'Cripping up' is just as unacceptable as blackface, says Sally Phillips
'Cripping up' is just as unacceptable as blackface, the actress Sally Phillips has said as people with disabilities continue to be underrepresented in television.
The term refers to an able-bodied actor playing a character who is disabled, with their portrayal often involving mimicking the physical characteristics of a specific impairment or medical condition.
Actors who have been accused of 'cripping up' include the Oscar-nominated Bradley Cooper in his West End portrayal of the ‘Elephant Man’ and Eddie Redmane’s turn as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
Ms Philips, 50, told the Sunday Times there is “basically no representation of people with disabilities,” within television.
She said: “Cripping up is just as unacceptable as blackface. People think a disabled actor isn’t acting if they’re playing a disabled character.
“But that’s like saying Idris Elba isn't acting when he plays Nelson Mandela. Lack of integration has massive effects.
"You shouldn’t be stopped from working in TV because you literally can’t get in the building.”
According to the 2019 annual Diamond Report published by the Creative Diversity Network, widely recognised as the most authoritative diversity monitor across the UK TV industry, disabled people are actually the most under-represented group of all in television.
The report, backed by broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, found that disabled people make up just 5.2 per cent of the off-screen workforce and 7.8 per cent on-screen.
Conservative MP Sir Desmond Swayne, who was widely criticised after a photo emerged last year in October of him dressing up as James Brown said on the Telegraph's Chopper Politics Podcast that people have “lost their sense of humour” over blackface and questioned why the practice was offensive.
Listen to to the full interview below:
Mr Swayne said: "Why is it offensive? Now my children tell me: 'Dad, of course it is offensive, of course you can't do that.' But why?
"Are you saying a black man can't get into a fancy dress party as a white man? That we must stay in our racial silos? That we can't interchange? I just don't see the world that way.”
