Morality Ranking
Morality of constantly saying that "Latino roles should only go to Latino actors" and then taking a a roll as a Greek.
Please don't get me wrong I don't mind actors playing whatever roles they want.
But if one of your strong stances is "X" roles are only for "X" people then stick to your convictions.
You can't have your cake and eat it to.
Like king of the hill replacing khans voice actor cause he was white, but the new voice actor is korean not laotian. EDIT: being told the voice actor is malaysian.
When I was STATIONED IN KOREA, I knew a soldier who kept calling the locals "Chinese". I pointed out to her that people from Korea are Korean, and she told me that means they're a different type of Chinese.
Even after I explained to her that China is it's own country separate from Korea, she refused to stop. I think some people think "Chinese" is another word for "Asian". It drove me fucking crazy.
All jokes aside, I believe the voice actor is Malaysian, as opposed to Korean as stated above. And unlike Korea, I know Malaysia at least has some cultural groups that share Tai ethnic roots with Laotians. Whether the va is a member of one of those groups, I can’t say.
But I agree it would have been beyond ridiculous to fire a white actor for sensitivity reasons and then cast a Korean in that role. It would have been like recasting Apu with a Turkish voice actor and calling it a day.
Hes Malaysian Chinese according to him, which, whatever, I dont have an issue with someone taking on the role. Toby Huss still works on the show, it seemed like he was a little uncomfortable voicing Kahn in 2026 which I get, Kahn has a very stereotypical voice (but actually as a lot of depth as a character).
Ronny is just bad as Kahn. He got better in the second season but he's still not to the level I'd want him to be.
It's like you said, casting a Turkic man for Apu and calling it a day. How granular do we have to be with this? Is Ronny good enough because he's Asian?
The problem with Leto is sometimes he is actually really good, and all these directors think that version of him is going to show up to Morbius, or Tron etc.
But man.... Requiem, DBC, American Psycho, Blade Runner 2049.... bangers...
Hank Azaria's interviews about it are really interesting imo. He talks about how he went from feeling targeted to agreeing with some of what people were saying and wanting change too. It was him who chose to step away from doing the character.
The way Hank put it is: Apu is a character who was created out of love in an era where a lot of Americans did not know a lot of Indian people, but a lot of convenience store clerks were Indian, and they wanted to show how there was more to a guy like that than just being a clerk. And they did. The Indian population in the US is about 6x more proportionally now than it was 35 years ago and even moreso in places like California where the show is made.
What really sucks is that while they did recast some characters on the show (like Dr. Hibbert or Carl whose voice replacements were not the greatest), they didn't replace Apu because The Problem with Apu made such a big storm about it that it was easier to just retire the character. Hank doesn't voice Apu anymore but neither does anyone else; for nearly 10 years now he has only appeared in background shots in the show as does the Kwik-E-Mart which was a staple location in the show earlier on.
>Hank Azaria's interviews about it are really interesting imo. He talks about how he went from feeling targeted to agreeing with some of what people were saying and wanting change too. It was him who chose to step away from doing the character.
He was pressured into saying this though. Otherwise he gets labeled as a "racist" and won't be able to find work.
Yeah but one dude bitched and moaned on a documentary so they had to stop using him. Crazy how Family Guy did a better job with Cleveland than The Simpsons did with Apu, Carl or Dr. Hibbert.
Then they could've gotten anyone who can do a good Apu voice who's Indian. Or any actor, who cares? It's been years. Hank Azaria also stopped voicing Carl and his new voice sucks.
Yeah he also said that they had this huge empire when everyone spoke latin and that the ethnicity of the people ruling it was latin as well. Dude is crazy
“White American actors have been taking Latino roles away from us for decades! Remember Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil? And Al Pacino did it twice [in Scarface and Carlito's Way]! For me, playing an Italian was my revenge. If they're going to steal roles from me, I'm going to steal them too.”
This was in response to getting flack for playing Luigi in the Mario Bros movie. I would say, he's not wrong.
I do remember his take being vilified at the time, though, but never got the actual straight quote until recently.
I mean Latin America is named that way because they were Latin (Spanish and Portuguese) colonies. While a lot of the European colonials in that area are Spanish, Portuguese, and then Italian.
