Daniel Wu Shares Thoughts on 'Iron Fist' Alleged Whitewashing Controversy

When Netflix and Marvel's latest series Iron Fist premiered, there was a lot of excitement but also some controversy. Some felt the lead—who is a magical, kung fu warrior—should have gone to someone of Asian descent instead of English actor Finn Jones. Hong Kong-based American actor Daniel Wu, who also stars in the martial arts–based Into the Badlands series, weighed in on the issue.

"I think that's people going a little too precocious on that because originally the character was written white—it wasn’t like it was a whitewashing thing," he told Screen Anarchy, before comparing it to the recent decision to have Scarlett Johansson star in a Japanese manga movie. "It's not like you are talking about a 'Ghost in the Shell issue,' right? And I still don’t actually buy the Ghost in the Shell whitewashing issue either, and I certainly don’t buy into the cultural appropriation bullshit because that’s saying [for Iron Fist] that 'only Asians are allowed to do martial arts' then that means only black people can play basketball and rap? That means Jeremy Lin shouldn’t be playing basketball? And Eminem shouldn’t be rapping? That’s bullshit."