“Daredevil” Actor Peter Shikonda Says Marvel Exec Threw Out His Character’s Storyline Because “Nobody Cares About” Asian People

Daredevil actor Peter Shinkoda says Marvel cut out his and another actor’s storylines because “nobody gives a sh*t” about Asian people.

During a roundtable discussion for #SaveDaredevil Con, Shinkoda accused former Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb of making racially insensitive remarks about the Asian community. Loeb was an executive producer on the now-canceled Netflix series. Shinkoda claims that Loeb told the writers’ room to throw out backstories for Nobu and Wai Ching Ho’s Madame Dao, according to Entertainment Weekly. Shinkoda is of Japanese descent, and Ho is from Hong Kong.

“I’m kind of reluctant to say this, but… I’m going to take this moment, but I have to because — because I just have to. I’m not into really protecting certain things anymore,” Shinkoda said. “Jeph Loeb told the writers’ room not to write for Nobu and Gao — and this was reiterated many times by many of the writers and showrunners — that nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people. There were three previous Marvel movies, a trilogy called Blade that was made where Wesley Snipes kills 200 Asians each movie. Nobody gives a s—, so don’t write about Nobu and Gao, so they were forced to put their storyline down and drop it.”

Actor Peter Shinkoda, who played Nobu in Netflix’s Daredevil talks about how Jeph Loeb, the head of Marvel Television (at the time) forcibly cut his character’s original story arc because ‘nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people’.
Absolutely appalling. pic.twitter.com/bGbIycbc7R

— Will (@WilliamD1123) July 26, 2020

Shinkoda says dropping the storylines meant that they would not dive into Nobu’s travel from Hong Kong to America that aids in telling the story of how Nobu ends up helping Gao fulfill their Black Sky plans. The character Nobu is in the first two seasons as a member of the Hand, which is a mega-villain organization. “All that backstory was dropped,” Shinkoda continued. “The writers told me they regret it, and they were reluctant to do it because they were stoked about including that in the storyline, but they were prevented, so I had to concoct this other storyline and rock that material I was given.”

Loeb and” Iron First” have been criticized before for “white savior” trope stories. Electronic Frontier Foundation policy analyst, Katharine Trendacosta spoke out about Loeb’s racial tone-deafness in a tweet saying, “I asked Jeph Loeb why Marvel in the 21st century was still doing ‘white guy becomes master of magic in Asia’ stories, and he looked me right in the eye and said it was because Danny Rand had to be an outsider.” Loeb has also served as EP on several Marvel shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Legion, Jessica Jones, Runaways, and more, according to E.W.

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