Daniel Dae Kim calls out ‘overcorrection’ in nationality-specific casting for Asian roles

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1. The actor noted that nationality-specific casting can sometimes be “important,” especially in instances when characters need “authentic language” or are depictions of actual people. But for roles that speak to the broader Asian American experience, Kim doesn’t think that casting directors need to narrow their search to one particular nationality.

   “Anytime there’s a role that focuses, to me, on the American experience of being Asian — that’s something that no matter [if] you’re Korean, Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, that’s something we all share in common as Asian Americans,” Kim said. “And we all know what it feels like to be othered. That’s a common experience. So to me, the nationality isn’t as important.”

   The actor noted that nationality-specific casting can sometimes be “important,” especially in instances when characters need “authentic language” or are depictions of actual people. But for roles that speak to the broader Asian American experience, Kim doesn’t think that casting directors need to narrow their search to one particular nationality.

   “Anytime there’s a role that focuses, to me, on the American experience of being Asian — that’s something that no matter [if] you’re Korean, Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, that’s something we all share in common as Asian Americans,” Kim said. “And we all know what it feels like to be othered. That’s a common experience. So to me, the nationality isn’t as important.”

   The Hawaii Five-0 star also finds it unusual that, in his estimation, Asian American actors’ nationalities are more hyper-specified than other actors’.

   “Asian American actors are often specified by nationality when other ethnicities are not,” he said. “When African American actors are hired, very rarely are they asked, where is their country of ancestry? Whether you’re Botswanan or from the Ivory Coast, it’s not pertinent. Especially if you’re playing an American.”

   Kim also called out the lack of attention paid to non-American actors playing American comic book characters.

   How many of our superheroes who are playing American are from other countries like Australia and England?” he asked. “And yet we don’t ever ask whether that’s important, relevant, and it doesn’t limit them from taking those roles.”

   (Indeed, Brits Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland, Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson, Henry Cavill, Benedict Cumberbatch, Patrick Stewart, James McAvoy, and Tom Hardy have all played prominent American superhero characters, with little-to-no objection to their casting.)

   The actor also said that he put his philosophy into practice while casting Reina Hardesty as his Korean American character’s daughter in his new spy thriller series Butterfly.

   “She’s Japanese American, and she’s mixed-race Japanese American,” he explained. “That was a deliberate choice on my part, because what the significant part of her character was is the idea of feeling alienated and alone in America. You don’t have to be Korean American to feel that way.”

2. Same would be true of African, European, South American, etc, casting.

   Hollywood has a really particular interest in some countries over others, so if you’re say Laotian or Singaporean you’ll probably always be disadvantaged against Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese actors just because that’s where Hollywood’s interest is.

   In Africa, a Ghanaian, Senegalese, Angolan, etc, actor is always going to be struggling against Somali, Ugandan, etc, actors.

   In a weird way it’s definitely counterintuitive. Hard to imagine Peter Stormare’s career if he’d been told from the jump he could only play SWEDISH characters.

3. I think any actor should be able to be cast in any role that they can reasonably pass as without makeup tricks.

4. Very good points and good on him for speaking up.  Someone said it happens in black and Latin communities.  Keep in mind daniel is speaking on behalf of Asians specifically. Also, in terms of people of color within Hollywood, Asians roles/actors are under represented compared to the other groups.

   For more than half a century, Asians had to fight tooth and nail to get representation in Hollywood. Now the pendulum has swung the other way where casting is seeking a specific Asian even though it has no relevance to the role (in terms of speaking)

5. > But for roles that speak to the broader Asian American experience, Kim doesn’t think that casting directors need to narrow their search to one particular nationality.

   Actor advocates for him having more roles. Or… person wants more money.

   Look it not saying he’s wrong, but c’mon.

6. Kenneth Choi is pretty much the model for this. It seems like whenever Hollywood needs an Asian-American character of any ethnicity (be it Chinese, Japanese, even Thai) they go to him.

7. Casting should be specific enough to get Asians jobs but not so specific as to exclude them from jobs? Pretty convenient.

   I like Daniel Dae Kim. A lot. I feel like Hollywood should have embraced him as a handsome leading man full stop. No racial qualifier. He’s a fantastic actor and such a hunk. There’s so many things he could have done. It’s sad he’s “Hawaii Five-O” actor in this article. It’s great he was first Asian man nominated for a leading actor role in a play. It should have been a long time ago. And it probably should have been him.

   But… the othered thing drives me a bit nuts. Now you have to be othered to be cast in roles? Otherwise you can’t just, I dunno, act? He speaks of all the people who have been cast as superheroes. But none of them actually have experience being superheroes as they are mere humans.

   I hope there are more producers, casting directors, whatever who are willing to consider good actors with less regard for race. There are places where it doesn’t work but there isn’t a whole lot of good reason Kim didn’t get a lot more leading roles than he has gotten.