Yeah. Also, at least Peninsular Spanish does not drop what comes after, people from Latin America are "latinoamericanos" (people from South America are referred as "sudamericanos"). "Latino" is used to refer either to someone from any Roman-ascendant country, to something that hails straight-out from "latín" (e.g. "gramática latina" would be "Latin grammar") and, in ancient times, to the language spoken by the christians living in Al-Andalus (Musarabiq in modern terms)
He's joking, because people from Quebec are of French descent and not English descent, with french being a language derived from Latin, like Spanish, Portuguese or Italian. But obviously, in the "modern" English language, Latinos refer to people from Latin America / South America
Generally speaking Latin America is pretty much just countries that primarily speak Spanish or Portuguese in the Americas, so people from French speaking areas are generally not considered Latino. And other times it's just used to described the countries south of the US, so French Guiana would count, but Québec still wouldn't.
But you can technically include French in your definition of Latin America, in which case Québec would count.
Most people would not consider people from Québec latinos in any serious capacity.
Haitians qualify as Latino. So technically people from Quebec would also qualify. If they don’t personally identify as Latino then that’s a different issue. They are Latino
"White" is a racial designation, and race is socio-political, therefore white and [not-white] is whatever is useful or convenient to those using the term.
He's almost comedically hypocritical. He dressed up as a Chinese stereotype twice in The Pest, depicted Toulouse Lautrec (a dwarf Frenchman) in Moulin Rouge, an Arabian djinn in Arabian Nights, and has done a few other comedic roles that don't match his ancestry (being that he seems to be very serious about people fitting their roles by ethnicity).
He seriously criticised the casting of James Franco (part Portuguese) as Fidel Castro (a son of Galician and Canarian immigrants, not a "pure blooded Cuban" whatever that may be), because "that's a role that belongs to Latinos*"... But, given that he's part indigenous, part Hispanic, part Italian, does that mean he can do whatever he wants, or only "Latino" characters, whatever that means?
It's almost a kind of highly hypocritical and self righteous religiousness, to a point that it almost becomes a joke.
*Like, what type of Latino? See I'm a bit confused because a "Latino" can be anything from an Italo-German Argentinian, a heavily mixed Hispanic Afro-Peruvian with a Japanese grandfather, a first generation Mexican whose two parents were Galician refugees from the Spanish Civil War, or a fully Indigenous Mapuche.
Hypocrite: A hypocrite is a person who pretends to have moral standards, beliefs, or virtues that they do not actually possess, or whose actions completely contradict what they say.
Doing an Asian caricature for laughs. Keep in mind he was 37 years old when The Pest came out, so he wasn't some young dumb kid. He knew was he was doing.
Greek culture and it's people have been so theme parked, people forget greek people are an actual, well people, oft marginalized outside of their own country, and their own country often suffering a lot too.
I do love me some percy jackson and Hades, but can you imagine if they made a game or story about Chinese and making all the gods not chinese?
Greek gods famously did not only have children with Greeks or even only humans, so Percy being American makes perfect sense. The gods on the other hand, yeah probably should have been Greek i suppose.
Yeah, anybody who thinks Zeus would have spotted some woman from up on Mount Olympus and went "oh shit, she doesn't live in Greece, guess I better not rape this one" is a silly. That guy would stick it in literally anything.
Modern greeks are as influenced by the ottoman empire as they are ancient Greek nobles. The greeks became marginalized cause they got colonized repeatedly and by groups that themselves carry some baggage depending on who you ask.
It's the same way southern Italians have an asterisk cause supremacists think they've it's a little too arab.
Yeah Keanu couldn't dodge away in time as the script demanded, so he did this instead. The creators of the matrix were so moved by this that they left it in the final cut.
The only criticism Ive ever seen John Cena get is for apologizing to China for calling Taiwan a country. I think thats fair but still miles away from making him a bad dude imo
The Taiwan thing is fair, if China pulled out from showing the movie he would have been on the hook for a major lawsuit and his movie career would be done.
Only issues Cena had that I've heard is he couldn't keep it in his pants during his first marriage and some dickish behaviour as a young wrestler backstage, but he's clearly matured become a very decent person.
True story: I know someone who worked with Fox on a project. She had an injury while working with him, requiring her to use crutches, which she was a bit clumsy with. There was a hallway in the studio with a heavy double door that was difficult to open with one hand.
At this point, Fox's Parkinsons was very advanced, but whenever he saw her coming, he would hobble painfully over to the door and open it for her to save her the trouble of juggling the crutches. Every time.
She said he was possibly the best person she ever worked with, and she had been working in Hollywood since the early 90s
Fuck every story I ever hear of Michael J. Fox is along those lines. Dude is just the best kind of person and got a rotten deal and still persevered like no other.
