If you’ve been watching the hugely popular television show UnReal, you know who Adam Cromwell, played by Freddie Stroma, is.
He’s the first suitor on the first season of the fake Bachelor-like reality TV show.
But what you may not remember is that he has a grandmother whom we met in season one and now, with the third season airing in 2018, her brief appearance in the series has taken on a new significance.
Currently in season three, UnReal is a wickedly clever black comedy/drama series, starring Constance Zimmer and Shirri Appleby as Quinn and Rachel, the producers of a reality dating show called Everlasting.
The series reveals what really happens behind-the-scenes on the set of reality show productions, and it’s horrifying as much as it’s fascinating – and has turned even those of us with the thickest rose-coloured glasses into hardcore cynics.
When we first meet Camille Cromwel the year is 2015 .
She’s at Cromwell Castle, where the show’s season finale wedding is planned to be. Sandy’s a bit rogue, a bit eccentric – and also a bit racist. During an advice session with her grandson Adam, she tells him that she knows who he’s going to select to marry – the beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde-haired Anna – and not the Peruvian temptress, Grace.
But, why is she so confident about that?
“We don’t marry brown people,” she says, casually stating the obvious.
Ouch.
It sounds like the kind of line an edgy show like UnReal would script, but of course, it’s also not wrong.
Contestant diversity and diversity of winners and suitors has been a long-debated issue on all seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, both in Australia and in America.
Listen to Mamamia Entertainment Editor Laura Brodnik get all the set secrets from Constance Zimmer, aka Quinn from UnReal….
But Camille Cromwel is also speaking the truth in a fiction-reflects-life kind of way.
Since it was revealed that American actress Meghan Markle, who has mixed race heritage due to her black father and white mother, was marrying into the British royal family, her background has been extensively discussed by the media and the public, because it’s an unprecedented move that’s sadly attracted some negative attention.
More seriously, earlier this year a UK politician’s girlfriend put his career in jeopardy after it was revealed she wrote a series of racist text messages about Markle.
The messages, published by The Mail on Sunday, come from the phone of 25-year-old Jo Marney, girlfriend of UK politician Henry Bolton.
In one text it says Marney says she doesn’t like “black people” because they’re “ugly”. The conversation turns to Markle and Marney is asked by her friend, “what’s wrong with her?”
“She’s obsessed with race. And her seed with [sic] taint our royal family. Just a dumb little commoner.”
She adds, “Not wanting other races and cultures to invade your own culture doesn’t mean I hate their race. Just means I don’t want their culture invading mine.”
As a woman of colour I could not be any more happier for Prince Harry and Megan Markle???? who’d have thought we’d see the day a black woman would be an embraced royal????????#RoyalEngagement #blackprincess
— Talulah-Eve☄️ (@TalulahEve) November 27, 2017
Naturally, it’s a minority perspective, but it exists nonetheless.
And on May 19, 2018, an accomplished actress and social activist will prove that minority wrong, because a Windsor will marry a woman of colour.
That’s something to celebrate – in addition to the fact that this is a wedding. It’s a time for happiness and excitement in a hard world.
And if it also means that people with outdated views like the fictional Camille Cromwel (and Marney) will be eating their words – and that’s the icing on the lemon elderflower wedding cake.
Hopefully, scenes like this from TV shows such as UnReal , will soon be total works of fiction and in no way reflective of our society.
Top Comments
How very dare they allow a mixed-race commoner taint a bloodline fraught history of incest and tyranny! Off with their heads!