Asian & Pacific Islander Actors Remain Underrepresented In U.S.-Produced Content, Study Finds

Nellie Andreeva
·2 min read

With Everything Everywhere All at Once sweeping the 2022-23 awards season and Beef doing the same during the 2023-24 awards season, the Asian influence on the film and television industry has never been greater.

That is one of the takeaways in a new study by McKinsey & Company. It acknowledges that API representation in film and television has increased in the past two decades but notes that the main driver for that has been international content.

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In film, API representation has increased from 3% in 2002 to almost 20% in 2022, but 17% is from films produced outside the US, while 3% is from US-produced films, with a similar trend in TV, the study say, comparing that to the 6% API representation in the total US population.

McKinsey’s research also has found that despite the increase of content from the US and abroad featuring API characters and storylines, more than two-thirds of API consumers are dissatisfied with the level of authenticity of their on-screen representation. That may be because the roles API actors most often play in US-produced content are either in hyper-stylized action movies or written as race-agnostic characters, according to the study, which says that almost 2/3 of major films with API leads do not tell API race-specific stories.

This is consistent with findings from the Asian American Foundation’s 2023 survey, which found about two-thirds of respondents across racial groups believe that “Asian Americans are somewhat or highly inaccurately portrayed in film/TV.”

If that improves, there is potential to unlock up to 2-$4.4B in industry revenues from API consumers because the study cites a consumer survey which revealed that half of API consumers would be willing to spend more money and time on film and TV if their experiences were more authentically represented.

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