Darren Criss, Samara Weaving, and Laura Harrier on "passing" in Hollywood

Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood has gotten a lot of hype for its leering look at the sex lives of the film industry’s elite in the 1940s, but a lot of its storytelling also centers on issues of race and class in a Jim Crow America. While Hollywood might seem progressive from the exterior, it’s still a business concerned with selling product, and in the ‘40s in particular, that product had to be white, heterosexual, and relatively wholesome. The A.V. Club talked to three of Hollywood’s supporting stars, Darren Criss, Samara Weaving, and Laura Harrier, about what it meant to them to be a part of a show that talks about race in such a frank fashion, including if Darren Criss can identify with his character’s “passing” as white.

Hollywood is streaming on Netflix now.