Tess Paras is an Asian-American actress who is tired of being cast as a white lady’s nerdy or sexy sidekick. She also happens to have a little bit of musical talent kicking around. And, you know, since Royals is such a fun song to parody on account of the fact that it’s got all kinds of lyrics, she and two of her fellow nonwhite actresses teamed up to make a video about how annoying it is to be constantly typecast.
Parodies of “Royals” are a dime a dozen, but this one’s pretty well done and makes an interesting point about the stubborn, annoying, insistence Hollywood has on sticking with tropes that most of the time it invented in the first place. Here’s hoping that we see more of Paras and her costars Haneefah Wood and Ayana Hampton in the future, preferably in substantive, interesting roles that treat them as individuals rather than sidekicks. Now all we have to do fire 90% of the knuckleheads currently running things in Hollywood.