That video he made is still one of the most outlandish and diabolical things I think I'll ever see, because on one hand - if he's innocent - it's just so amazing how good of an actor he is/was. But if he DID do it... it's more sinister than 99% of fantasy genre villains
Typecasting is a problem, not individual roles. It’s not a problem to have a black dude play a drug dealer, but it’s a problem to only cast them as drug dealers.
I know it's not the main point but the Hector thing is funny. He didn't play a guy named Hector in everything. Up until 2023 he had appeared in 205 shows or movies. He played a character named Hector in 9 of them.
Then that (fake) image went around saying he plays Hector in everything.
Since 2024, he has acted in 19 shows/movies and he was named Hector in 10 of them.
If I remember right Trejo asks that his villainous characters die because he doesn't want kids who might watch his films to think being a violent criminal is good or cool.
That’s not what he said. He said they shouldn’t be typecast as stereotypes of dwarves and that they should be able to have roles besides “short person”.
None of the people parroting this obvious lie/misquote care, they just like the moral satisfaction of getting to dunk on a guy with a disability in a socially validated way. It's why it will never die. Literally none of them have actually listened to the Marc Maron podcast episode the alleged quote comes from, or even read the transcript in any news pieces, they just go off of half-baked sensationalist headlines.
Completely Normal Statement Guy: "I am a working actor with dwarfism who thinks the story of the 7 dwarfs is an outdated and somewhat offensive caricature, and it's upsetting that so often the only roles these big studios give to performers like me are ones based in these caricatures. That fucking sucks, yo."
Bozos on the Internet, Apparently: "How fucking dare you, don't you know massive media corporations are literally just wittle guys, and Snow White is a load-bearing pillar of reality that literally MUST be created? Know your place, [slur]"
Edit: notice how IMMEDIATELY everyone wants to talk on behalf of the alleged victims but nobody can give any specifics that aren't just secondhand speculation, gossip, or "well I saw a TikTok/YT Shorts clip of this one guy who ALSO blames Dinklage for the actions of massive corporations".
Which, BY THE WAY, isn't even true of the specific movie everyone lies about Dinklage affecting the casting of. 1 of the 7 dwarfs in the 2025 Snow White IS played by an actor with dwarfism, Martin Klebba; another character, Quigg, is also played by an actor with dwarfism, George Appleby. How, again, did Dinklage "directly remove" 7 roles that were already cast and released BEFORE his podcast appearance?
He's had the most success of any actor with dwarfism in history. The fact that people get angry at and try to discredit his lived experience is fucking wild to me. He would know better than anyone the typecasting associated with his contemporaries.
I think Dinklage had more success with GoT and several major films compared to Warwick Davis, but I'll be honest I did forget about him. This is probably more recency bias because Warwick was on Seinfeld, though Tyrion Lannister is likely more popular/well known as a character than Mickey was.
Dinklage had more success with GoT and several major films compared to Warwick Davis
are you fucking insane? willow, the entire leprechaun series, the harry potter series, star wars, labyrinth, narnia... those all ECLIPSE dinklages work especially considering the fallout of GoT is that very few people give a fuck about it anymore while warwick's work includes multiple insanely huge franchises that are beloved and multiple hardcore cult favorites.
it's insanely stupid to say peter is anywhere near warwick. he's been in more random shit but there's almost nothing that even gets remotely close to star wars or harry potter besides maybe game of thrones which again is NOT remembered fondly because of the last 2 seasons (I think the last 3 sucked ass)
No, he said dwarves shouldn’t be only cast as dwarves, especially as oafish and stupid and as fools, and they deserve a fair shot at roles that depict that depict them as normal people living regular lives. Because other than size due to dwarfism, they are regular people. They work, they have families and friends, they have the same emotions and intellect. They experience the same things, so why not let their talent be used the same as other actors telling the same stories. It’s not at all the same. You can believe Leguizamo is wrong but you don’t need to misinterpret Dinkleage.
Not what he said, this one keeps going around and been just plain wrong.
He talked specifically of snow white remake and how problematic dwarf in that story are as a stereotype.
He said he had hoped Hollywood was pass reinforcing those stereotypes but he also mentioned that admittedly it was a lose-lose situation. Disney would come out looking bad of they casted little ppl or if they didn't.
Disney took that as "do some CGI monstrosity nobody wants" and the worst of it is Peter got the flack for it like he was the damn casting or exec at Disney making these decisions.
