The Choices Made When Casting Teens

Just about everyone has, gently or not, mocked some movie or TV show for its casting of teenagers. Mostly along the lines of the show/film casting people who seem way too old to be teens. We’ve all said it, at some point, realistically.

Here’s the thing though – we’re wrong.

When I was a teen I can’t think of a time I watched a show or film with supposed teenagers and thought they looked too old. The closest I came was the original 90210, and Andrea, and I don’t know if I was on the cusp of what I’m about to explain, or if it really was a casting issue.

I submit that you only notice this casting choice when you are out of the target demographic for the product. Which makes sense, if you think about it. Let’s break it down.

When you’re a kid, or a young teen, you often feel like you’re older than you are. You feel like, especially as a young teen, like you have it worked out and aren’t you basically an adult already? Sheesh why won’t anyone treat you like one? It’s frustrating. You know that you and your friends are grown! It’s obvious!

Then you get older and realize that all teens in real life now look to be about toddler age to you, and will from then on. And you get it, you get why you weren’t treated as adult when you were twelve.

It’s perspective. A mental shift, that hits the eye.

When I first saw Breakfast Club I was something like eleven or twelve. I saw it on VHS. But those kids looked, to me then, like what high school kids looked like. Because when you’re twelve kids who are fifteen look like they might as well be thirty to you. I remember it well. So the casting totally worked!

But looking back at it now and I wonder, briefly, who thought Judd Nelson, at twenty-five, should play sixteen, because wow he doesn’t look like a barley ripened tadpole at all. He looks like, well, he’s twenty-five.

When I hear now “Oh they cast kids the right age for the role” I have to wonder who is supposed to watch the show, because kids of the right age will look at that casting and it won’t ever feel as powerful, or as perfect, as it could otherwise. Adults will buy into it, more, sure. But figure out where you are aiming your show, and more importantly, who you are aiming it at.

Realistically – can we just stop casting anyone under the age of eighteen at all, if possible? I know it isn’t always possible, no eighteen year old is playing a toddler, but child actors don’t have a great streak of having a good life – if nothing else they lose their childhood. Maybe we could just fucking stop it and let them be kids?

Just a thought to go along with the larger thought here.

Anyway, the next time you see a grown-ass adult playing a teenager ask yourself if you are the intended audience for that character, because chances are you ain’t it, and the kids who are watching will relate and feel better about themselves because of the casting. Seriously, seeing yourself portrayed closer to the way you feel inside is a good and powerful thing.

Let’s embrace it.