‘Daredevil’ Actor Accuses Marvel TV Boss of Deliberately Cutting Asian Character Storylines

Zack Sharf
·2 min read

Peter Shinkoda, who played crime boss Nobu Yoshioka in nine episodes of Marvel’s Netflix superhero series “Daredevil,” revealed during the #SaveDaredevilCon event (via The Wrap) that former Marvel TV boss Jeph Loeb deliberately cut out stories centered on Asian characters from the series. Loeb allegedly told the “Daredevil” writers room that “nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people” in film and television projects. One storyline that Loeb reportedly cut deepened the relationship between Shinkoda’s Nobu and Wai Ching Ho’s character, Madame Gao.

“Jeph Loeb told the writers room not to write for Nobu and Gao — and this was reiterated many times by many of the writers and showrunners,” Shinkoda said. “[Loeb said], ‘Nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people. There were three previous Marvel movies, a trilogy called ‘Blade’ that was made where Wesley Snipes killed 200 Asians each movie. Nobody gives a shit so don’t write about Nobu and Gao,’ and [the writers] were forced to put their storyline down and drop it.’”

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According to Shinkoda, the “Daredevil” writers “planned for months to write and implement” the Nobu-Madame Gao storyline that Loeb forced them to drop. The actor said, “I had [been] privy to that storyline. They explained it to me and they were very apologetic that they couldn’t follow through with it, but their hands were tied. It was a very interesting storyline about having to go there under the guise of some kind of a transplant, and there were medical reasons, and a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy was fudged so that Nobu could get into the country and carry out his Black Sky plans.”

Netflix canceled “Daredevil” in November 2018 after three seasons. The show was one of several Marvel series the streaming giant axed, including “Iron Fist,” “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage,” and “The Punisher.” Leading “Daredevil” actor Charlie Cox said in May that he doubted the show will ever return for a fourth season on Disney+. Cox noted that “Daredevil” Season 4 would be nearly impossible to pull off because the majority of the cast and crew have moved on and getting everyone’s schedules linked up would be too difficult.

IndieWire has reached out to Marvel and representatives for Loeb for further comment.

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