BRING BACK CRYING IN TV & FILM! (Pleek!)
- Habeebh
- Sep 11, 2025
- 4 min read
Author's Note: Making a website is hard! And Wix is only making it harder so it's still under construction, don't judge me too much!
Hi guys, I’m hot off the press. And by hot off the press, I mean I just finished Cruel Summer on Hulu.
My older sister watched this show yearsss ago when it was premiering on the channel Freeform. Yes, we still have cable 😛. But when she watched it, I really didn’t care for it. The same way, I didn’t care for her all-time favorite show–Pretty Little Liars, when it was still airing on Freeform–formerly ABC Family. Maybe I’ll circle back to the show because I’m…different…now? But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. We need to bring back real crying in TV & film because it’s your job…
How can you be an actor and not know how to cry? You’re telling me you attended acting school, took multiple acting lessons, did a self-tape with you actively crying in it, prayed night and day for your time on the big screen…and now you don’t wanna cry? I don’t get it. Actually, I’m not having it. When I watch TV or movies, I’m a stickler for a damn good performance. I’m watching everything. I’m watching your body language, your eye movements, the unsaid emotion when words can’t even begin to explain the emotion. So when an emotional scene calls for a tear to cascade down your face and you don’t deliver–I’M PISSED. Instead, the actor pulls one of these.
They either get really loud or really quiet and act dishelved to hide for lack of theirof--their tears.
I didn’t wait through five 30-second Hulu commercials just to be greeted with a cheap cry trick. Are these the methods acting coaches are teaching their clients these days?! I should have your license. Then again, maybe our standard is getting lower because, like Beyoncé said–
BUT the reason I bring up Cruel Summer, Season 1 is because every episode, these girls were crying, oh my. Olivia Holt was the queen of the one tear falling down the left side of her face. Anytime someone in the show would accuse Chiara Aurelia of any wrongdoing, she had already had tears brimming her eyelids. And that is EXACTLY what I want to see. Cruel Summer premiered in 2021, so they were lucky to escape the crying drought of the year uh…actually right now. You see, media today is so cryless, actors are so scared of the ugly cry that hits your body so hard you’re buckling down to the floor, unable to breatheee. What modern media doesn’t know, or maybe does know and ignores, is that I NEED that cry. That cry is the one thing that is saving me from continuing to another episode or moving onto another show. When actors don’t shed tears when it calls for it, it tells me–you cannot do the job. *(Me whispering now) Baby, you’re surface-level. *
It read that you haven’t done the work to reach that emotional place, and when the cameras started rolling, this was all you had. And that isn’t enough for me. I know this sounds rude, but time is money! Especially in a time where consumers are paying for multiple streaming services and being bombarded by constant ads, increasing plans, and lower quality, we’re gonna be a little peeved by you not giving us the well-deserved performance we paid for. Don't be rude!
It wasn’t always like this, though. I’m a sucker for early 2000s media, and they had it in their crying bag! Some people and shows I can count on for vicious, ugly crying (I mean this in the best way) are Viola Davis, Bailee Madison, Grey’s Anatomy, and Korean Dramas which always have me enjoying their cries or fighting back my own. I’m reminiscing back to my Freshman year in college when I lived in a triple dorm and had to silently cry watching Hi Bye, Mama! because the ghost mother would never be able to take care of her daughter again. Man, that was a good one. Sorry, that was such a random list. I should have made a more comprehensive one before writing this, silly me. Anyway, maybe these actors don’t have enough to cry about because one thought about my life and the political and economic state of the world, and…oh wow, I’m already crying.
Welp, I'm leaving this here just in case anyone needed a refresher 👀
Anyways, comment below on which actor/show/film is/has big, ugly, criers? I wanna know like reallyyyy bad pls.
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