‘Bojack Horseman’ creator admits ‘racist error’ casting white actress to voice Asian

The creator of a popular animated Netflix show reflected Tuesday on his “mistake” of hiring a white actress to voice a Vietnamese-American woman.

Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator of “Bojack Horseman,” did not back away when asked why the character Diane Nguyen was voiced by Alison Brie.

He has previously been interviewed on the topic, but clarified some of his remarks Tuesday and admitted his “huge racist error” in a Twitter thread.

In a January 2018 interview with Uproxx, Bob-Waksberg said when he was writing the pitch for the show he knew Diane’s character would be Vietnamese-American, but said she would be “fully American.”

“Her race is barely going to play a factor and she’s just going to be a person,” the creator of the show said in 2018.

He corrected himself Tuesday on his 2018 comment, tweeting it was “a very ignorant way to talk about a WOC (women of color), real or fictional.”

Asian actresses were auditioned for the role, he said in the 2018 interview.

Bob-Waksberg said in a September 2018 interview with Slate he wouldn’t make the same decision to cast Brie, but said he was “very happy” to have her on the show.

Brie is most known for her roles in “Community,” “Mad Men” and her starring role in Netflix’s “Glow.” She has not commented publicly about being cast as Diane.

“I wasn’t thinking of Diane as an Asian character at first, I didn’t feel the need to hire Asian writers, and that is a responsibility that I should have felt much earlier,” he told Slate. “So that is something I regret as well.”

In all six seasons of the Netflix show, there were not any Asian writers, Bob-Waksberg said in his tweets Tuesday. He called that “a mistake.”

He said he attempted to write a character in Diane who would not be defined by her race, but he said Tuesday he went too far.

“We are all defined SOMEWHAT by our race!” he said. “Of course we are! It is part of us!”

The show ended earlier this year after six seasons.

Despite having answered the question about Diane’s voice actor many times in interviews, Bob-Waksberg said he is “grateful” for the people engaging in conversation or criticizing him about it.

“It’s important for me to keep saying it until everybody hears it,” he wrote. “ESPECIALLY when my show suggests the opposite of it. And the ‘it’ is this: the appearance of diversity without true diversity behind the scenes isn’t real representation; worse, it’s appropriation.”

This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 6:01 PM with the headline "‘Bojack Horseman’ creator admits ‘racist error’ casting white actress to voice Asian."