The original voice of Disney’s “Mulan”, Ming-Na Wen, has a very special request for Disney while they make their live-action version.
When the 53-year-old star was asked by Entertainment Tonight who she would like to see play the character of Mulan, she had only one request:
“That she’s Chinese in her heritage.”
“Even though we’re Pan-Asian, it is specifically a Chinese folklore and I really think that someone with that ethnic background [would] really just add more to the story,” the actress added.
Lately, Hollywood has been getting a lot of criticism because of movie roles that should have been given to someone of Asian origin. Similar to the film “The Great Wall” that cast Matt Damon and most recently, “Ghost in the Shell” and Scarlett Johansson, many questioned why the main leads were not Asian.
According to Huffington Post, Disney has promised that they will be casting Asian actors in the movie to make sure that there is diversity in the film.
As an attempt to illustrate their efforts, the movie company used the voice of Auli’i Cravalho as the voice of the Moana, which is an honest representation of the movie’s Polynesian theme.
Hopefully, just like what Wen is requesting, the same can be done for “Mulan”. Wen also teased in the interview a possible appearance in the new remake. We’ll cross our fingers and hope for the best.
Feature Image via Flickr / Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
