‘An actor can do anything they want – as long as they mean well when they do it.” Such, jokes Chris Grace, was the movie star Scarlett Johansson’s justification for starring in manga adaptation Ghost in the Shell in 2017. Grace, an Asian-American actor and comic, stress tests that philosophy here with this mind- and character-bending comedy hour in which he stars as Johansson (who in turn stars as Chris Grace, and so on …). It’s a great device, embedding Grace’s ideas about cross-racial casting into the structure and playful humour of the piece – at least until the end, when (please stop!) he starts spelling the argument out.
That’s his prerogative: the debate isn’t academic for the 50-year-old, who’s been pushed to the margins his whole showbiz career – as a few dismaying anecdotes demonstrate. It’s also a function of the recursive structure: Grace’s show keeps re-starting throughout the hour, as the joke about Chris-playing-Scarlett-playing-Chris adds another layer. So perhaps it requires multiple false endings, too. In a few of which, even if I worried Grace was over-articulating, he does add some complicating footnotes to the case the show has made.
