10.21.2013

Casting Call: Dumb American Family is the fake Chinese sitcom you've never heard of...

This is either going to be kind of brilliant or absolutely infuriating.

Got another weird casting call sent my way... This one's kind of interesting. Abominable Pictures is currently casting actors of Chinese descent for a live-action Adult Swim comedy pilot called Dumb American Family. The premise will kind of make your head spin.

Dumb American Family is a multi-camera sitcom featuring Asian actors made up to look like "gluttonous Americans," speaking in "loud, boisterous, slightly wrong English with Mandarin Chinese subtitles."

What it sounds like: if Chinese television made a sitcom about an American family -- ugly western stereotypes set to maximum -- this is what it might look like.

This is either going to be kind of brilliant or absolutely infuriating. Here are the character breakdowns:


UPDATE: I've been informed that the breakdown is allegedly copyrighted material, so I'm taking it down -- for the time being. But here is a non-descriptive list of the characters they're casting. They want actors of Chinese descent for all the characters except Kraimo:

DOUGIE LINCOLN, 12-16

RONALD LINCOLN, Mid to late 40s

KERRI-STRUG LINCOLN, Mid 40s

VAMPIRE LINCOLN, Early 20s

KRAIMO (The only non-Chinese actor in the bunch.)

LIU XUN, 25-45

SERGEANT APE, 30s

LUCAS, 12-16

JILL, 12-16


I've gotten a look at the pilot script and man, I don't know what to make of this. Is it mocking ugly American ignorance? Or perhaps it's yet another jab at China's cultural posturing/incompetence. Or somewhere in between? It's really difficult to tell on the page. Who's being laughed at here?

If done right, I could see Dumb American Family actually being really smart and wickedly subversive. Or maybe something else entirely. Of course, it still requires Chinese-speaking American actors to play rather ignorant Chinese actors doing fake American accents through via their fake Chinese accents. (Huh?) I don't know. This is one where we'll have to wait and see -- honestly, I'm intrigued.

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