Matt Damon: Great Wall Is Not Whitewashing If Role Was Never For Asian Actor

Matt Damon would like you to know that by taking the lead role in The Great Wall, an upcoming science-fiction film set in China, he did not steal the part from a Chinese actor. The Bourne star explained in an interview with The Associated Press that he hoped everyone who was angry about a white man saving China on the big screen would just chill, "once people see that it's a monster movie and it's a historical fantasy and I didn't take a role away from a Chinese actor ... it wasn't altered because of me in any way."

The fact that Damon's presence on the cast list didn't change the racial make-up of the story is probably 100% true. But by pointing that out, the actor is just confirming what actress Constance Wu, a vocal advocate for more diverse casting in Hollywood, tweeted about the project, "I never said The Great Wall was whitewashing.It's not. I said it was white-hero bias. Those r two VERY diffrnt things so dont lump em togthr."

Several whitewashed roles made headlines this year, from Tilda Swinton playing the Ancient One — originally a Tibetan character in Doctor Strange, though they very pointedly mention in the film her origins are "Celtic" — to Scarlett Johansson landing the lead in Ghost in the Shell, an adaptation of the popular Japanese manga. But the fact that the hero of a film about the Great Wall of China was originally written as a white man is still incredibly problematic. Minorities being saved by white characters is an age old trope in film and it needs to die. As Wu said in a tweet this summer, "We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world. It's not an actual fact."