Marvel Boss Kevin Feige Regrets Whitewashing Doctor Strange's The Ancient One

Marvel Studios Boss Kevin Feige has said he regrets whitewashing the movie Doctor Strange, which featured Tilda Swinton playing The Ancient One in the 2016 film.

Speaking to Men’s Health, Feige said Marvel wanted to avoid making The Ancient One a cliche of the “old, wise Asian man,” so they cast Swinton in the role. This turned out to be a mistake, however, Feige said.

“We thought we were being so smart, and so cutting-edge,” he said. “We’re not going to do the cliché of the wizened, old, wise Asian man. But it was a wake-up call to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, is there any other way to figure it out? Is there any other way to both not fall into the cliché and cast an Asian actor?’ And the answer to that, of course, is yes.”

Scott Derrickson, who directed the original Doctor Strange, addressed the controversy in 2017. He said in an interview with The Daily Beast that year that he believed Marvel would cast an Asian woman to play The Ancient One, but this presented problems.

“We talked about Asian actors who could do it, as we were working on the script, every iteration of it–including the one that Tilda played–but when I envisioned that character being played by an Asian actress, it was a straight-up Dragon Lady,” he said.

“I just didn’t feel like there was any way to get around that because the Dragon Lady, by definition, is a domineering, powerful, secretive, mysterious, Asian woman of age with duplicitous motives–and I just described Tilda’s character,” he added. “I really felt like I was going to be contributing to a bad stereotype.”

The Doctor Strange sequel, In the Multiverse of Madness, is due for release in March 2022, with Spider-Man’s Sam Raimi directing. Swinton’s The Ancient One died in the original Doctor Strange, but she made an appearance in Avengers: Endgame through a time travel storyline. Whether or not she’ll appear in the Doctor Strange sequel remains to be seen.

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