‘DOCTOR STRANGE’ WRITER ADDRESSES ANCIENT ONE CASTING CHOICE!
C. Robert Cargill, the writer of the upcoming Doctor Strange movie, recently revealed in an interview Marvel’s reasons or not casting an Asian actor to play The Ancient One.
“Casting Tilda Swinton as the mentor of Dr Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) was carefully planned in order to avoid political clashes with China. The Ancient One was a racist stereotype who comes from a region of the world that is in a very weird political place. He originates from Tibet, so if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that that’s bulls**t and risk the Chinese government going, ‘Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie because you decided to get political’. If we decide to go the other way and cater to China in particular and have him be in Tibet… if you think it’s a good idea to cast a Chinese actress as a Tibetan character, you are out of your damn fool mind”.
He added Marvel Studios was well aware of its fanbase in China and did not want to create a controversy with any reference to Tibetan and Chinese relations.
