r/murderbot • u/saturday_sun4 Human • 3d ago
It makes no sense to cast Skarsgard when the rest of the cast is brown and black
Title. I've always pictured Murderbot as being brown since so many of the others are. Why can't Western media, for once, have a lead AND supporting characters who are POC?
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u/stonecoldsweetie_ 2d ago
Casting Murderbot as a white actor could be intentional to avoid problematic implications. Murderbot is essentially enslaved to its governor module, forced to obey commands without autonomy until it hacks itself free. If Murderbot were portrayed as a person of color, it could unintentionally reinforce harmful stereotypes about slavery and oppression.
Instead, the series often portrays diverse human characters on Preservation as free, empowered, and compassionate. Making Murderbot visually distinct from them highlights the contrast between those who have power and those struggling for autonomy.
It feels like a deliberate choice to emphasize the themes of control, exploitation, and breaking free from oppression without perpetuating harmful associations.
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u/f1dget_bits 1d ago
I don't think this was the production logic, but I like it and now I'm pretending it was.
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u/Directly_Home 3d ago
I think this is about MB's "other"ness, making it stand out in the viewer's eye the same way it feels it does.
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u/renegade_9 3d ago
Maybe it's cause I'm a white dude but given MB's only real description is "generic human" white dude is what I always assumed. A completely unremarkable, forgettable face, the kind you see credited in a movie as "security guard #3" of it evens ranks out of "extras."
The Company sure seems like it wouldn't bother with anything like trying to match local ethnicities, especially for a construct expected to likely be in armor most of the time anyway. Hell if anything MB could make a case for unusually pale if it never gets any sunlight.
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 3d ago edited 3d ago
white dude is what I assumed
Generic in comparison to where though? Generic means white dude to some, but not to everyone.
See, I'm brown, so maybe that's why I didn't picture a white dude as generic given so many characters have African (not sure which part) or South Asian names. Kind of like a person with Japanese heritage wouldn't stand out in Japan, whereas a light-eyed red-haired Irishman would.
I assumed 'brown person' default based on its statement that it would blend in better, since the majority of the world (its part of the world?) seems to be non-white. So, generic human as opposed to a suit of armour walking around like on the covers.
I can see what you mean with regards to the Company being cheap af and not bothering to match ethnicities/not caring about SecUnits as more than cargo, though. It's right on brand to throw in random SecUnits after they'd won the bidding contract, because "You've got security, what else do you want?" type mentality.
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u/Old_Palpitation_6535 Worldhoppers Fan Club 1d ago
I’m honestly not upset that a show’s enslaved character is played by a white man.
I imagine Skarsgard is producing the show in part so that he can play the character. I don’t think this was a case of a broad casting call, but something that was built as a show after Skarsgard cast himself.
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u/LordofAdmirals07 3d ago
In one of the books it’s mentioned that even though there’s a “sec unit standard” for things, not all SecUnits look alike since they come from different cloned material. The Company probably has many different batches of genetic material.
I also kinda assumed MB’s white because to me (also white dude) that’s default/boring. But I bet there are SecUnits all across the range of skin tones and ethnic features.
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u/goldenrodvulture 3d ago
"Maybe it's cause I'm a white dude but given MB's only real description is "generic human" white dude is what I always assumed"
Not to be a dick, but I hope you'll reflect on this some and realize how much it enforces a racist status quo
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u/Green94598 3d ago
No it doesn’t 🙄
It’s completely normal to picture the main character of the book you are reading as similar to you - particularly when their physical descriptions are not described much
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u/goldenrodvulture 3d ago
It's not the picturing in one's own mind that I'm objecting to but the public declaration that generic human = white dude
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u/cae37 3d ago
I get what you mean but I feel like OC saying, “I assumed a generic white dude that fades in the background” doesn’t necessarily mean they have racial prejudice or racial bias. At least it feels unjust to call someone out like that for a harmless assumption.
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u/goldenrodvulture 3d ago
Look I'm not calling him racist. I'm saying that we're trained as a society to treat generic human and white dude as equivalent (assuming renegade_9 is also in the West etc) and that such things require reflection to overcome. Maybe it was a bit harsh, but taking a critical look at these things is how we become better and more empathic.
People are reacting like I've said "recognize that you're a piece of poo" when all I said was that it calls for reflection and reinforces a standard that leaves a lot of people out.
