After the events of the past few days, it’s fair to say there is no love lost between actress Tilda Swinton and comedian Margaret Cho.
The two celebrities have very publicly clashed horns over the whitewashing of Hollywood, specifically Swinton’s new film Doctor Strange. The English actress plays ‘The Ancient One’ – a character who in the Marvel comic books (on which the movie is based) is actually an older Tibetan man.
Unimpressed with the casting decision, Margaret Cho has vocally called out Swinton on a recent podcast, and revealed a private conversation they had on the topic. Since then, things have taken a nasty turn.
So, for anyone else who’s scratching their head at how this all began, here’s a play-by-play on the situation.
Top Comments
Perhaps Cho wanted to be relevant ... who has even heard of her until now?
She's a rather famous comedian particularly in the US.
I have always lived in Australia and I heard of her at least 10 years ago now.
Um, plenty of people who are not solely interested in mainstream culture and entertainment. Cho has been around for decades for those bothered to find out and is a major force for recognition for asian women and women in general. Not to mention what she has done for the LGBTI community and speaking frankly about sexuality. Maybe try Google before you brand someone in such a condescending way.
I follow a lot of Comedians and she's never hit my radar. She looks vaguely familiar but that's about it. Separate to that, she completely mis-represented the email exchange to blow her own horn, so yeah I think she was trying for extra publicity or something like that. My original comment stands whether you find it condescending or not.
I think Cho was wrong to misrepresent the exchange, she gave it dramatic flair and artistic licence, but it appears she tried to do what Taylor Swift did to Kanye West which is put her on spin on a conversation to make drama. It was already stated they changed the character of the ancient one for the Chinese audience because of their tensions with Tibet. So she knows why they changed it. Just seems like she wanted something to be offended and upset about. She cast herself as an activist for Asian representation in film and was very vocal, so someone who didn't have experience with that reached out to have dialogue with her about this issue and she turned around and tried to humiliate Tilda, how are people supposed to have dialogue about this stuff if you are going to humiliate people asking questions?