When Amandla Stenberg was cast as Princess Amari in the Children of Blood and Bone movie, a familiar argument erupted: the novel describes Amari with “dark copper skin,” and Stenberg — who is mixed race — is visibly lighter than the character as written. Was it colorism? The debate split fandom, drew in the author herself, and still hasn’t settled. Our full guide to the film covers the casting facts; this piece steps back to explain the pattern it belongs to — colorism in Hollywood casting — and why it keeps happening.
What colorism actually is
Colorism is prejudice or preferential treatment based on skin tone within a racial group — typically favoring lighter skin. The term itself was coined by Alice Walker in her 1983 collection In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, and it describes a hierarchy with deep roots: under slavery and colonialism, proximity to whiteness — lighter skin — was systematically rewarded, and the preference embedded itself in beauty standards, marriage markets, and eventually casting rooms.
It’s not the same as racism, though they’re related. Racism is discrimination across racial lines; colorism operates inside them. That distinction matters for casting, because Hollywood can cast an all-Black ensemble — a genuine step forward — while still favoring lighter-skinned actors for the leads and the love interests.
The casting pattern
The pattern is easy to describe and hard to unsee once you notice it. Dark-skinned historical figures get played by lighter-skinned stars. Dark-skinned fictional characters get lightened in adaptation. And when dark-skinned actresses do land major roles, they’re disproportionately cast as mothers, best friends, or authority figures — rarely as the romantic lead, the ingenue, or the fantasy heroine.
This isn’t about any single actress’s talent. It’s about a system of preferences: which faces the industry considers “universally” beautiful, which it considers “specific,” and who gets to be the default.
Case study: Nina (2016)
The textbook case remains Zoe Saldaña’s casting as Nina Simone. Simone was a dark-skinned civil rights icon whose appearance — her wide nose, her dark skin — was central to both her identity and her politics. The production darkened Saldaña’s skin with makeup, gave her a prosthetic nose, an afro wig, and false teeth. Critics argued the production could simply have cast a dark-skinned Black actress. Simone’s own daughter, Lisa Simone, told The New York Times: “My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark. Appearance-wise, this is not the best choice.”
Saldaña initially defended the role, then publicly reversed herself. In a 2020 interview she said, “I should have never played Nina,” adding that she should have used her leverage to make sure the role went to a Black woman who looked like Simone. The film never recovered from the controversy — a case study in how a casting decision made before cameras roll can define a release.
Case study: Rue in The Hunger Games (2012)
The Rue backlash ran in the opposite direction — and it’s just as revealing. In Suzanne Collins’s novel, Rue is explicitly described as having “dark brown skin and eyes.” When the 12-year-old Stenberg was cast, a wave of racist tweets followed anyway, with some viewers saying Rue’s death hit less hard once they knew she was Black. The irony, as Stenberg later put it, was that Rue was one of the only characters she could find in the stories she loved who was literally written as Black — and audiences had simply pictured her white regardless. Ebony’s contemporary coverage documented both the backlash and the fans who pushed back, pointing to the book’s own description.
The two cases together map the trap: cast a dark-skinned character with a lighter actress and it’s colorism; cast the character faithfully and a segment of the audience revolts at a Black girl being mourned. Either way, dark-skinned Black girlhood is treated as the problem.
Case study: Princess Amari in Children of Blood and Bone (2027)
Which brings us back to Amari. The character’s arc in Tomi Adeyemi’s novel is explicitly about colorism: her own mother pressures her to lighten her skin, and she’s told she’s “far too dark.” Casting Stenberg — who has spoken openly about thinking carefully about her lighter skin with every role — struck many readers as the industry repeating the exact dynamic the book criticizes. As TheWrap reported, the novel describes Amari with “dark copper skin,” and the casting drew sustained questions online.
The counter-argument deserves honest airtime: Stenberg said she would never chase a role she felt wasn’t right for her, and pointed to Adeyemi’s own involvement as validation. Casting also involves chemistry, availability, and star power — not just skin-tone matching. And the production did cast the dark-skinned Thuso Mbedu as Zélie, the protagonist. But the Amari debate persists precisely because the character’s storyline is about colorism — the one role where the allegory made the casting choice load-bearing.
Why it keeps happening
Three forces sustain the pattern. Star power: lighter-skinned actresses have historically gotten more leading roles, which builds the résumés that justify the next leading role — a feedback loop. Beauty standards: the industry’s default “beautiful” still skews light, a bias with roots in the history above. Risk aversion: studios treat dark-skinned leads as a commercial gamble, despite constant counter-evidence.
Awards culture plays its part too. As Ebony’s archive argued in her awards-season essay, Black performers get industry recognition most reliably in struggle narratives — which means the system rewards a narrow band of Black stories while calling it progress. Colorism narrows the band further.
The literary roots run deep
Long before Hollywood, Black literature was mapping this exact hierarchy. Toni Morrison’s debut The Bluest Eye (1970) — about a dark-skinned Black girl who believes blue eyes would make her lovable — remains the definitive novel about colorism’s interior damage. Morrison is central to our guide to essential Black women writers, and The Bluest Eye is where that guide says to start with her. Every casting debate is, in a sense, an argument about whether the industry has absorbed what that novel already knew.
What would actually fix it
The fix isn’t complicated, though it’s slow: cast dark-skinned actresses as leads, love interests, and fantasy heroines — not just mothers and best friends. Greenlight stories where dark skin isn’t a plot point to overcome. And when a character’s arc is about colorism, treat faithful casting as a creative requirement, not a nice-to-have. The source material keeps handing Hollywood the blueprint — our Black fantasy books guide is full of dark-skinned heroines waiting for adaptations. The question was never whether the stories exist. It’s whether the industry will let them be seen.