Fully agreed. Blind casting is a fair process that gets the job done for the product, and if it produces suspiciously inequitable results you have to wonder where the inequalities or biases are coming from: not from the casting director, but from the networking in the recruitment pool. Essentially, who is or isn't in the loop to see casting calls for projects of this scale; who knows how to play this game? Of course prolific and established performers will have an advantage even if you don't look at their credits/CVs, because agencies, talent management, and their peer professional network keep them plugged in and take off some of that burden. It's easy, as the people doing the casting, to wash your hands of this and say it's outside your responsibility or purview, but at the same time they're the only ones who can ultimately move the ball on addressing implicit biases already baked into the search space.
It's entirely possible to support a greater consciousness of systemic biases in employment, and push for active efforts to address them, without falling into the trap of a short-sighted, patronizing ideological dead end like "authentic" voice casting.
Classy and informative response by Kimlinh Tran. I'd agree they certainly made an unforced error in how they announced the cast with headshots, creating a ready-made object of derision that could be held up as an emblem of what's wrong not just at Chucklefish but throughout the industry.
