Author J.K. Rowling has defended the decision to cast Korean actor Claudia Kim as Voldemort’s devoted pet, Nagini, in the upcoming Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald.
This is not the first time she has been targeted by the angry fans.
The casting drew the ire of many on social media for being racist, while some called it a classic case of Asian actors playing submissive characters on-screen.
A user on Twitter called out Rowling: “Listen Joanne, we get it, you didn’t include enough representation when you wrote the books. But suddenly making Nagini into a Korean woman is garbage.”
Rowling responded, saying Nagini is a Naga, which are “snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology”.
“They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi. Have a lovely day,” the author added.
Calling out the film for showing a subservient Asian to a white man, one of the users tweeted, “You can’t be admitted to Hogwarts unless you’re English and we don’t know if there’s any wizarding schools in Asia, home of 4.4 billion people … (and) a homicidal white man traps an Asian woman inside a snake form and brainwashes her.”
