Daredevil star says Marvel exec cut storyline because “nobody cares about…Asian people”

Daredevil star Peter Shinkoda, who played the villain Nobu in the first and second seasons of the show, has leveled some accusations against Marvel executive Jeph Loeb, who served as executive producer on shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Legion, Jessica Jones and Runaways, and before that worked on series like Smallville and Lost. Shinkoda made the accusations at the #SaveDaredevil Con this past weekend, claiming that Loeb directed the Daredevil writing staff to cut storylines written for him and other Asian cast members like Wai Ching Ho (Madame Gao) because “nobody cares about…Asian people.”

“Jeph Loeb told the writers’ room not to write for Nobu and Gao — and this was reiterated many times by many of the writers and showrunners — that nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people,” Shinkoda said. “There were three previous Marvel movies, a trilogy called Blade that was made where Wesley Snipes kills 200 Asians each movie. Nobody gives a s***, so don’t write about Nobu and Gao, so they were forced to put their storyline down and drop it.”

Before that, there was going to be a storyline where the show explored how Nobu and Gao ran the Hand, an ancient organization of ninjas, but it was dropped. “The writers told me they regret it and they were reluctant to do it because they were stoked about including that in the storyline but they were prevented so I had to concoct this other storyline and rock that material I was given,” Shinkoda said.

This is the first time Jeff Loeb has been criticized for the portrayal of Asian characters on his shows. Iron Fist, another of Marvel’s Netflix shows, featured a white lead character who learned Asian martial arts in a mystical city before leaving the fight crime. When Io9 editor Katharine Trendacosta asked Loeb about peddling in racial stereotypes, he brushed it off:

And there was that time he showed up to San Diego Comic-Con in a karate outfit.

The Marvel TV shows Loeb helped create were slowly cancelled as Disney decided to focus more on Disney+; Loeb is expected to step down from his role at Marvel Television this year, as the division is absorbed into Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios.

Meanwhile, Marvel will release Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have an Asian lead, next year.

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h/t Entertainment Weekly