"Why are actors of color only allowed to play their own race? And sometimes they’re not even allowed to play their own race. If John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, I can play Bess of Hardwick."
Due to the dearth of Asian actresses with significant fame, Chan has become a de facto standard-bearer for Asian representation in film and TV. I assumed that she would be tired of talking about it after doing so in nearly every interview during her Crazy Rich Asians press tour and countless others. She is not. She is fully Chinese by heritage, but Chan describes her racial identity as “compound. I feel British, and European, and English, and Chinese, and Asian.” She brings up the Internet trolls who took issue with her playing Queen Elizabeth’s confidante, Bess of Hardwick, in the period piece Mary Queen of Scots because she isn’t white.
“Why are actors of color, who have fewer opportunities anyway, only allowed to play their own race? And sometimes they’re not even allowed to play their own race,” Chan says. “In the past, the role would be given to a white actor who would tape up their eyes and do the role in yellowface. John Wayne played Genghis Khan. If John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, I can play Bess of Hardwick.”
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“I feel like Hamilton opened minds a lot. We have a black man playing George Washington. They describe it as ‘America then, told by America now.’ And I think our art should reflect life now,” Chan says. And life then, too. Last year, Chan worked on a documentary about the Chinese Labour Corps. “I studied the First World War three times at school. And I never heard that there were 140,000 Chinese in the Allied effort,” she says. “We would not have won the war without them.”
I never heard about those Chinese laborers, either. In large part, it’s because of the images that remain. Chan tells me about a mural made to commemorate that war. It was massive, she says. There was a whole section dedicated to the Chinese, but it was painted over when the Americans joined the war effort. “They left one kneeling Chinese figure, which you can still see,” she says. “If people understood that, my parents [might not] have been told, ‘Go home, go back to where you came from’ multiple times. If we portray a pure white past, people start to believe that’s how it was, and that’s not how it was.”
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Chan playing Bess of Hardwick is a step toward visibility. Chan playing Minn-Erva is, too (the Marvel character is blue and has dark hair, but the alien’s race in the comics is ambiguous). Chan’s newfound media prominence gives her a platform, and she’s embracing it. Wu is just one of several Asian designers whose clothes Chan has worn in recent red-carpet appearances. After seeing photos of a New York City screening of Crazy Rich Asians hosted by Prabal Gurung and other prominent Asian-Americans in fashion, and attended by Asian designers, editors, and makeup artists, Chan committed to wearing Asian designers (Prabal Gurung, Kenzo, Altuzarra, Adeam) for the majority of that press tour. “I was just so moved,” she says.
"If we portray a pure white past, people start to believe that’s how it was, and that’s not how it was. If people understood that, my parents might not have been told, ‘Go home, go back to where you came from’ multiple times."
Chan repeatedly underscores that it’s not just about Asian representation. She mentions Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther as important for their nearly all-black casts. Captain Marvel features the first stand-alone woman title character in the Marvel franchise. It’s also the first Marvel movie directed by a woman. Chan also celebrates “what Prabal Gurung’s been doing — putting models on the runway who are plus-size, who are transgender,” she says. “I love opening up a magazine and seeing a whole mixture of body types, gray hair, dark skin, wrinkles — we’re saying that we find these things beautiful.”
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Chan could talk about this all night. We nearly do. And don’t get her started on U.K. politics (I do anyway) — it’s such a mess, she tells me. “My issue with politicians like David Cameron, of the Conservative Party, whose fault all of this Brexit stuff is — he went from Eton to Oxford, then I think he worked for a time in communications before going straight into Parliament. He’s lived such a privileged life without any real interaction with anyone who’s having to live under his government’s policy. And I think that distance, that disconnect, is so damaging,” Chan says. “I’m so grateful for my work. But sometimes it feels almost absurd to be going onto a set to play kind of make-believe. There are so many things that demand our attention.”
Like Time’s Up — Chan is involved with the Justice and Equality Fund, the U.K. equivalent of the movement’s Legal Defense Fund. “You have to attack [the problem] on a regulatory level while also trying to change the culture,” she says. “This is all going to take time.” She also partnered with fellow British actress Ruth Wilson and the British Film Institute to do educational workshops with more than 400 drama-school students on how to protect yourself from compromising audition situations, understand nudity clauses, and recognize other abuses of power. “What’s going to be expected of you if you have to do a sex scene? What if you get asked to do something you’re not comfortable with? How can you say no?” Chan says. “These are things they don’t teach you in drama school.”
“What’s going to be expected of you if you have to do a sex scene, [or] asked to do something you’re not comfortable with? How can you say no? These are things they don’t teach you in drama school.”
Between aiming to shift industry norms and taking on superhuman roles, what could be next on Chan’s list of things to do? Being vulnerable, it turns out. In an as-yet-untitled Dominic Savage drama coming out later this year, she’s playing an ordinary (OK, ridiculously beautiful) woman “who is feeling very under pressure to start a family,” Chan says. “Everyone she knows is having babies, settling down, becoming a mother, and, um, she feels like she’s an anomaly for not being sure whether she wants that.”
She doesn’t share details about her own relationship, but it’s been widely reported that Chan is dating actor Dominic Cooper after splitting from longtime beau Jack Whitehall more than a year ago. She and Cooper made their first public appearance together at the British Fashion Awards in December. Something about Chan’s tone of voice, the way she talks about this role, makes it feel a little nearer than fiction. But I don’t have to ask. “It’s drawing on a lot of me in it,” Chan admits. “It’s exciting and terrifying in equal measure.”
Fashion stylist: Karen Kaiser. Hair: Kevin Ryan. Makeup: James Kaliardos. Manicure: Casey Herman. Set design: Juliet Jernigan. Production: Heather Robbins.
A version of this article originally appeared in the April 2019 issue of Allure.
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