Maybe Anthony Mackie will grow on me in Altered Carbon season 2, but so far he’s been exactly what I’ve been concerned about. He’s just not a strong enough actor for a role like Takeshi.
If you wanted to focus on African American actors, Chadwick Boseman or Michael B. Jordan would have been so much better. Yahya Abdul-Mateen would also probably have been great after his Watchmen showing.
Morris Chestnut would be super great but might be on the high end of age. Shemar Moore would also be super great.
To be clear, Joel Kinnaman is not a master actor. But, the fact that english is his second language brought this great synthetic American accent that felt somewhat awkward and blandly universal for a person that didn’t speak english natively, which Kovacs should have.
Mackie is just so effortlessly east-coast American that it makes Takeshi seem inauthentic.