Hollywood Wanted a White Actress to Lead 'Crazy Rich Asians'—So Author Kevin Kwan Fought Back
Crazy Rich Asians, which hits theaters this month, features an unprecedented feat in Hollywood: a principal cast entirely of Asian descent. It’s also, simply put, a really delightful romantic comedy. The movie follows a professor (Constance Wu) who travels to her boyfriend’s old stomping grounds in Singapore to attend an opulent wedding. (She’s also there to meet his ridiculously wealthy family, NBD.)
The movie, an adaptation of the 2013 novel written by Kevin Kwan, is being heralded as a major win for representation—but a new Hollywood Reporter feature reveals some behind-the-scenes drama nearly kept it from being a faithful big-screen experience.
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Kevin told the publication he rejected numerous “lucrative” offers and instead optioned his film for a mere $1, passing on the large paycheck to ensure he maintained involvement with creative and development decisions. This was after, Kevin said, one disastrous pitch that strongly recommended he change the Asian heroine to a white woman. (“It’s a pity you don’t have a white character,” he was told by the producer.) “To say, ‘I’m going to do this for a dollar,’ the only other person I know who does that is Stephen King,” Brad Simpson, one of the film’s producers who fought for Kevin’s vision, explained of this significance. “You don’t want to just be another piece of development. With a movie like this, peopleare never going to have to make it, and it could get lost.”
Kevin and the film’s director, Jon M. Chu, also rejected an enticing offer for Crazy Rich Asians to be a Netflix-exclusive film—”dangling complete artistic freedom, a greenlighted trilogy and huge, seven-figure-minimum paydays for each stakeholder”—but the duo ultimately decided the need to bring Asian actors to the bonafide big screen was more of a priority. “Jon and I both felt this sense of purpose,” Kevin explained. “We needed this to be an old-fashioned cinematic experience, not for fans to sit in front of a TV and just press a button.”
The results will soon speak for themselves—Crazy Rich Asians will be released, not on a streaming service, on August 15.