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The star of Crazy Rich Asians, Gemma Chan, does not shrink from the fight for representation.
In an interview with Allure, the actress explained why she thinks she should be able to portray white characters. Chan, who recently appeared in "Captain Marvel", asked, "Why are color actors, who have fewer opportunities anyway, allowed to play their own race?"
Introducing our April issue cover, @gemma_chan With a degree in Oxford law, a license to kill in #CaptainMarveland a sense of fashion that will not stop, Gemma has the world in the queue: https://t.co/qf7ooRYK81 pic.twitter.com/yw5FYCXqCH
– Allure (@Allure_magazine) March 19, 2019
"And sometimes they are not even allowed to play their own race," she continued. "In the past, the role was entrusted to a white actor who would tape their eyes and play the role in Yellowface. John Wayne played Genghis Khan. If John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, I can play Bess of Hardwick. "
Americans of Asian origin know many Asian-inspired or Asian-inspired roles entrusted to white actors. Scarlett Johansson's whitewashed major in "Ghost in the Shell" and Emma Stone's Allison Ng in "Aloha" stand out from recent memory. And throughout the history of Hollywood, the roles that should have been attributed to Asians also went to white actors. In some cases, they even won awards for these performances. Yul Brynner, who was mainly of Russian descent, described the King of Siam in the 1956 musical "The King and I", winning an Oscar for Best Actor. Luise Rainer won the Best Actress Award in 1938 for her portrayal of O-Lan in "The Good Earth", based on a book of the same name on a family of Chinese farmers.
Chan explained that with regard to representation, stories of the past involving people of color still need to be brought to light. She devoted a portion of last year to making a documentary about the Chinese Labor Corps, a group of some 95,000 Chinese farm laborers recruited from their villages to serve Britain during the First World War World.
She said it was relevant for viewers to see a story that was not just white. After all, the story is filled with major contributions of people of color.
"If we describe a purely white past, people start to believe that this is what was happening and what was not. If people had understood that, maybe they would not have told my parents, "Go home, go home."
To read the full interview, go to Allure.
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