"Fresh Off the Boat" star Constance Wu has slammed upcoming film "The Great Wall" for casting Matt Damon, saying Hollywood should stop perpetuating the "racist myth" that only a white man can save the world.
Adding her voice to the ongoing debate of diversity in the film industry, the actress tweeted that the heroes that she was familiar with looked like Mahatma Gandhi, young Pakistani Nobel prize-winner Malala Yousafzai or Nelson Mandela.
"We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only white man can save the world. It's not based in actual fact. Our heroes don't look like Matt Damon. They look like Malala. Ghandi. Mandela. Your big sister when she stood up for you to those bullies that one time," she tweeted.
The 34-year-old actress said it was a lame accuse to say that films starring non-white actors were difficult to finance.
"Money is the lamest excuse in the history of being human. So is blaming the Chinese investors. Remember it's not about blaming individuals ... It's about pointing out the repeatedly implied racist notion that white people are superior to POC (people of colour) and that POC need salvation from our own color via white strength," Wu wrote on Twitter.
"The Great Wall", directed by acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou, is set in the Northern Song Dynasty and is about the mysteries surrounding the famous Great Wall. Damon plays a soldier in the movie.
"We don't need salvation. We like our color and our culture and our own strengths and our own stories ... We don't need you to save us from anything.
"Can we all at least agree that hero-bias & "but it's really hard to finance" are no longer excuses for racism? TRY," she added.
Asian American actors have decried the Hollywood practice of whitewashing minority roles in movies with recent films like "Ghost In The Shell", "Dr Strange", "Aloha" and "Pan" using white actors rather than the minorities that they were written for.
