White actor plays role that was created for a person of colour. Actor issues an apology or says nothing, takes the pay check does the role anyway and Twitter is in uproar.
Sadly this is a cycle we are all used to seeing. Especially after recent news that actress Emma Stone was casted to play Allison Ng, a character of Asian – Hawaiian descent in the film Aloha. It seems that every actor is open to talking about the issue of whitewashing in Hollywood until a pay check is involved, then it’s like everyone turns a blind eye.
Worryingly Ed Skrein is the only white actor that I know of who has openly turned down a role that he knows should fully be occupied by a brown actor, therefore breaking the cycle (probably temporarily). The thirty-four year old English actor known for his role as Daario Naharis in Games of Thrones issued out a statement on Twitter saying that he has decided to turn down the role of Major Ben Daimio in the Hellboy reboot, after claiming that he was ‘unaware that the character in the original comics was of mixed Asian heritage’. The character in question was Ben Daimo who appeared in Dark Horse Comic books and is portrayed as being of Japanese-American descent. Ed’s refusal to feature in the Hellboy reboot has undoubtedly reignited the topic of white-washing in Hollywood.