I was thinking about identity in casting recently because of a short series I saw on Netflix, El Secreto del Río, which deals with third-gender/other gender/trans identity. The story is about a friendship that starts in childhood, ostensibly between two boys, one of whom everyone sees as an effeminate sissy. As an adult, this person identifies as a woman and then, finally, at the end, as muxe, a Zapotec word for what might be called a third gender. The adult character is played by Trinidad González, a trans actress. The child role is played by a girl, Frida Sofia Cruz--but she's playing a child perceived by all the world as a boy (dressed as a boy, given a boy's name, etc.), and at least at the series's start, that child has no clear sense of themself as not-male; they just feel *different.*

Pragmatically speaking, maybe there were no young trans actors available ... or is "no young trans actors available" a wimp-out that's part of the same exclusionary tendency that informed so many past casting decisions?

Having a non-Black person play a Black person in a movie that's directly addressing the issue of passing does feel like the wrong choice (though it sounds like the actor was great), but I'm not sure how I feel more generally about having actor and character line up in terms of identity. I guess in cases where identity is part of the focus of the film and where the identity in question is one that's been discriminated against or excluded in the past? But in films where identity isn't the focus and where, e.g., the ethnicity of the character isn't specified beyond a name, maybe not? (Fortunately the world isn't waiting for me to rule on this, so my confusion and indecision has no consequence.)