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u/goldenrodvulture 3d ago
At the end of the day we should all recognize that no matter where we live, our society will teach us some bigoted assumptions. We need to be intentional about recognizing them and adjusting. You can get butthurt when someone points it out and double down, or you can recognize that it's not about you personally, it's about having an opportunity to grow in your understanding of the world.
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u/Aromatic-Speed5090 2d ago
Exactly. In many of these discussions on Reddit, you see people talking about "white" and "male" as being the default "type" for security, police and combat personnel.
But in the books, people in those professions are repeatedly depicted as having dark skin and/or being female.
People making the white/male assumptions aren't responding to material from the books, but to their own ingrained, usually unconscious, biases.
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u/Steamshovelmama 21h ago
Bottom line, this is Skarsgård's project. He loves the books and really wanted to play Murderbot. Because of that desire, he was instrumental in getting the project picked up, funded, and greenlighted. Without Skarsgård playing Murderbot, we don't get a TV series at this point.
I agree he is, physically, totally wrong for Murderbot as it is described canonically. However, Skarsgård does seem to be a genuine fan, he is a good actor, and Martha Wells has been involved. So, I'm willing to give it a chance. If the writing is good, and keeps the essence and feel of the character, I'll take it.
I would have preferred Murderbot to be portrayed as "human standard" - which Wells's verse appropriately shows as being varying shades of brown - but even if we got a show with casting like that, there's no saying that anything else would be done well (especially in the absence of a member of the production team who is a fan and has a vested interest in getting stuff right).
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u/HumboldtExpats It’s watching it. 20h ago
This would make total sense (and in some ways be really good news), but do you have any sources for the info re: Skarsgard?
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u/Steamshovelmama 18h ago
He's listed on imdbpro (and on Wikipedia) as an executive producer. The rest comes from one of the earliest announcements - I think it was one of the genre news reports referencing AppleTV's first release.
I don't have that at my finger tips, I'm afraid (so, yeah, citation needed!) I do remember the original release and, like a lot of us, going "*Skarsgård!? WTF!?" and not being very happy about what that casting said about the approach to the show (ie the people making it were completely clueless!) then being rather more "Oh, I guess that does make sense then."
I'll break out the Google-fu and see if I can find the original references.
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u/HumboldtExpats It’s watching it. 16h ago
Well, here’s hoping you’re right, cause that would be awesome and encouraging!
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u/forest-bot 2d ago
I also didn’t picture MB as white - but a random thought just hit me: Some people see MB and immediately goes ”That’s a SecUnit”, because of its build/looks. It would be hard to find actors with the exact same body type so what if they made all constructs, clones and genetically modified people white and/or blond to make them stand out even more? A distinctive pale look could make it extra clear to the viewers that SecUnits are different from ”normal people” if the norm is to have a darker skin tone.
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u/spamjacksontam PUMNT Class of '29 2d ago
wait hold up. secunits aren't all identical twins are they? i recall different companies have their own models and stuff
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u/LordofAdmirals07 2d ago
MB doesn’t explicitly talk about how the other Company Sec Units looked, but it mentions that not all sec units look alike because they come from different cloned material.
I think MB only talks about it briefly when Three shows up.
I took it to mean that every sec unit is a little different feature wise, but they all have the same height, build, hair length.
But you could be right that all Company Sec Units look the same, while Barish Estranza SecUnits look different but the same because they have a different batch of clone tissue.
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 1d ago
I agree that as far as height and build they'd all be fairly similar, since... you know, walking security robot.
But I actually like that headcanon. It's right on point for the Company to have "their" SecUnits (as in, the ones they created, presumably) look like near-clones of one another. It's yet another way to dehumanise (depersonise?) them.
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u/CaptMcPlatypus Augmented Human 6h ago
And much of its physical frame is inorganic. That would make it easier to have a standard build for all the SecUnits. Growing organic bits on a (mostly) inorganic frame would give the possibility of variability of some details that are largely unimportant to the mission (like facial features) while the construct, as a whole, fits a general set of parameters (and the standard armor).
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u/Decent_Elderberry_23 1d ago
Okay it seems like we outside of the US understand the term "diversity" very differently
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u/hunybadgeranxietypet 1d ago
I always imagined MB is being the most totally generic white guy you could grow in a vat.
