Whether "Jewface" is appropriate to refer to inauthentic casting, when Judaism is a mix of cultural, religious, and ethnic identities, has been debated, as has the focal point of these criticisms.
The name plays off the term "blackface," and the act featured performers enacting Jewish stereotypes, wearing large putty noses, long beards, and tattered clothing, and speaking with thick Yiddish accent.
[4][5] Silverman described the pattern, using the example of Kathryn Hahn being cast to play Joan Rivers, as "Jewface", and defined this as "when a non-Jew portrays a Jew with the Jewishness front and centre", which can include changing features and using a New York or Yiddish accent.
[9][10] Still, in 2020, Daniel Ian Rubin proposed adding a "HebCrit" field of study, focusing on Jews as an ethnoreligious group, to critical race theory.
[8] British actress Maureen Lipman has opined that "ethnicity should be a priority" when casting roles that focus on this aspect of the character,[7] while British presenter Esther Rantzen instead felt that focusing on an actor's ethnicity could lead to performances being little more than "racial caricatures", and that people of ethnoreligious identities different to their characters can still achieve an authentic portrayal of the person, giving, among others, several of Lipman's roles as examples.
[12] Saval noted that with a rise in antisemitic hate crimes in the United States, the media perception of Jews as an ethnic group needed to be given better treatment.
[7] Abrams acknowledged the lack of Jewish actors as main characters of any background on British screens, and suggested an unconscious bias in casting may be the cause.
[7] Examples of Jewface include Hahn, Rachel Brosnahan in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; Will Ferrell in The Shrink Next Door; Tamsin Greig in Friday Night Dinner; Tom Hardy in Peaky Blinders; Oscar Isaac in Scenes from a Marriage, Operation Finale, and Moon Knight; Felicity Jones in On the Basis of Sex; Kelly Macdonald in Giri/Haji; Rachel McAdams in Disobedience; Helen Mirren in Golda; James Norton in McMafia; Gary Oldman in Mank; Rachel Sennott in Shiva Baby; and Bradley Cooper in Maestro.