A producer reportedly wanted 'Crazy Rich Asians' to star a white woman

Today in bad but unsurprising revelations: Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan was reportedly pressured by a film producer to make the book’s Chinese-American protagonist, Rachel Chu, a white woman instead.

Kwan detailed the experience, which happened before the book was even published, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

“They wanted to change the heroine into a white girl,” he explained. “I was like, ‘Well, you’ve missed the point completely.’ I said, ‘No, thank you.’”

Hollywood whitewashing, of course, is egregious and nothing new. (Remember Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell? Emma Stone in Aloha?) In this particular case, making Rachel a white woman would effectively ruin the plot of the book, which in large part focuses on a Chinese-American woman’s experience of spending time in Asia. Read more…

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Source: Mashable | A producer reportedly wanted 'Crazy Rich Asians' to star a white woman