8. Eloquent as always. To break this down in a more simple way – if you’re representing someone from history who was Japanese, who was fluent in Japanese, then I would think for historical and ethical reason the person selected should be Japanese and speak Japanese and have some knowledge of the person, who they were and have some sort of connection to them.

   If, on the other hand, your movie or show has adjacent characters experiencing first generation or second generation experience in America or Canada – then that actor that is hired should also have some sort of alignment with that experience.

   It’s pretty simple, if you think about it. It isn’t about the rigidity, it’s about the intention of the story being told.

9. I disagree. There are all sorts of Asian-<country here>’s around the world with different degrees of attachments to their heritage. It’s pretty obvious from Danny Kim’s barely preschool level of Korean that he is 99.9999% American than anything else. This isn’t far off from a white guy suggesting we should just cast any Asian actor for Asian characters. Others with deeper understanding of their own culture most likely won’t be happy with the decisions he is advocating for.

10. Calling it now. We are about a week or two away from finding out he is playing Martin Li in Spider-Man:Bran New Day. This is laying the groundwork.

11. One thing I noticed on this subject.

    Masuka from Dexter is played by South Korean-born American actor C.S. Lee, who, as one could guess by the character’s last name, is meant to be Japanese.

    This would be rectified in the prequel series Original Sin, when Japanese-American Alex Shimizu was cast.

    It ultimately didn’t really matter much for the character, but it’s an example of that more recent effort to cast specific to ethnicity, which DDK makes a decent point about.

12. But Asian itself is primarily an western identity. And its not shared across all Asian-Americans, especially amongst those who immigrated over. I have Filipino, indian, and pakistani friends who dont consider themselves Asian.

    My viet grandparents & parents never thought of themselves as asian. I don’t even know the word for it in viet. I only consider myself Asian because of american movies and tv.

    It’s akin to how you’ll never find an american, mexican, or canadian who call themself north american.

    Asian is a big ass grouping. Might as well just use Earthling.

13. I get it. I am an Asian Canadian actor, specifically, Chinese, but more specifically Cantonese, and even a bit of Toisanese. I am all these, but I am also still just and actor. And this is what I want to be first a foremost, an actor.

    If the role calls for a Asian actor, open it up for Asian actors. If the character is Chinese, cast a Chinese actor. If the character is born and raised in Korea, don’t cast an Korean American who barely speaks the language. If the character is Asian for a reason, don’t cast an obviously mixed actor.

    Compared to white or black actors, there are very few East Asian actors, and even fewer “successful” ones. If they limit the casting of East Asian actors to ancestry, yes, that further limits the already very few available parts. But I think it is more important to be true to the character.

    What he is saying, if I am understanding correctly, is that often times characters are listed as, say, Japanese American for no specific or valuable reason. Maybe a throwaway reference somewhere down the line, which would make little valuable difference if you replace it with a Chinese character. In this case, why not open the role to more Asian ethnicities?

    For me, if this is what he is saying, I say do this for all roles too. If there is no reason a character is any one race, open it to all AND genuinely give all a fair chance. Soooo many casting calls say “open ethnicities” and end up casting a Caucasian yet again. Soooo many say they are casting white actors only for no specific reason.

    I get it. This has been the way of western film and television for so long that Caucasian is default and every one else is a purposeful decision, diversity hire, token minority, overcorrection, woke, etc. I get it. And I don’t think it can be changed any time soon. As long as we have people arguing that*, well, there are more white people,* or *we shouldn’t cater to such a small population,* nothing will change.

    I get what DDK is saying, I think. Asian American is a broad group. There needn’t be such specificity if that’s the only character description. There is a lot of overlap in the Asian American experience, and if the writers are not going to go into specifics, there is no reason why there isn’t Korean-Japanese-Chinese-etc Americans in the roles.

14. Going to be interesting when Daniel Dae Lewis signs up for CRA 2 then…

15. There’s not enough nationality specific Asian roles, every time there’s an Asian lead, it’s always a half Asian being cast.

16. Shoutout to Randall Park for playing a Chinese dad who only talks to his mum in English in Fresh Off The Boat

17. “Americans can’t even tell the difference between Asian people so why be so strict with casting?”

18. I think it depends. I was bummed when ‘To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’ had an Eurasian protagonist (rare!!) and they cast a full Asian. I also think that nationality blindness can lead to the same 5 POC being cast in every minority role.

19. If it’s racist for a white person to play a Japanese character then it’s racist for a Chinese person to play a Japanese character. It’s kinda ridiculous to be like “as long as the skin color is close enough then it’s fine”. Like can a dark skinned Indian person play a black character? It’s all BS virtue signaling.

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