DOCTOR STRANGE: Kevin Feige Admits Casting Tilda Swinton As A Whitewashed Ancient One Was A Mistake

DOCTOR STRANGE: Kevin Feige Admits Casting Tilda Swinton As A Whitewashed Ancient One Was A Mistake

Marvel Studios had good intentions when they cast Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in Doctor Strange, but Kevin Feige admits that it was a mistake not finding a way to have an Asian actor in the role.

By JoshWilding - May 19, 2021 12:05 PM EST
Filed Under: Doctor Strange
Source: Men's Health

The Ancient One is a stereotype, so no one could really blame Marvel Studios for trying to do something different with the character in Doctor Strange

Tilda Swinton, a white actress, ended up being cast as a female version of the Sorcerer Supreme. There was whitewashing criticism at the time, but Kevin Feige has now addressed the controversy head on by admitting that they made a mistake by taking the Ancient One in that direction. 

"We thought we were being so smart, and so cutting-edge," Feige told Men's Health in a new cover story on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu. "We’re not going to do the cliché of the wizened, old, wise Asian man. But it was a wake-up call to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, is there any other way to figure it out? Is there any other way to both not fall into the cliché and cast an Asian actor?’ And the answer to that, of course, is yes."

Marvel Studios had good intentions, but this is clearly an experience they learned from, and may also explain why we're getting Wenwu instead of The Mandarin in Shang-Chi. Talking of that movie, Feige would go on to explain why that franchise is key heading into the MCU's Phase 4. 

"Once we finished what we call now The Infinity Saga, we rolled up our sleeves and said, 'Ok, what's next?' What are we going to kick off the next?" he said. "The next sort of evolution of the MCU post- our first big saga, and that's why Shang-Chi was at the very top of that list."

Check out Liu's Men's Health cover to hype Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings below: 
 

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noahthegrand
noahthegrand - 5/19/2021, 12:33 PM
Basically my thoughts, I love Tilda Swindon but they could have cast an Asian and just not made it stereotypical.
SonOfAGif
SonOfAGif - 5/19/2021, 12:40 PM
@noahthegrand - Except it wasn't stereotypical. The Ancient One had a British accent. She wasn't American. She was European and the plot specifically stated she used the energy from the dark dimension to stay young because she couldn't trust anyone to become the sorcerer supreme. And then in Endgame she added more to that plot point claiming Strange was meant to be the best of the Sorcerors. So that implied she was waiting for him to take the mantle. I thought it was cool making the Ancient One non-binary and Tilda Swinton. She brought some serious class to the role.
noahthegrand
noahthegrand - 5/19/2021, 1:05 PM
@SonOfAGif - I was not saying that, Tilda Swindon was anything but stereotypical. I was saying they could have created a non stereotypical Asian ancient one
noahthegrand
noahthegrand - 5/19/2021, 12:35 PM
It’s kind of rare and cool to hear a direct apology like this from a producer when he’s not even getting called out for it that much. Very classy
KWilly
KWilly - 5/19/2021, 12:45 PM
@noahthegrand - Then you got Zack Snyder saying, "But WB hates me! And I don't even know why! I'M NOT A CROOK"
WruceBayne
WruceBayne - 5/19/2021, 12:50 PM
@KWilly - C’mon Willy... You’re not done beating up Snyder yet? He literally had nothing to do with anything that was said on this post bro. You can’t shoehorn Snyder into every post and then blame him for it.
MCUKnight11
MCUKnight11 - 5/19/2021, 12:36 PM
Now I wish Ken Watanabe was the Ancient One.
ModHaterSLADE
ModHaterSLADE - 5/19/2021, 12:37 PM
Great actress, but Feige has a good point.
SonOfAGif
SonOfAGif - 5/19/2021, 12:42 PM
@ModHaterSLADE - I don't know. I read an article today claiming that only 5.8% of API are cast in Hollywood projects and 2% of those roles are usually non-speaking and stereotypical asian roles like Yakuza, Samurai, martial arts, and so on. An Asian Ancient One as the all wise stereotypical asian character would have fit that 5.8% study that Asian Americans are complaining about.
ogrodafloresta
ogrodafloresta - 5/19/2021, 4:54 PM
@SonOfAGif - Great finding, but the study you're mentioning maybe doesn't fit this case.

Removing a character that was originally Asian and replacing it with a white woman with an European accent is, in all terms, whitewashing — which might be worse than casting an Asian actor in the same old roles.

To address the issue pointed by the study would be to cast Asian actors (or actors of any etnicity) in roles that are traditionally played by white male actors.

The brave cop, the romantic lead, the comedic romantic lead, the Jedi, the astronaut, the Army soldier and so on.
SonOfAGif
SonOfAGif - 5/19/2021, 5:00 PM
@ogrodafloresta - It's a tricky study because I don't know if the 2% stereotypical casting applies to fictional characters getting live action treatments. For example Mortal Kombat and now Shang Chi. Since those characters were written and created to be Asian do they still fit the 2% stereotypical casting for API actors? Or is the 2% stereotypical casting strictly for new original characters in random films from Hollywood?
drbong
drbong - 5/19/2021, 10:06 PM
@ModHaterSLADE - he didn’t quite say they were wrong he just said they learned from the situation and that he will make changes accordingly next time
tastes and ideas can change in media in a heartbeat...what is woke and forward thinking today is almost prehistoric six months from now
in reality the ancient one has been many different people over time within the pages of marvel comics. in the end surely can be played by a man, women, or child of any race or nationality...
Honestly they should have just called her
ancient one: Zhered-Na and not shaved her head and called it a day (that’s where all the confusion came in if she was wearing yellow face or not, tilda was not obviously people are morons she has hooded eyes and pale skin, and the conversation she had with Margaret cho which later it came out that cho was on massive amounts of drugs and fabricated most of the incident and then continued to escalated it).....

ogrodafloresta
ogrodafloresta - 5/20/2021, 9:50 PM
@SonOfAGif - I guess it doesn't really matter. Hollywood got away with typecasting for quite some time. We finally came to a time when they are EXPECTED to do things differently — for better or worse.

One thing that, unfortunatelly, I still feel, is that they're doing it just to look "progressive" and not because they really believe it's a great and valid choice.

But it's better than nothing.
Oberlin4Prez
Oberlin4Prez - 5/19/2021, 12:39 PM
But when you gotta appease the Chinese government, what's a girl to do?
Origame
Origame - 5/19/2021, 1:45 PM
@Oberlin4Prez - yeah. It'd have been box office suicide had they made the movie with a Tibetan ancient one like the comics.
TheWalkingCuban
TheWalkingCuban - 5/20/2021, 3:33 AM
@Origame - True, you can always just apologize later
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