Pete Buttigieg: James Bond Not ‘Intrinsically White’

Mayor Pete Buttigieg believes that characters like James Bond are not “intrinsically white,” allowing Hollywood executives to switch up the race of any character.

“I think, whether we’re talking about James Bond or whether we’re talking about comic books, it makes sense for the portrayal of these characters to reflect the amazing cultural diversity of the country,” he said when asked about black actors playing characters that were previously played by white actors.

The South Bend mayor weighed in on pop culture on Friday in an interview with TMZ Live after the Democrat debate.

One of the TMZ hosts asked about the current proposal by Marvel Producer Kevin Feige,who floated the idea of casting white X-Men characters Professor X and Magneto as black.

Buttigieg praised recent portrayals of the leading X-Men characters by white actors but indicated that changing their race would be a good thing.

“Look, one of the beauties of making comic books into movies is, you can reimagine them constantly and there’s nothing intrinsically white about any of those character roles,” he said.

He added that he would “love” to see a racial change of characters in the upcoming X-Men movies.

“I just care about whether it’s going to be good — and I believe that they are up to that in producing a new film, and I would love to see that kind of diversity.”