In a particularly topical panel discussion regarding the canceled Netflix show Daredevil, actor Peter Shinkoda revealed a rather shocking bit of info given to him by former head of Marvel's TV efforts, Jeph Loeb. According to Shinkoda, whose character Nobu Yoshioka served as one of the show's antagonists and head of the sinister "Hand" organization, Loeb asserted candidly that the character wasn't as developed on-screen as originally planned because "nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people.”
While answering a fan question regarding Nobu's backstory, Shinkoda shifted from his own interpretation of the character's motivations to a surprising tangent detailing how Loeb ordered the writers' room to scrap a storyline they had been planning that would've expanded on the mysterious villain. Shinkoda, who appeared visibly frustrated and conflicted while revealing this information, said "they [the writers] gave me privy to a storyline that was supposed to go, they had planned for months to write [and] implement into shooting, but they were prevented."
After a thoughtful pause, Shinkoda continued, "I'm kind of reluctant to say this, but I'm going to take it, and I apologize to Tommy [Walker] and to Jeph that I'm going to take this moment, but I have to because... because I just have to." He paused again before seemingly fortifying himself and moving forward, "Jeph Loeb told the writers' room not to write for Nobu and Gao [played by Wai Ching Ho], and this was reiterated many times by many of the writers and showrunners that 'nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people.'"
The day following the panel, Shinkoda took to Twitter to further reveal that he and Wai Ching Ho, who played another of Daredevil's villains, Madame Gao, weren't even invited to the show's season 2 premiere. "We found out about the event as it live-streamed," he said in his tweet, "'They' were sorry we were 'overlooked.'"
This revelation comes at a time when discrimination against people of color is being alleged and exposed at an alarming rate, so it was perhaps inevitable that the story would come out now. Loeb, who left Marvel in 2019 following Kevin Feige's promotion to head of the company, joins the ranks of powerful executives from many companies who have recently been accused of misconduct and racial bias.
This panel discussion was initiated as part of the #SaveDaredevil fan campaign, which seeks to have the character of Daredevil re-integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe once Netflix's rights to the character expire. Since Netflix retains the rights to its Marvel characters for two years following the cancellation of a given show, and Daredevil was canceled in November of 2018, #SaveDaredevil is currently counting down the clock until the rights transfer back to Marvel in November 2020.
Source: IGN