Kevin Feige said he regrets casting Tilda Swinton in 'Doctor Strange' whitewashing: 'It was a wake up call'

• In "Doctor Strange," Tilda Swinton played the Ancient One, who is an Asian man in the comics.
• At the time, the filmmakers said they wanted to "subvert stereotypes, not feed into them."
• Feige has now said the casting was a mistake and the subsequent backlash was a "wake up call."

Kevin Feige has said he regrets the decision to cast Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in 2016's "Doctor Strange," which many called an example of Hollywood whitewashing at the time.

In Marvel comics, the Ancient One is an elderly Asian man, but Feige and the movie's director Scott Derrickson elected to cast Swinton in the role instead so as to avoid contributing to negative stereotypes.

Now, in an interview with Men's Health, Feige, who is the Marvel Studios president, said that they were wrong to cast Swinton.

"We thought we were being so smart, and so cutting-edge: 'We're not going to do the cliché of the wizened, old, wise Asian man,'' Feige told Men's Health editor Evan Romano.

"But it was a wake-up call to say, 'Well, wait a minute, is there any other way to figure it out? Is there any other way to both not fall into the cliché and cast an Asian actor?' And the answer to that, of course, is yes," he added.

At the time, the movie was criticized for whitewashing what is one of the Marvel comics' most iconic Asian characters.

-Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (@Hello_Tailor) November 6, 2016

However, in a 2016 interview with The Daily Beast, Derrickson defended the casting. He explained that after he decided to make the role a woman, when he "envisioned that character being played by an Asian actress, it was a straight-up Dragon Lady."

"I just didn't feel like there was any way to get around that because the Dragon Lady, by definition, is a domineering, powerful, secretive, mysterious, Asian woman of age with duplicitous motives - and I just described Tilda's character," he said. "I really felt like I was going to be contributing to a bad stereotype."

Meanwhile, in another 2016 interview, with IndieWire, Swinton herself spoke about her casting, saying that she thought people would understand the decision and embrace her casting once they saw the movie: "There's a kind of misunderstanding, which I hope the film will make clear when people see the film."

Feige himself previously defended Swinton's casting, saying that the Oscar-winning actress was cast to "subvert stereotypes, not feed into them."

"We didn't want to play into any of the stereotypes found in the comic books, some of which go back as far as 50 years or more. We felt the idea of gender swapping the role of The Ancient One was exciting," Feige told Deadline in 2016. "It opened up possibilities, it was a fresh way into this old and very typical storyline. Why not make the wisest bestower of knowledge in the universe to our heroes in the particular film a woman instead of a man?"

However, Feige clearly feels differently now - as does director Derrickson, who, according to Entertainment Weekly, wrote in a May 2016 tweet: "Raw anger/hurt from Asian-Americans over Hollywood whitewashing, stereotyping & erasure of Asians in cinema. I am listening and learning."

Swinton reprised her role in "Avengers: Endgame" in 2019, but is not expected to appear in next year's "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness."

As part of a major push for diversity within the MCU, Marvel Studios will release its first movie with an Asian lead later this year with "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," which releases on September 3.