite as easily as, say, Harold’s pot belly. Harold has been compared on social media to Proud Boys, and rightfully so. Owen Teague, who will play him in the miniseries (he can be seen in the trailer and production stills), looks, in the role, like many of the young guys who have left manifestoes on the internet before committing atrocities, so I can see why he would be cast to represent our current most dangerous outcasts.

But Harold is a very nuanced character, a meaty, juicy role, and I don’t intend a pun by either of those descriptors, they are just how we talk about a role being a great opportunity for an actor. Teague will probably get his shot, at some point, at playing big, flashy roles that only skinny actors get called for. Harold should have been the breakout role for someone less likely to have that happen.

I guess I will reveal one more thing about Harold: over the course of the book, he loses some weight, which affects how people see and respond to him, and is important to the story for that reason. That still doesn’t mean he has to be played by someone who looks like his final physical form, nor does it mean that the thing to do would have been to hire someone thin and have him wear prosthetics for the first half of the series. Production companies put money into changing the bodies of actors all the time. Perhaps this could have been some heavier actor’s weight loss plan: play early Harold at the weight he comes in at, and then lose weight as the character does. I’m not saying all fat people want to or have to have weight loss plans, but that would seem to be, once again, a great opportunity for someone in Hollywood who’s not getting many.

I don’t know the end of Harold’s story yet, and I anticipate liking the miniseries. This sort of thing has just been bothering me for years, and this character was what inspired me to write something about it. 

Aaron Netsky (@AaronNetsky on Twitter, @aaron_netsky on Instagram) is a singer, actor, and all-around theatre professional who has worked off and off-off Broadway...just not recently. He is also a writer who has been published on AtlasObscura.com, TheHumanist.com, Slate.com, StageLightMagazine.com, and ThoughtCatalog.com, as well as his own blogs, Cantonaut (http://cantonaut.blogspot.com) and 366 Musicals (https://366days366musicals.tumblr.com), and his Medium account. Lately, he's been trying his hand as a YouTuber (https://www.youtube.com/user/AaronNetsky). Stay safe, wash your hands.