About

On The Rewatchables' Friday the 13th episode, Van Lathan said "Black StatMuse would be incredible": a site that tells you how many Black people are in a movie versus the total number of characters, and the ratio. He said he'd check it out. So now it exists, for every movie The Rewatchables has covered.

The Rewatchables — “Friday the 13th” with Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan and Van Lathan

The Van Lathan Ratio

Black credited characters out of total credited characters, written the way Van said it: "0 of 79."

How the numbers work

• The movie list comes from the podcast's own episode titles. Mailbags, draft episodes and other non-movie episodes are left out.
• The cast is every credited role listed for the movie on The Movie Database (TMDB). Roles marked uncredited are left out, so background extras usually aren't counted. Same rule for every movie.
• Animated movies count the voice actors, not the characters they play. A Black actor voicing a toy counts; a cartoon character drawn as Black but voiced by someone who isn't does not.

How actors are tagged

This is the part we took most seriously, because it's about real people.

• We go by how people describe themselves. An actor is counted as Black when they publicly identify as Black, in their own words or in how their published biography describes them. Nothing is guessed from a photo, a name or a last name.
• Ancestry alone isn't enough. Plenty of people have Black ancestry and describe themselves another way, or as several things at once. Unless someone publicly identifies as Black, we don't put that label on them.
• When in doubt, we leave it out. An actor we couldn't confirm counts toward the cast total but not the Black total. So if a number is off, it's more likely a little low than invented. For a handful of actors with little published biography, we went by how their own career has been publicly presented.
• Each actor is tagged once, and that tag carries across every movie they're in.
• Close calls are shown, not hidden. When we considered counting someone and decided not to, their movie's page says so and explains why.
• Every tag was a person's decision. Public Wikipedia categories were used to suggest names to check; someone reviewed them, and ancestry-only categories were set aside.

The tags count credits for a joke Van made on a podcast. They aren't a judgment of anyone's identity, and they aren't a verdict on the movies, most of which are great. It's a stat site with a real method, built by hand, so individual tags can still be wrong.

The fine print

Black StatMuse is an unaffiliated parody. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by StatMuse, The Ringer, Spotify, Van Lathan or anyone on the show. No ads, no tracking, no cookies.

This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Cast lists and posters come from The Movie Database.