My regret for this decision has nothing to do with the casting of the actors, their performances, or their ability to represent my personal story. My regret comes entirely from the reason that I made this decision — because I was afraid of what it might say otherwise.

I first wrote the characters as being both white. But then I began to think…

If this is a story about myself, shouldn’t the main character look somewhat like myself?

I had settled on who would play the father, a fantastic actor you might have seen in Mad Men as Grandpa Jean. I consulted with both my producer and casting director about changing the ethnicity of who was to play the son. I had my casting director pull some options for biracial characters and I took a good look. But ultimately the choice was mine to make and finally I chose to keep the son the same ethnicity of the father.

The reason that I made this decision still stings every time I try to watch the movie.

I didn’t want audiences to change their perspective of what was considered normal. I didn’t want them to be uncomfortable.

So I made excuses—

“What if everyone focused on the racial aspect instead of the father and son?”

“If they’re different ethnicities and the father is an alcoholic — what was I saying about interracial families?”

But I know that deep down, I was crafting a story that an audience would already understand. Rather than crafting a story that would make the audience understand me.

The real truth of why I made this decision is simple:

I didn’t strongly consider making a character my own ethnicity because I felt the need to explain my own existence.

Growing up in Chicago, I knew that my family wasn’t the norm. There weren’t as many out there like me and in that city, people often try to force you to pick sides. There are more now and will be in the future. But those of us who are mixed are still a small sample size.

Combine that with living in foreign country for several years, many rounds of my favorite game “What Are You Exactly?”, and I was left with the feeling of not quite feeling like part of the mainstream. I told myself that I reveled in it. But when I had the opportunity with this film I was making to really embrace that notion — I failed.

This feeling is not to denigrate the actor who would be cast in the role of Junior. He’s one of the best actors that I’ve ever had the chance to work with and his work in Control was fantastic. My regret comes from my mindset in the creation of this film and how it would ultimately influence everything that came afterwards.