When BoJack Horseman made her Netflix debut in 2014, fans wondered why Alison Brie voiced Diane Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American character. The animated series faced backlash during its final season in early 2020. But now, Brie admits that she shouldn’t have voiced Diane in BoJack Horseman first.
White voice actors stop playing non-white characters
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In recent days, several voice actors have stopped playing non-white roles. On June 24, Jenny Slate stopped voicing Missy on Netflix Big Mouth.
“At the beginning of the show, I reasoned to myself that it was permissible for me to play ‘Missy’ because her mother is Jewish and white, like me,” Slate wrote in a statement on Instagram. “But ‘Missy’ is also black, and black characters in an animated show should be played by black people.”
A few hours after Slate’s announcement, Slate Kristen Bell revealed that she would stop voicing Molly. Central Park. Then on June 26, Mike Henry resigned Family man like Cleveland Brown and The Simpsons They confirmed that they would no longer use white actors to express people of color.
Alison Brie regrets voicing Diane Nguyen on ‘BoJack Horseman’
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It is clear that many animated series will re-launch roles as they go along. But for BoJack Horseman, It’s too late. As mentioned, the Netflix series ended her career in early 2020. However, Brie released a statement expressing her regret and apologies for voicing Diane on BoJack Horseman for six years.
“In hindsight, I wish I didn’t express Diane Nguyen’s character,” Brie wrote on Instagram. “Now I understand that people of color should always express people of color. We missed a great opportunity to represent the Vietnamese-American community with precision and respect, and for that, I am very sorry. “
Brie also drew attention to those who left their roles last week. “I applaud everyone who has stepped away from their voice-over roles in the past few days,” she wrote. “I learned a lot from them.
The creator of ‘BoJack Horseman’ opens after a fan yells out the cast for Alison Brie as Diane Nguyen
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Now Brie is not the only one BoJack Horseman camp that has opened on Diane’s representation. On June 23, creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg admitted that they made big mistakes when it came to the character.
In a Twitter thread, Bob-Waksberg stated that he previously believed that Diane would be “completely American” and that “her race will hardly play a factor and will simply be a person.” But he currently sees this as a “very ignorant way of talking about a WOC, real or fictional.”
Bob-Waksberg also shared BoJack Horseman She didn’t understand what being a Vietnamese-American really meant when writing Diane.
“Even in the little ways that we write of Diane’s experience as a woman of color, or more specifically an Asian woman, we rarely became specific enough to think about what it means to be SPECIFICALLY VIETNAMERICAN AMERICAN,” wrote Bob-Waksberg . “And that was a big (racist!) Mistake on my part.”
In a separate tweet, he added: “The intention behind the character is that he wanted to write AWAY from stereotypes and create an Asian-American character that was not defined solely by his race.” But I went too far in the other direction. We are all defined SOMEWHAT by our race! Of course we are! It is part of us!
Then Bob-Waksberg noticed the BoJack Horseman The team hired a consultant for the fifth season episode where Diane traveled to Vietnam. However, she recognized that they should have done more.
“We should have hired a Vietnamese writer and a Vietnamese actress to play Diane,” Bob-Waksberg wrote on Twitter. “Or if not, he changed the character to match the one we hired.”
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