Dwarves as opposed to Dwarfs. Generally, the -ves spelling is used to denote the fantastical/mythological race, to distinguish them from human beings with dwarfism, for whom the -fs spelling is used. I'm not sure about Peter Dinklage's exact comments, or feelings on the matter, but Tyrion is a human with dwarfism in a fantasy setting, as opposed to a member of a fantasy race, so it would change the context.
It makes sense only for language. When the character is meant to be Latino, if he has Spanish speaking lines, he better be native fluent. Vigo Mortensen(?) did a good job in the Alatriste movie.
For ethnicity/appearance? Pointless, as Latino is hardly a racial category. There are Japanese Latinos in Peru, Italians in Argentina, German, Lebanese, Nigerian, etc.
Iberian and Native mix may form a plurality, but taking the statement as this would be awfully exclusionary and inaccurate. If all the “only X actors should play X”, the Latino angle makes the least sense.
How specific do we need to get on the accent? Because it can be distracting do hear, e.g. a Puerto Rican accent when the character is supposed to be Mexican. Or a Québec accent when the character is supposed to be French.
If you’re a native Spanish speaker and claim to be an actor, you should be able to learn and perform an accent. The thing here is fluency. It’s easier to adjust and do an accent than to learn an entire language.
In one of the Ryan Reynolds straight to stream flicks there is a character that is a Greek gangster. The only thing Greek in that movie where the fake license plates on the cars and the name. Everything else was not. Location was Croatia, the "Greek" was Antonio Banderas, and his pronunciation was terrible.
And don't get me started on all the fake German Hollywood tries to pass off as Dutch.
It is funny you say that - I love Breaking Bad and I thought Giancarlo Esposito did a pretty good job delivering his Spanish lines. But my dad, whose first language is Spanish, didn't think the same. He would say, "No one talks like that!! He does not speak Spanish!"
To piggyback off your point, it would be nice to see more actors without the 'stereotypical Hispanic' features in Hispanic roles. There's black Hispanic, sun-kissed blond Hispanics, Chinese Cubans, red heads, etc. I don't like how Hollywood has a 'Hispanic look' that they go for, as if they have rules that actors for Hispanic roles have to be super dark skinned but not too dark with black hair and thick eyebrows.
That fact that he also said this when the Illumination Super Mario movie came out and didn’t have any Latin voice actors, purely because he played Luigi in the terrible 1993 movie, when Luigi is goddamn Italian in the first place.
He actually said that instead of just one Latino, reflecting on how hard it was for him to get cast in ‘93, the new one should have had both Mario and Luigi be Latino. So Italian actors just don’t exist to this guy I guess. He takes the important discussion about Latin actors struggling to get lead roles in Hollywood but makes every argument absolutely delusional.
Immoral. He also played Italian when he was Luigi in the Mario Brothers but again yeah no problem playing other races he only has a problem when it’s white people because he’s racist.
Agreed. I've never had any issue with any actor playing any role as long as they do it well. But I did find myself agreeing a tiny, tiny bit with the people objecting to the Helen of Troy stuff based solely on the fact that it wouldn't be considered OK if it were the other way around. That is, if someone decided to do a film adaptation of an Africa myth, set in Africa, with an African queen described as having beautiful ebony skin etc. it would absolutely not be OK to cast a white actress in that role.
Again, my view is: Both cases should be viewed the same way and in both cases there's no issue. My problem is that people change their standards from case to case.
But I did find myself agreeing a tiny, tiny bit with the people objecting to the Helen of Troy stuff based solely on the fact that it wouldn't be considered OK if it were the other way around.
My main issue with Helen is that its her husband that would have the canonically Ethiopian heritage, not her.
I think the Odyssey is the one movie where no one cares, and they pretend to
Not a single main cast member is of Greek heritage, but people really focusing on Lupita and this guy.
There’s been a long history of European characters, especially in historic pics having more wiggle room, because empires had alot more intermixing than some people want to admit.
He didn’t say Latinos couldn’t take other roles, but he said Latinos should play Latino roles.
You can’t call it hypocrisy if it’s a different topic all together.
Honestly this a very funny thing you pointed out that didn’t dawn on me till you posted it. There is a hint of hypocrisy for sure. But most of the cast non Greek and that was kind of what they were going for.
Has nothing to do with the whole cast, more so that this guy felt one way and now that he’s offered a role to play a different race suddenly it’s not a problem.
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u/PyroTacoInvader 3d ago edited 3d ago
Like king of the hill replacing khans voice actor cause he was white, but the new voice actor is korean not laotian. EDIT: being told the voice actor is malaysian.