Khalil re signs with Y&R

[MoTheGreat]

I know how the ratings will skyrocket for Y&R. Since everybody that write for the show wants to keep CK. Who wouldn't tune in to see her with a black love interest. Kissing, laying beside him or her, and maybe marrying him or her.

I know I would tune in for that myself, I'm just specking for myself. I just want to watch if she'll pull those disgusting faces that she did on That's So Raven.

[kalbir]

Christel Khalil on "The Sinbad Show", episode "My Daughter's Keeper", from 1993. She would've been about 5 or 6 years old then.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AF30k9pa7k

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1yw9WtCJQs

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPAWVgzvcT8

[Cat]

It's true, it's all shockingly true. Maybe she's ashamed of one-quarter of her heritage, though it clearly has been her calling card to get roles in AA-centric sitcoms and land the part of Lily Winters. Maybe she has deep-seated issues about color. Maybe she just doesn't self-identify as AA (just like Jessica Alba said she didn't self-identify as Latina -- until she got an in with a big Hollywood Latino Actors association) except when it comes to a paycheck. All I know is that her interviews or documented twitter outbursts have left me with my jaw on the ground. Whether it's the inanity of her SL proposals, the nasty besmirching of Davetta Sherwood's professional reputation (couched in religiosity and pretend-concern, like so many cowards do -- "I will pray for her!") or general casually-offered ignorance, I am stunned this twit can even dress herself in the mornings, let alone function in a workplace.

Don't think I am pushing blame away from CBS or Sony in all this. They clearly wanted an actress to play Lily who would pass as "less black" as possible for whatever viewership/advertising excuse they use to cover up their own prejudices. It is stunning to me in this day and age because it reads like a scene from Douglas Sirk's "Imitation of Life" -- a film made in 1955.

[Taiah]

Which CK interviews? Give me a link.

[Cat]

I would love to, and in fact, have been googling for the past 15 minutes to find just that. However, most of her interviews prior to that infamous MySpace post she made in 2006 regarding her return to Y&R (and Davetta having been a problem behind the scenes) I cannot find! I cannot find the interview she gave in 2005 when she first left Y&R which was along the lines of "Ima gonna be a movie star. See ya Y&R!" and I know i didn't imagine reading that. There was the interview about the pole-dancing that was cited above -- again, not to be found at the moment. A passing comment on why Lily couldn't possibly be paired with Devon. There isn't even a screen shot of the MySpace post she was forced to take down, unfortunately, because that really exposed another side to the actress previously kept under wraps.

Look, you don't know me from Adam and for all you know, I could be some crazed CK-hater (I'm sure my posts on this thread can seem pretty damning in that respect!) but, all I can tell you is that I read these things, I didn't project them, and formed a conclusion about CK based on them. I will admit that sometimes backstage unpleasantness ends up coloring my view of certain actors. With CK, I guess I am just tired of her not trying in any scenes (the cancer SL was a case in point). I am over it, and her, and I am ready for Y&R to look closely at the actors who really want the job and try and bring something to the material (no matter how poor) and those that don't.

[Taiah]

Oh I remember her little comments about Davetta. I believe she has race and color issues too. I just never read the interviews exposing it.

[sheilaforever]

Is this for real or a bad hoax????

ValleyGirl needs to go buh-bye. Same for "Ethan"...

[SFK]

Truly, this is the greater problem, and it's plagued all of the soaps. It's so much bigger than CK, though her *issues* make it all the more maddening. The fact of the matter is, daytime loves to whitewash (a word I have really tried to avoid using in previous discussions) its black characters, with notable exceptions. Look at the casting of most black characters on soaps. Many black characters are cast with fairer complected biracial actors (where inexplicably, biracial characters have often been cast with black actors ). There is a black vernacular in this country that the majority of black fans speak with, and they are not ashamed of it or offended by the sound of it, and yet, a disproportionate amount of black characters are cast with actors with standard American by way of Southern California speech (which frankly sounds white/bougie/sadiddy to many black ears). Then when you have an actor who speaks like most black Americans in this country, they are given dialogue that sounds stilted in their mouths, or worse, you have ignorant fans who call them "ghetto".

[Ann_SS]

I try to stay out of these comments, but there are so many generalizations and stereotypes in this post. There is no "black vernacular." Like whites, African Americans have a variety of accents which are influenced by the region where they grew up. Yes, they might share cultural experiences being African Americans in America, but this does not mean that their accents and/or language patterns are the same. Education attainment also influences how people regardless of ethnicity speak. None of this has anything to do with being biracial. On top of which almost all actors and other public personalities regardless of their ethnicity work hard to get rid of their regional accents and learn to speak in that "generic" Midwestern accent that is used in the movies and on tv.

[juppiter]

I have been waiting for years for Y&R to drop this Dead Weight Diva. Khalil always has sucked & always will.