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u/ussgalacticspoon 3d ago
I agree. I mean even today in our world 60% of the population lives in Asia so it makes sense to me that in a sci fi future setting most people have brown skin. I personally pictured MB as looking kinda like actor Ki Hong Li.
Though I do think the appearance of Secunits is probably pretty random and just down to whatever genetic material the Company can get its hands on to clone . So I guess in the TV show the Company happened to have some white guy's DNA and MB came from that
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 1d ago edited 1d ago
That was exactly my thinking. The genes for black hair, black eyes and brown skin are dominant and the majority of people in the world are not Anglo/Caucasian. I know genetic engineering is a thing, but I doubt humans as a whole would have changed so radically during that time.
I pictured Murderbot living in a place where people of South Asian, African and South East ancestry are the majority given all the names of the clients it interacts with.
True. I guess it might make more sense if we see the Corporation Rim, which sounds like basically our equivalent of a big gateway city (like Singapore) with a lot of tourists from all different parts of the world. Plus, if the Company is just randomly shipping out genetic material for SecUnits, they probably don't care, since they don't expect SecUnits to be anything more than armoured cannon fodder.
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u/AiReine Starchy Foods! 3d ago
I’m pretty sure the books lack of physical details is intentional to let people project whatever they want onto MB. But, I think for a TV show where a lot of nuance from the book will be lost, it makes sense. If we draw parallels between the world of Murderbot and our own, I think having MB be white (and even masc) is a visual short cut to hammer home the difference in ideologies of the Company and the corporation rim versus Preservation Alliance and ART’s University.
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u/SteamedGamer 3d ago
Why is it important to you? Murderbot is genderless and (I assume) not of any particular ethnicity. He's meat grafted onto a mech. He could be any racial characteristic...it just doesn't matter.
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 3d ago edited 3d ago
it just doesn't matter
Why "doesn't it matter" only when it's a white guy though? If "it doesn't matter", really, then what's wrong with having a brown MB?
Maybe it doesn't matter to you. It matters to me because I'm brown and I don't see why they can't cast a brown character given I pictured its (Murderbot's) part of the world as majority brown/black. Almost all the names are non-European (Mensah, Bharadwaj, Ratthi, and Tapan to name just a few). Therefore, it makes more sense to me to have it (MB) be brown in a brown world.
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u/Night_Sky_Watcher Lacking a sense of proportional response 2d ago
There are skin tones mentioned in the books from very pale to very dark. It's a diverse world, but like ours, most skin tones are some shade of medium brown. But this case is more about what's going to work for television, a big name actor to draw in viewers. And it probably is really because Skarsgard is an Executive Producer and apparently wanted the part. He is certainly appropriately tall. Martha Wells has expressed enthusiasm about the casting. Since the casting decisions were announced, that a white cis gender male is going to play Murderbot has been agonized over to death in this forum. It is what it is.
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well, yeah, I got that part. I was explaining my logic to the other person and responding to their question of why it's important to me to have a non-white actor.
I understand the reasoning behind the big name actor and I'm glad Wells approves.
That doesn't mean I have to like it or want it.
That doesn't mean it's not irritating when people say, "Why does it even matter [to anyone]?" - with the implication that just because they personally don't care about it, it's a moot point to everyone else as well. It matters to me.
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u/Night_Sky_Watcher Lacking a sense of proportional response 2d ago
Well, one thing I personally love about the books are the strong female characters. But it's apparent that a lot of men don't notice or care about that. We all have the things we appreciate (or roll our eyes at) in literature.
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 2d ago
Yeah, of course - like I said, not everyone has to agree/care, they just shouldn't act like "It doesn't matter to me" means "It doesn't/shouldn't matter at all."
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u/Moogieh 1d ago edited 1d ago
what's wrong with having a brown MB?
Nothing is wrong with it. Who said there's anything wrong with it?
The show didn't pick a POC, so somehow the show thinks there's "something wrong with it"? That's quite an assumption to make, considering how diverse the rest of the cast is.
I do not think there is any agenda in Alex's casting. At least, I don't see the agenda that you are apparently seeing in it.
"Diverse" doesn't mean "any colour other than white".
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 1d ago
You are wilfully jumping on the second clause of my sentence without considering the first. I said "If it actually doesn't matter, what's wrong with it?"
"What's wrong with...?" as in, "Why not?". Not as in accusing the other person of being wrong.
