Im in the middle of season one of this series, which takes a little while to get into. I can't get over the idea that Ike Evans and his two sons, Stevie and Danny, are supposed to be jewish. I am jewish, and there are no jews who look like they do. The sons are totally hot and goyish, so that part of the story is completely unbelievable to me.
I'm just sayin, don't hate.
But according to the story told, their late mother was a WASP. Kelly Lynch plays her sister on the show. The family name is Bannock.
Here's a detailed interview with Kelly Lynch (wife of Mitch Glazer who created and wrote the whole show before it was cancelled) and she goes into great detail:
Magic City (2012-present)—“Meg Bannock”
Kelly Lynch: When Mitch created the show, there were a lot of different ideas about it. One was that it would be a movie, one was that it would be a miniseries, and then that it would be a series. At one point, there was talk that it was going to be a broadcast-network TV show, but then all the powers that be said they couldn’t actually tell the story that Mitch wanted to tell. It was more of a premium-cable story. And then [Starz CEO] Chris Albrecht read it when he went over to Starz and went crazy for it. After that, there were two different characters that he was interested for me to play. Of course, I had to sleep with the showrunner to get the part, but… [Laughs.] Anyway, it was either the Miramar Playa house photographer who was also sort of a spy for Ike [Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character] as well a gal-Friday/best-friend kind of thing, or Meg Bannock. And the more we talked about it, Meg just seemed to be the part.
She’s this sort of Doris Duke/Grace Kelly throwback, the ultra-WASP who’s part of Ike’s earlier life, to sort of compare and contrast the Jewish hotel world, which even at that time—although no one realized it—was sort of dying as it kept coming up again and again that the WASP persona in America was being viewed as “the real Americans.” Meg’s a nice person, but she’s a person of her world, where Jewish people aren’t invited into their country clubs, and the South Beach area isn’t integrated. There are colored and white drinking fountains, and this all seems kind of normal in Meg’s world. So I think with her affection for Ike and her being accepted into his family more and more, she’s seeing her world open up a bit.
It’s cool to play a woman from that era who’s extremely wealthy. Her parents are gone; she’s an heiress like Doris Duke, with something like a billion dollars in today’s money. She’s got no children and has just said goodbye to husband No. 2, so she can swim the waters of the world like a man. I mean, you want family and you want relationships, but she doesn’t need a man to take care of her. She just doesn’t need that. Whereas I just did a movie right before I came back to Magic City, a contemporary-set film called A Dark Plan, where I play a woman of today who’s a complete throwback, a housewife and a mother, and loses both of those definitions in the course of her story and has an affair with a very young guy and is just completely rebuilding herself. So it’s interesting for me to have done those two things back-to-back.
From AV Club
Ah, ok. I didn't get that connection. Now I see that the sons are half-breeds. That lends a little more credibility to their extraordinary good looks (a little more).
shareLook, Paul Newmann od Harrison Ford are half-breeds too, and they look even more Aryan. Not to mention Kirk Douglas, who is 100% Jewish and looks like a WASP.
shareGod, you really are a self-hating American jew... aren't you? They're only good looking because they have an anglo mother.... Some Serious issues you have there
shareThe show seems to make it extremely clear that they are Jewish.
The whole bas mitzvah controversy (Ike's father didn't want to attend, and Ike's daughter didn't want to have one if her grandfather wasn't going to attend; Ike's wife insisting that the ceremony go forward, as her proof of trying to be Jewish enough to fit into the family). Stevie wearing the Star of David pendant. The multiple references to Jewish holidays (eg, Diamond speaking to Ike) and uses of Yiddish terms.
And what's this about no Jews looking 'like that'? You can't be serious.
William Shatner, Tony Curtis, James Franco, Adam Levine, Zac Efron?
Ok. If that's the case, why not cast real jews in those parts???? Were Franco, Levine and Efron too busy?
shareHow do you know the actors aren't Jewish.
But more to the point: because they're actors. It's all make-believe. They aren't playing the people that they are in real life.
If only Jews can play Jews, does that mean Jews can't play non-Jews?
James Caan isn't Italian, so he could never have played Sonny Corleone in The Godfather?
Andy Garcia couldn't have played an Italian American in The Godfather III?
Al Pacino couldn't have played a Cuban in Scarface?
Id bet my left nut they are not jewish. And I'm not saying only jews can play jews. But not only do they not look jewish on any level, they don't even look like each other. It detracts from the authenticity of their characters. That's all I'm saying.
shareMaybe one was supposed to have inherited more physical traits from one side of the family while the other inherited traits from the other.
It's not like people with Jewish ancestry look just one way. Especially when one side of the family isn't Jewish.
Gwyneth Paltrow?
Scarlett Johansson?
Lenny Kravitz?
Daniel Radcliffe?
Ben Foster?
Maybe one was supposed to have inherited more physical traits from one side of the family while the other inherited traits from the other.
Well, I´m allways a bit uneasy to see a goi play a Jew. There´s allways somenthing false in it, they don´t get it. I don´t know, why in Hollywood films Italians play Jews, Jews play Italians - or why every Sioux has a Jewish face.
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“Goy” is a slur. Go eat some pork, then fuck yourself.
shareThank you
shareThey may have been too expensive since the players are relatively unknowns, except for the older men like Danny Huston, Michael Rispoli and Alex Rocco
Krusty the Clown is more Jewish than these yutzes . . . and a much, much better actor!
"Your next challenge is always your biggest." Joe Namath
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Here is a great article about it...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/arts/television/magic-city-jewish-power-brokers-in-1950s-miami-beach.html?_r=0
You know what else I just noticed? That kids in movies and TV (that I've been watching for over 50 years) mostly look nothing like their parents.
sharewhile the op's thought is half sound, the series makes pains to point out that the 3 kids of ike are HALF-jewish, the other half being blonde/shiksa. how anyone could miss that is hard to fathom.
so they got actors who purposely do not look full jewish, but rather half jewish, which could be just about anybody.
i think they were cast well: one son is darker like the dad, one is blond-ish like the mom, and they are always referencing how much younger bro looks like mom bannock.
The fact that the OP said they look "too hot and goyish" is an indicator that he thinks they were too handsome to play Jews. That's kinda disturbing given that he proclaimed to be Jewish himself.
Just say'n.
Excuse me--ya'll lookin' for a dead body??
Yeah there is definitely something not right with the oo. Plus Judaism is a bloody religion not a race anyway. I wonder where this dickhead lives if he thinks all jews look the same, I've only heard this *beep* from idiot American Ashkenazi jews
shareYou're Jewish and you don't know that Jews can look different than bloody American Ashkenazi Jerry Seinfeld like with a big schnozzle. Get real, I'm Jewish and I know jews of every different colour under the sun. My best friend is Polish Ashkenazi with blonde hair and looks like Leonardo Dicaprio, another who's a ginger who looks Scottish, another who's Ethiopian, most of my Mizirahi and Sephardic friends who look straight up Latin American, I always get mistaken for greek or latin (I'm Australian Sephardic with green eyes)
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