[Wales2004]

I think we're almost right there in terms of trying to resist this. We differ on the term "African-American" which I will shout at the top of my lungs whenever, wherever is a useless term to me. It seems to come from the need to make all black people in America (wthether they were born here or not and regardless of their background) a single monolithic group which is wrong. Every black person in America is not a descendant of slaves which is what the main commonality is based and all the slaves were not from the same ethnic group or country as Africa is a continent made up of many nations and not some singular united nation. It's so evident that this term is a major source of confusion when all you have to do is listen to how many times within one conversation, people will refer to black and "African-American" as if they are interchangeable.

Most of what is referred to as "black vernacular" seems to be a combination of some exaggerated drawl (southern in nature), bad or even atrocious grammar, and maybe even slang. If people could learn to accept that just because some black Americans speak a certain way does not mean all black Americans speak that way nor are compelled to speak that way, things would be peachy. But no, you've got both black and non-black Americans who feel it's their duty to tell people how to be black and "talk black" and they are too ignorant to understand that you should not have to be told how to be a certain race. Your skin isn't going to change colors miraculously and your skin has nothing to do with your speech patterns, how you walk or how you behave. It's the ignorant people in society that try to inflict their ignorance on society by telling people how they should act because they "look black."

Both Pinky and The Human Stain told about black people who society saw as black and would continue to do so if no one said any differently. That's a fine example of how useless race is as wel because is it something scientific or is it based on what your eyes can see or a drop of blood if you can't see it for yourself and no one says a word.

And I'm beyond the so what? point when it comes to the light skin and the dark skin business....especially when I see black people discriminate against other black people on the basis of skin tone and then try to blame it all on the white man as if he's got such total control over their minds that they can't get free of their ignorance. How many black people looked at the last three in Destiny's Child and shot down Kelly Rowlands and Michelle Williams in favor of Beyonce (who claims for some idiotic L'Oreal ad that her skin tone comes from being Native-American, Creole and "African-American") as if we could not find women who will only claim to be black with that same skin tone.

[frequentsoapfan]

They don't just try to whitewash black characters too though. They also whitewash hispanic characters so you forget that are hispanice. They either hire white latinos, italians, or just white actors who know nothing about the culture and put them in the roles. And if a character is partially hispanic they will just completely ignore that side of them.

I don't have all her old interviews or copeis of all the crap she said in her younger years regarding race or getting her job back but I did find this

Sindy: Do you find that your multi-racial background affects the type of [roles you get?

Christel Khalil: Oh yeah! There are a lot of parts I haven't got because they couldn't define my look. "Oh, you're not black enough, you're not Hispanic enough." If it's a role within a family, I wouldn't get it because I didn't look enough like the rest of the family. It definitely has affected my career], but not in a good way.

Sindy: You took a break from playing Lily Winters on The Young & the Restless before returning to the show last November. What made you want to go back?

Christel Khalil: Well, I had a year off to relax and do my thing and be able to do my own thing - to take a break, basically. I was so stressed out before that I couldn't appreciate being on the show. I was so burnt out. So that's why I left, and I had a year off and then they asked me to come back, so I thought, "Yeah, I feel fine now" and I really missed everybody, so I did.

[SFK]

With all due respect Ann and Wales, I think you two are missing some very important points that I am trying to make. Speaking with a particular accent or dialect, which I referred to as "black vernacular" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English) in my previous post, does not constitute ignorance. Perhaps I should preface... I am a biracial man who had a very well-rounded upbringing by a black mother and a white father, and I was surrounded by my extended families on both sides. Many of my black relatives speak with a black sound characteristic of the Mid-Atlantic region, and they are far from poorly educated. No more so than a white person from New Orleans or Atlanta who might unfairly be dubbed a yokel for their Southern drawl. Grow up in a black family, live and work with black people in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Florida, Texas... the majority of black women do not sound like Karla Mosley.

My point is, daytime would rather cast in that direction.

It's not about neck rolling, it's not about teeth sucking, it's not about using words like "bootylicious". When my mother called me and I picked up the phone, my girlfriend would comment on how my voice/speech changed, almost like when she spoke to her mother in Spanish over the phone. If we can accept that Carlotta and Cristian or Tea's conversations took on a different tone, why is it so hard to accept that black people can and do speak differently without getting into a conversation about black stereotypes? Is there ONE way to be black? Absolutely not. But if I were to pose the question to a room full of black female viewers if they felt that CK's Lily was an accurate portrayal of the young professional black women that they were or knew, the cumulative eye rolls would tilt the earth.

I also went to acting school and I know all about Standard American Speech for the stage being drilled into our mouths so we could all perform the classics uniformly, but rule number one was that that was a tool to be used when appropriate... not some means of erasing who we were as individuals. So I don't think that really carries here (not to mention the fact that the majority of soap actors, regardless of race, are hardly classically trained).

I look back on Mari Morrow and Nafessa Williams. There is a rhythm in which many black people speak and their OLTL dialogue writers were not always in tune with that rhythm, and consequently, their dialogue sounded artificial and stilted at times. Ellen Bethea, Sandra Grant, REG, Tika Sumpter, Kearran Giovanni, they didn't have this issue, and those are the black females you will most likely see in daytime, which imo has EVERYthing to do with TPTB thinking this "type" of black is more "palatable" to the general audience.

