Simu Liu isn’t holding back on his criticism of what he describes as a “backslide” of Asian representation in Hollywood.
The actor shared his thoughts on Threads on Friday, responding to a post asking for Hollywood to put more Asian men in romantic lead roles.
“Put some asians in literally anything right now,” Liu responded. ‘The amount of backslide in our representation onscreen is f**king appalling. studios think we’re ‘risky.’”
The Barbie star went on to highlight several movies released in recent years that center on the Asian experience — Minari, The Farewell, Past Lives, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (which Liu starred in) — adding, “Every single one [was] a financial success.”
“No asian actor has ever lost a studio even close to 100 million dollars but a white dude will lose 200 million TWICE and roll right into the next tentpole lead,” he continued. “We’re fighting a deeply prejudiced system. and most days it SUCKS.”
The Threads post that Liu was responding to also included comments from Manny Jacinto, who recently starred as Lindsay Lohan’s onscreen love interest in Freakier Friday. While some fans pleaded for Jacinto to star in more rom-coms after seeing the movie, he previously told ScreenRant that it seemed many creatives in Hollywood had other ideas, as he’s mostly been “getting dad roles, or dad auditions” since.
While the overall percentage of Asian characters on screen has increased from 2007 to 2024, those gains were wiped out between 2023 and 2024, according to USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s diversity report of movies, which was released in August 2025. The percentage of speaking characters of Asian descent decreased from 18.4 percent in 2023 to 13.5 percent in 2024. However, the report found that there were significantly more white characters on screen in 2024 (63.6 percent) than in 2023 (55.7 percent).
Liu also responded to claims made by producer Rachel Tan about her experience trying to cast Worth The Wait. “They gave me a list of white guys we could cast. If we could give one of the roles to them, we could get funded,” Tan previously told Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times.
“Spoken to countless directors who have corroborated this,” he added on Threads. “Studios give a list and as of now, all the names are white with maybe ONE bipoc name that is tossed in there so they cover their own asses. and unfortunately that name is never asian.”
