NEW YORK (AP) — The Broadway rom-com “Maybe Happy Ending” isn’t in a very happy place these days. A casting controversy threatens to dampen the show’s post-Tony Award-winning glow.
The strife began when producers of the South Korea-based musical chose to cast Andrew Barth Feldman as the male lead when original star Darren Criss steps away, in effect replacing an Asian actor with a white one.
That prompted denunciations by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, the Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists and prominent Asian American artists such as Conrad Ricamora, Ruthie Ann Miles, Kay Sibal, Jose Llana, Kay Sibal and BD Wong, who became the first Asian actor to win a Tony in 1988 for “M. Butterfly.”
The Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists has called on producers to recast the lead with an actor of Asian descent, calling the casting of Feldman an “affront to our community” and a “slap in the face.”
“This was an Asian-driven show with an Asian American cast, and it was like a breath of fresh air to all of us,” says Lily Tung Crystal, artistic director of the East West Players and a consortium board member. “This was the show that would bring us into the next stage of the conversation. But instead, we feel like we’re going backwards.”
Online comments
More than 2,400 people have signed an open letter from Wong asking the musical’s creators to reconsider their casting choice. The letter has attracted the signatures of two-time Tony winner Donna Murphy, Tony winner Ali Stroker, Golden Globe winner Awkwafina, “Saturday Night Live” star Bowen Yang, actor Anthony Rapp and director Leigh Silverman.
The reaction on social media has been rough, with many flatly telling Feldman to drop out, with one writing: “You know the role should go to an Asian person. You know it. And the longer you stay silent, the more damage you do to your reputation.” Another joked Feldman would soon be seen as Mufasa in “The Lion King.” Neither Feldman nor the show responded when contacted by The Associated Press.
Dan Bacalzo, an associate professor of theater at Florida Gulf Coast University, compares it to the whitewashing controversy around Scarlett Johansson when she was cast as a cyborg in the manga-inspired “Ghost in the Shell.”
“In the end, it comes down to opportunity,” he says. “With fewer leading roles possible for Asian American actors, why cast a show that has an established opportunity for them with a non-Asian actor?”
The controversy comes 36 years after the casting of a white actor as the Eurasian lead in “Miss Saigon” prompted a similar backlash, which ironically, was the subject of a revival of “Yellow Face” this past season. It’s also set against a backdrop of the Trump administration’s attempt to rip up initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion.
What’s the show about?
Set in a futuristic version of Seoul, “Maybe Happy Ending” is a love story between two helper robots, Oliver and Claire, who are deemed obsolete. It began being developed in South Korea in 2014 and has been a hit there; the Broadway version is led by Criss and Helen J. Shen with a predominantly Asian cast.
Criss, who became the first Asian American actor to win the lead actor Tony in a musical in the role, will be out for nine weeks starting Tuesday. He announced he would return to the show Nov. 4, but the damage was done.
The show’s creators, Will Aronson and Hue Park, said in a statement that they wrote Oliver and Claire as androids created by a global company, but understood that the “makeup of our opening night cast became a meaningful and rare point of visibility.”
“With ‘Maybe Happy Ending,’ we wanted to write a show in which every role could be played by an Asian performer, but without the intention that the robot roles always would be,” they said.
Critics point out that the script and direction illustrate an Asian-presenting lead actor is crucial to the plot and rue that producers leaned on the Asian American community to get it on Broadway.
“For the creators and producers to then turn around and say, ‘Oh, thank you for the help and now we’re going to go outside the community,’” says Tung Crystal. “It’s a slap in the face in many ways.”
Hye Won Kim, an assistant professor of English at Kennesaw State University, argues that the controversy is an example of the tensions and transformations that often occur when musical theater becomes transnational.
“It’s multilayered. It’s complicated. It’s complex and you can’t just say that there’s a single answer to this,” she says. “I really hope that the two parties meet and talk because I know that everyone wants this musical to do well.”
A season of firsts, but…
In addition to Criss’ win, theater-makers of Asian or Pacific Island descent had a smashing 2025 Tonys, with Francis Jue winning for best featured actor in a play, Nicole Scherzinger winning best lead in a musical and Marco Paguia getting the Tony for best orchestrations. Daniel Dae Kim became the first Asian nominee in the best leading actor in a play category in the Tonys’ 78-year history.
But industry-wide the numbers are less buoyant. According to the data from The Asian American Performers Action Coalition, only 3.7% of all actors on Broadway are of Asian descent, in a city where Asians make up 14.5% of the population. Asian American actors secured just 2.8% of all lead roles in musicals; white actors nabbed 52.8%.
“When the playing field is not level, then we should retain some space — some representation — within the roles that represent our own community,” says Tung Crystal. “There are other Asian American actors who are as talented.”
The controversy has doubly impacted Shen, an Asian American actor making her Broadway debut and who is also dating and living with Feldman, calling him “perfect” for the role. “This has been an immensely challenging moment,” she said in an Instagram post.
“Every perspective on this situation contains truth. This conversation must be had, and it’s not the last time I’ll be talking about it or amplifying other people’s perspectives here,” she wrote.
‘Grace and kindness’
Telly Leung, a Broadway veteran who has criticized the casting of Feldman, responded to Shen’s post by acknowledging she has been “put in a very difficult position,” adding “these conversations are challenging — but necessary — and I agree with you that we need to have them with grace and kindness for each other.”
Michael R. Jackson, the playwright behind the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “A Strange Loop,” defended the musical, Feldman and its makers in a Facebook post, decrying what he called “a bourgeois racial tribunal.”
“I do know what it is like to be a lone voice of dissent against a bored and bloodthirsty social media mob,” he wrote. “They are good people and artists who deserve your support. Especially against viral cry-bullying like this. Especially in times like these.”
Leslie Ishii, the artistic director of Perseverance Theatre in Alaska and a consortium board member, says she has compassion for Feldman, even as she asks for him to step aside.
“That actor is being forced to be in that place knowing there’s controversy, to take on an identity that is not theirs. They’re being forced to be complicit with systemic racism, and then, in turn, the actors in that cast are being forced to be complicit,” she says. “It’s a harmful dynamic all around, on every level.”
