Age is just a number… until a 30-year-old actor is playing a 16-year-old on screen. If you watched shows like Never Have I Ever growing up, you’ve been face to face with this phenomenon. Sure, the actors’ makeup, outfits, and dialogue were fit to portray highschoolers, but nothing about Paxton Hall-Yoshida looked under twenty. If you’ve browsed through Buzzfeed, you’ve likely seen the articles listing out the variety of teen characters who are played by grown adults. Casting old actors as young characters is not an unnatural occurrence, in fact, it happens all the time. But should this practice really be normalized?
As I rewatch early episodes of Riverdale, I don’t feel like I’m watching a show about characters my age. Older actors are altered with de-aging CGI technology and special makeup techniques to make them look younger. All of the main actors in Riverdale were 19 or older in the first season, even though they were playing high school sophomores. The oldest of the main cast, Cole Sprouse, was 24 years old at the show’s premiere – nearly ten years older than his character! The obvious age difference between the actors and their characters makes the show feel drastically more mature than the producers were likely aiming for; though the characters were supposedly a year younger than me, I felt like I was watching a drama about full-grown adults. Riverdale highlights the main drawback of casting older actors: most of them have no idea how to accurately portray younger characters.
This problem may not seem like a big deal, but quickly spirals into more alarming issues. The most obvious one is that these actors’ teenage personas come off as too forced, decreasing relatability for actual teen audiences and making the character feel “cringe.” But another troubling consequence is the portrayal of unrealistic physical maturity in teenage characters. Seeing a teenage character played by an actor of ideal figure could perpetuate body image issues in actual teenagers, who feel as if they can’t compare to CGI-altered, fully-matured adults. Unfortunately, casting more mature actors may also increase the sexualization of the adolescent characters they are playing. Older actors are able to film more sexually-explicit scenes that minors are legally not allowed to perform. This creates a hyper-sexualized image of teen characters, especially in shows like Euphoria, that shouldn’t be accepted in film and television. These characters are still minors, and should not be portrayed in a sexual manner regardless of the writers’ meaning behind doing so.
Of course, casting directors aren’t choosing older actors for no reason. Child labor laws are an obvious roadblock for younger actors; in California specifically, minors cannot be employed for over eight hours per day or over 48 hours per week. In a project consisting of countless scene retakes, lengthy auditions, scene set-up, and other time-consuming processes, actors are expected to take on long hours to keep the production moving. Child labor laws are the obvious reason for casting older actors in place of properly-aged minors, but this reason is still not entirely excusable when considering the glaring issues with this practice.
Teens around the world are consuming media that gives them an unrealistic idea of how mature they should be and even normalizes the sexualization of adolescents. The reason I enjoy shows about teenagers is because these shows make me feel seen. When watching shows like Riverdale, where the entire cast looks and acts older than me, I don’t get the sense that the writers actually understand how teenagers behave. Even with child labor laws, directors have the opportunity to cast early adults from ages 18 to 20. It’s time we take a shift from the super seniors of the acting world.
