Color-Blind Casting Built ‘Deception’

The new “Deception” isn’t the first broadcast show with an African-American women leading the cast – it’s not even the only one currently on the air (“Scandal” is another).

But it may be the first with a woman of color in the lead that was written color-blind.

“One thing that I thought was really cool is when I read the script,” said Meagan Good, “characters were not specified [by] race. It wasn’t like, you know, this young black girl, anything. It was just ‘Joanna.’”

Good plays Joanna Locasto, a former friend of an heiress found dead of a drug overdose who also happens to be a police detective of a squad who wants to investigate in the NBC drama.
The character of her ex on the show was also not specified by race.

“My character, when I was cast, his last name was Sackavich,” Laz Alonso said on a panel at the TV Critics Association winter press tour this week. “Now he’s Moreno. It makes a little more sense — [I can] throw a little bit of my Spanish in there every now and then when I get a chance. But for me, it’s been great to play a well rounded human being regardless of color or racial ethnicity.”
Show creator Liz Heldens says race was never an issue with the show, though, she adds,
“we definitely touch on class. That’s been a really fun thing to approach in the writers’ room for sure.

“As far as Meagan and Laz, Meagan just walked in and owned it in a great way. That’s what you want to happen when you’re casting a show, and that’s the thing that is so rare and so great when somebody just comes in, and it was just like, boom: she’s Joanna. And same with Laz. He just walked in, and they did their chemistry-

read together, and they were fantastic, and it was just kind of, like, undeniable.”

The result, Heldens says, “is a way to sort of deal with race without actually having to talk about it. But it’s not really something we talk about too much in the writers’ room.”

“Deception” runs Monday nights on NBC.