Actress Olivia Munn said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that white men should not direct “Black stories, Asian stories, Latinx stories.”
Mitchell asked, “What have you experienced in your career in a business that is supposed to be so open and embracing of diversity?”
Munn said, “For the longest time, it has been that white people can tell everyone’s stories. They can tell Black stories, Asian stories, Latinx stories. We can only support them. The fact that their stories have been whitewashed for so long and it is acceptable. Whenever I see an article come out with a cool movie with a great director that happens to be a period piece, I have said, ‘Hey, can I meet on this movie? It sounds like a really great concept.’ I’ll hear back that it is a period piece — no other explanation. My Asian face does not fit into a period piece. I cannot tell those stories. That’s a really infuriating thing because everyone else is allowed to tell our stories.”
She continued, “Not just in front of the camera, it’s behind the camera. Look at the Tiger Woods documentary on HBO. It is directed by two white men. It starts with his DUI. Yes, Tiger had a lot of traumatic moments, but also, he is a Black Asian-American man who reached to heights you never could have dreamed. When you watch, it is so negative. I think it is because it was told through the eyes of two men who do not know what it is like to live life in a Black man’s skin or see the world through the eyes of an Asian man’s eyes. It is just the systemic white-washing that is happening goes so deep and so far back and still happening even to this day.”
Mitchell said, “You bring such an important perspective. Thank you for speaking out.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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