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Rom Com Bankrollers Tried to Nix All-Asian Cast
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 16 Jul, 2025
The producer of Worth the Wait revealed that financiers attempted to replace an Asian character with a white male as a way to make it more marketable.
Worth the Wait sounds like your typical rom-com: The lives of several strangers intertwine as they navigate budding love, confront profound loss, and encounter old flames.
Oh, and the strangers all happen to be Asian, a minor detail that nearly derailed the film’s development.
At the Malaysian premier this week, producer Rachel Tan revealed that the film’s financiers requested that a white male be added to the ensemble rather than letting the cast be completely Asian. Tan was even presented with a list of white actors to choose from.
According to Tan, the financiers did not believe that Asian casts were marketable to Western audiences, with the exception of martial arts films. Tan and her team disagreed and ignored the suggestion.
While the casting pushback was not necessarily a surprise given Hollywood’s historically White nature, it doesn't appear to be supported by evidence. 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians, which featured an all Asian cast, raked in $238 million worldwide. 2022’s Everything Everywhere All At Once grossed over $143 million and swept that year’s Academy Awards.
Worth the Wait, which was released on streaming service Tubi in June, takes place in Seattle and Kuala Lumpur. In a statement promoting the movie, Tubi noted that it marked their first “Inclusive AAPI Tubi original film.”
The film received just mediocre reviews, which generally criticized it for being too dull. But one thing critics seemed to agree on was the strength of the actors, which include stars Leana Condor, Andrew Koji, Ross Butler, Sung Yang, and others.
Various reviews praised the “wealth of talent,” "impressive lineup of actors,” and "Ross Butler and Lana Condor’s Chemistry.” One viewer referred to the cast as “The Avengers of Asian romance.”
The film’s casting obstacles are reminiscent of a statement by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the writers of 2004’s stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Addressing potential pushback, they joked that they would stick to their guns and not make David and Jason Go to McDonalds. The film, which starred Indian American Kal Penn and Korean American John Cho became a cult classic with two sequels and an additional fourth film in the works.
Even if the financiers had succeeded in getting a white character into the film, it still would have been a nice change of pace from the standard token minority that's typically inserted into an otherwise white ensemble like Raj on The Big Bang Theory, Fez on That 70s Show, and Cleveland on Family Guy.
Now, we can only hope that this film becomes a success, lest Hollywood uses failure as an excuse to never green light an all-Asian cast again.
Various reviews praised the “wealth of talent,” "impressive lineup of actors,” and "Ross Butler and Lana Condor’s Chemistry.” One viewer referred to the cast as “The Avengers of Asian romance.”
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