Ethnic Casting Quotes

Looking the way I look, whenever anybody's looking for a light brown funny guy, I get the call... I'm 100 percent Greek, but I look like I could be Indian or Middle Eastern or Hispanic. If it's ethnic, they'll try and put me in it.

I hope Hong Kong and Asia wants to hire American Asian actresses as much as Hollywood has been hiring Chinese actors from Asia.

Depictions of race have changed so much since, like, the '50s, where white people just played every race. But the pendulum swings both ways: I'm Filipino-American. If I had to wait for a Filipino role to come out to get work, I couldn't eat. There are barely any roles out there.

I'd go for roles that would say 'for all ethnicities,' but what they're pretty much saying is, 'We want a Caucasian guy or a black guy.' One or the other.

There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character?

Eventually we got to a point where 'Riverdale' came along, and it was a character that was originally written white, and I saw this as an opportunity to take a classic American character and make them Asian.

My talent is universal, and acting is a craft that can be used anywhere, unless ethnicity comes into play, and then, looks matter.

All the networks have always been willing to have ethnic people as the third or fourth lead or the best friend to the white person. But to actually let a black family or an Asian family carry a show, that's something where there hasn't really been a precedent set in terms of a real financial gain.

As a community, we're fighting for Asians to play Asian roles. And then there's the other battle, which is Asian Americans playing roles that aren't written for Asians, and I think that's something that completely should happen; Why can't an Asian American male just play a leading cop figure... or the Matt Damon roles?

Other Asian actors, especially American-born actors, sometimes shy away from immigrant roles.