[Cat]

If SoCal/Valley speak is now the standard for any actor under the age of 35 (whether black, white, Hispanic, whatever), then God help us because it sounds SO awful when it is forced and exaggerated. Americans of all backgrounds used to speak so richly and beautiful, with the cadence of their individual region or background. I can't deal with Christel's Valley delivery but she's not even the worst. Melissa Egan (who I love), Eden Reigel, Liz Hendricksen, Jessica Heap and Rebecca Herbst are the most egregious in terms of shoddy pronunciation and shrill, nasally voicework.

It's funny you should talk about your voice changing depending on who you speak with, SFK -- I noticed this with Victoria Rowell who IMO had one of the most rich and melifluous speaking voices in soaps. With Neil, DS's Lily, Malcolm, Dru would turn it on and play tough but at the office sparring with Nikki, Dru would out-diva the diva with her distinguished delivery. It made sense from a girl with a runaway, "street" past who discovered a passion for books and for performing, so that every conversation had something of a performance to it.

ITA with this. Bonnie on Vampire Diaries was a case a point at first, though she did grow on me. She just seemed so... generic and stiff at the beginning.

VR really changed things on Y&R in terms of taking ownership of her dialogue. But I also have to give props to Kristen Loyd on B&B who manages any soap dialogue with ease and makes it sound Dayzee's own.

[Wales2004]

SFK you're right but so am I and Ann_SS and everyone who agrees or disagrees with anything we've said because it's our opinions and not facts. You know a bunch of people that substantiate what you believe and I know people like that as well but I also know people that are entirely the opposite and none of them are any less than the others who aren't like them. I don't know who Karla Mosley is and I cannot say what the majority of black women in America sound like because I don't even know anywhere close to half a million people and I would imagine there are probably four times that many black women in this country. I can say without doubt that the majority of the black women in the world don't speak anything like however people expect black women to speak. I am guessing that the majority of black women in the world might not even speak English but maybe they do with whatever accent is prevalent in whatever nation they reside.

Hopefully America is the only country in the entire world that racializes accents. I find that ignorant.

In fact I find the whole concept of race ignorant because based solely on race a person will determine how you should sound and act. Does a b/w biracial kid who was born in France and happens to look black need to speak some sort of "black" way to make everyone in America comfortable with the notion that he knows who he is?

If Adriana Lima or Wentworth Miller were born here with their same backgrounds would they get a pass on having to sound "black" because we might not be able to see any visible traces of "black" in them?

CK is a bland actress which has nothing to do with her racial background. Her character does not need to be a mini-Dru because she's not the street wise child. Daughters aren't all carbon copies of their mothers or else there would probably never be a case of mother-daughter strife so the perception of how CK should play Lily seems to come from this perception of how black people should sound and men probably get more of a pass in this area than women do. A better actress would be able to bring a spark to her character as needed.

In discussions about political polls you may note that the only racial group that gets a complete breakdown happen to be whites. Maybe it's because they make up more of the voting population but we're consistently told that Hispanics (even though they are made up of various groups of people with Spanish language backgrounds} and blacks can only be one single group. They cannot be broken down by gender or age. It's a one size fits all deal and people basically buy into this and then proceed to become the enforcers of this rule.

So what if Tiger Woods or any other biracial or multi-racial person who is dark, doesn't want to be seen as black? Why should they have deny all the other things that make them up just to please the black gatekeepers of who can be black and what is required outside of your skin to make you black? I only see this is as a problem when they are ashamed of having any black ancestors.

Marissa Ramirez who played Gia on GH isn't black. She had the braids and the tough demeanor that we've come to associate with the street wise kids. Is that because we know kids who are just like that or is that because tv and movies have told us that this is the way street wise people act? Did art imitate life or do people take their cues from tv and movies? And if some street wise white character is portrayed in that same way, are we going to fly into a tizzy and claim that the actor is trying to "act black?" You know like how if a white girl wears braids then she's stealing from black people and trying to be one but if a black woman straightens her hair or wears a weave then it's just a hairstyle and not an attempt to steal from white people, unless you're the number one natural hair advocate who swears everyone else but you is trying to keep up with the white folks.

Thandie Newton is English and she slipped right into that role in Crash where she played the well-off wife who saw her husband as "cooning." But then she was nothing like that when she played Nyah in Mission Impossible II because she wasn't constrained by having to play a black American woman. I've read a number of complaints about how Shonda Rhimes' doesn't write black women as real because Olivia Pope isn't being "black" and hopefully in season 2 she will be "black." Make her foreign and problem solved.

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis pretty much said that Cherelle, who grew up in Beverly Hills, wasn't "street" (or you know black). Had she grown up in the projects or the street and had the same demeanor, would she then not be "authentically black?." Only in America......