Prior to
Kiss the Girls (1997), author
James Patterson was offered seven figures for the movie rights to the Alex Cross books on the condition that the African-American central character be changed to white. Patterson refused, saying of the incident, "When I wrote the first Alex Cross book, I didn’t have a lot of money and Hollywood came calling — knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. They offered seven figures, and I did not have a lot of money. They said, 'We just want one change; we want Alex to be a white guy.' And I said, 'Fuck you.'”
Salma Hayek stated that she was passed over for two large comedy roles due to her ethnicity. While the directors thought Hayek was the best actress for those roles, they believed studios would not want a Mexican lead at time. The directors later said that they regretted their decision and that Hayek’s audition was better than who they cast for the movies. She also mentioned that producers of
The House of the Spirits (1993) did not want to cast Latinos outside of stereotypical roles. Hayek asserted that she was denied even a chance to audition for the film because “they were not hiring Latinos for Latino roles. They were not hiring Latinos period — unless it was the maid or the prostitute. And that part was not a maid or a prostitute."
Justin Lin, director of
Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), revealed that he was told by potential investors - some of whom were Asian Americans - to add a white male lead,
Macaulay Culkin, if he wanted million dollar investment for his movie, which was based on an Asian American story. Lin turned down the offer.
MC Hammer provided funding and Lin was very grateful for his generosity. The writers of
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004),
Jon Hurwitz and
Hayden Schlossberg, said that they were really sick of seeing teen movies that were one-dimensional and that had characters that did not match the diversity of their group of friends. Because the main characters were Asian American, they had difficulty pitching their screenplay to studios.
John Cho, who played the lead character Harold Lee, stated that, to avoid studios’ attempt to cast white actors, the writers included scenes that directly related to the characters’ ethnicities. Cho recalled, “It had to be rooted in that as a defense mechanism so that they wouldn’t get turned white.” Kal Penn mentioned that the reason the movie was greenlit was because there were two junior execs at
New Line Cinema who were given this new project and decided to take a chance on it. Penn added, "The older people around Hollywood, the older people in town were like, 'We don't know if America is ready for two Asian American men as leads in a comedy.'" According to author Kevin Kwan, a potential producer wanted to change the heroine into a white girl for
Crazy Rich Asians (2018). He responded that the producer missed the entire point of his book and rejected the offer. Shirley Li of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "To whitewash Rachel would take away an integral part of the character’s identity and also be a detriment to the story itself." Lulu Wang, director of
The Farewell (2019), also faced whitewashing obstacles with her film about a Chinese-American family. She mentioned that many disheartening encounters with American financiers who wanted to include a "prominent white character into the narrative, and punch up the nuanced drama to turn it into a broad comedy." Wang later created an episode on
This American Life based on her family, which caught the attention of producer
Chris Weitz who helped secure financing. When casting for
Harriet (2019), producer/writer
Gregory Allen Howard said that a film studio executive said to him, "'This script is fantastic. Let's get
Julia Roberts to play
Harriet Tubman.' He then went on to say, "When someone pointed out that Roberts couldn’t be Harriet, the executive responded, 'It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference.' "
Ed Skrein was initially cast in the 2019
Hellboy reboot as
Major Ben Daimio, a character of Asian descent from the
Hellboy comic books. After the casting received criticism on social media, Skrein withdrew, stating, "Representation of ethnic diversity is important, especially to me as I have a mixed heritage family. It is our responsibility to make moral decisions in difficult times and to give voice to inclusivity." According to
The Hollywood Reporter, "this is the first time an actor has exited such a high-profile project in response to public criticism" over whitewashing.
Daniel Dae Kim was cast to replace Skrein. The filmmakers behind
The Paper Tigers (2020) planned to have a male Asian-American main character with a
minority leading cast for their martial arts comedy film. They knew that it would be difficult to find studio support due to whitewashing. When pitched to Hollywood producers, they were offered $4 million with a caveat that there would be no Asian-American lead character and suggested a white lead character to be played by
Bruce Willis instead. They were also asked to write a role for
Nicolas Cage. The team declined the offer and request. Director Bao Tran mentioned that Hollywood usually sent their mid-level executives who were also
people of color to be the messengers of whitewashing. For
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
, director Daniel Kwan talked about whitewashing with studios, "The casting was probably one of the hardest things of the whole process. They're like, 'Oh, should we try a white actor?'...or 'Should we find other types of people that might actually bring in the money?'" He continued, "We had to have some really hard conversations with people to basically put our foot down and say, 'No, this was written for a Chinese family.'" Director Daniel Scheinert said that while it took a little longer, they ultimately ended up with an ideal cast. For the
Tubi film,
Worth the Wait (2025), producers faced pressure from Hollywood financiers to cast white male lead instead of having an all-Asian ensemble cast. Rachel Tan recalled, "They gave me a list of white guys we could cast. If we could give one of the roles to them, we could get funded." Tan mentioned that investors held the belief that Asian male characters are not bankable with little appeal for Western audiences. Tan and her team ignored the suggestion and completed the film with their goal of an all-Asian cast breaking stereotypes. == See also ==