Eternals actor Kumail Nanjiani recently accused Hollywood executives of racism claiming they are refusing to allow non-white actors to play villains.
Nanjiani, 44, was excited to play the villainous role of strip club owner Somen ‘Steve’ Banerjee in Hulu’s Welcome to Chippendales as he says audiences will rarely see a non-white villain anymore.
In a lengthy interview with Esquire about his upcoming TV mini series Welcome to Chippendales, Nanjiani admitted to the fact that Hollywood executives and casting agents are not casting non-white actors in villain roles.
‘I’ve never gotten to play an arc like this,’ the Pakistani American actor said of the role to Esquire.
‘By far the most layered, complex, complicated person I’ve ever played.
‘I want to play more bad guys.’
The Silicon Valley actor said he doesn’t believe he would have given the chance to play Steve Banerjee if it wasn’t based on a true story, suggesting the role would have gone to a white actor.
Nanjiani first posited, ‘I think that Hollywood now – even though they’re trying to be more diverse – is still weird.’
Esquire’s Henry Wong then went on to summarize Nanjiani’s argument, ‘The problem, Nanjiani wagers, is that good intentions can sometimes lead to misguided solutions: if the bad guy is a brown guy, what message is that sending?’
As it’s framed by Wong in the Esquire article Nanjiani concurred telling him, ‘And that’s just as limiting as anything else. I want to play more bad guys.’
Nanjiani then compared himself to fellow Marvel Studios actor Sebastian Stan, who not only plays Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but is also able to jump out of the role and become a character named Steve, who is an organ-harvesting cannibal serial killer in the Hulu original film, Fresh.
After briefly comparing himself to Stan, Nanjiani unwittingly revealed the anti-white agenda throughout Hollywood.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi actor stated, ‘[Sebastian Stan] does these big Marvel movies, and then he’ll play a psychopath.
‘I was told that’s going to be hard because people don’t want to cast non-white people as bad guys.’
Wong claims that “if Welcome to Chippendales were not based on a true story, Nanjiani believes that the central role would have gone to a white actor.’
As Nanjiani notes, this anti-white agenda is an open secret in Hollywood.
It’s part of the whole representation agenda that these massive companies have adopted and began propagandizing onto audiences.
Since the 2000s, moviegoers have seen a lot more white actors playing villains on their screens, from Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008) to Tom Hiddleston as Loki in the Marvel Universe (2011-2021).
Before then, villain roles often went to people of color and several roles portrayed Arabs as terrorists.
Art Malik, a Pakistani-British actor, famously played Salim Abu Aziz in the 1994 film True Lies, which follows Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character tracking down nuclear missiles from Malik’s.