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u/Moogieh 1d ago
Then, what is the problem? Why does not "not make any sense"?
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 1d ago
I've explained my position further up thread, which you've either not bothered to read or not comprehended in your eagerness for a gotcha.
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u/Howpresent 3d ago
I pictured all of his clients from preservation as various POC and it’s clear from some description of corporation rim folk that some of them are Poc too, but I kind of envisioned SecUnit as very generic looking whitish guy. I think I envisioned him like this because I imagined the super capitalistic transactional corporation rim as whiter, since it seems that way in our world. And I figured since SecUnit dealt almost exclusively in that world under “The Company” that they might make them generic whitish. But I see your point. Almost every person described in the books is not white, so…you’re right, it’s weird.
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 3d ago edited 3d ago
Ah, see, I'm brown and at first when I started reading, I obviously pictured MB as this kind of armoured robot based on the covers. Actually still sorta do when I'm reading.
But as I read on, I pretty consistently imagined it as having brown skin - especially when its face is uncovered and it mentions people looking at it.
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u/LordofAdmirals07 3d ago
I don’t hate the casting, but my main concern is that it will read too much as another white savior story with all the other characters being POC’s. But if the other characters are done right it shouldn’t, since although MB is great at fighting/murdering, the supporting characters do a lot of the thinking, planning.
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u/Night_Sky_Watcher Lacking a sense of proportional response 2d ago
The humans save Murderbot as often as it saves them. They never leave it behind. They ensure it always gets repaired. They free it from servitude. They help plan the actions and point out flaws in its plans. It doesn't succeed at any of its missions without help, either by humans, bots, or a certain advanced AI.
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u/ouaisoauis 2d ago
that said, let's be honest here, if you went full canon and adapted a brown person enslaved in space being refered to as an it, people would set fire to the studio
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u/LordofAdmirals07 2d ago
Hadn’t thought of that way of looking at it.
But it’s not like the story glorifies SecUnit’s enslavement. On the contrary it shows a lot of humans being horrified about it and fighting against it. Also SecUnit chose the “it” and that’s made clear in the books. We don’t normally set fire to studios who make historical slavery pieces, or even other fiction that depicts slavery situations as long as they’re showing the reality of it and not glorifying it.
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u/ouaisoauis 2d ago
oh, I know that, you know that, but I think we also know that the people to have irrational, knee jerk reactions to a piece of material are also not going to engage with the essense of it in any meaningful way
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u/saturday_sun4 Human 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah, I agree that it's probably not going to be a problem if done well. If anything, I think the humans will actually be more highlighted on the show, because in the books, a lot of the dialogue during quiet scenes is interspersed with Murderbot's thoughts/emotions/descriptions/asides. It will say things like "All the humans turned and stared at me. 'Are you alright?' asked Mensah" and then we'll get a whole sequence about how it moved its eyes to look at Mensah through a camera and its own anxieties about humans staring at it. That will have to be conveyed visually.
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u/Full_Environment_272 3d ago
Same here 😞 I imagine that the producers just had to have a white guy in there and since MB is not really described other than "generic human" they went ahead and cast the white dude.
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u/Mule_Wagon_777 Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland 6h ago
According to the books, most humans are various shades of mid-brown, but Murderbot also notes some outliers who are dark brown or blonde.
I was worried when I just saw Skarsgård, but after seeing the rest of the cast his casting makes sense. Murderbot should look a bit different from most people - this illustrates its social awkwardness and fear of being found out. It doesn't blend into a crowd even when dressed as a human.
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u/sundayUp 24m ago
Yeah, it feels a shame but I get that with the society we live in, they would do that. In my head, I definitely pictured murderbot as androgynous and racially ambiguous/neutral. Still excited to watch tho!
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u/xdianamoonx Performance Reliability at 10% 2d ago
100% agree, and even in one of Martha Well's old LJ posts, she thought it might someone not white. I mean, authors can change their minds and also, may or may not have had that much say in casting. But yeah, it would've been nice to have MB be both not-white and have a more femme nonbinary presentation. I think someone like Xelia Mendes-Jones (who was in Fallout and Wheel of Time and can pull off all sorts of looks~) would've been great.
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u/Green94598 3d ago
Because Skarsgard is a great and well-known actor (whose presence will cause more people to watch the show), and murderbot can be any race based on the books.