’In a show deeply tied to Asian creative labor and originally cast with care, replacing the only male Asian lead with a white actor sends a clear message: our place on stage is still conditional,’ writes Fil-Am actress Giselle Tongi

LOS ANGELES, USA – When Maybe Happy Ending made its Broadway debut, it was celebrated as a rare gem, a story born from Korean creators, translated for a global stage, and brought to life by a predominantly Asian cast. 

It joined a short but powerful list of Broadway productions that centered Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voices, including KPOP, Here Lies Love, and David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face. Together, these shows symbolized a rising tide of visibility and validation for our stories in a space that has long excluded them.

Which is why the decision to replace Darren Criss, who is half Filipino, with a white actor, Andrew Barth Feldman, in the lead role of Oliver, feels like a gut punch. This isn’t just a casting change; it’s a cultural step backward.

Let’s be clear: while Criss is white-passing, his casting was not incidental. As the first Asian-American actor to win a Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Musical, Criss represents a generation of AAPI artists fighting to be seen not as tokens, but as leads. 

His presence in Maybe Happy Ending mattered not just for representation, but for continuity. For the idea that AAPI actors could finally be centered in stories that reflect their lineage, even in futuristic or metaphorical narratives like this one.

The sting is amplified when we look at recent history. KPOP, the first Broadway musical to feature an all-Asian cast and creative team, closed prematurely despite groundbreaking work that finally brought Korean and Korean-American performers to the heart of Times Square. 

Here Lies Love, a daring exploration of Filipino history through immersive storytelling and a majority Filipino cast, also closed early, despite a passionate community response and historic casting choices. 

Yellow Face, David Henry Hwang’s deeply personal and political critique of casting white actors in Asian roles, remains relevant perhaps now more than ever.

Each of these shows meant the world to the AAPI community. They were more than theater, they were movement. They chipped away at decades of erasure and offered our communities moments to exhale, to be seen, to belong. But those victories were fragile. And when the rare opportunity to cast another AAPI actor in the role of Oliver presented itself, Broadway chose instead to revert.

This isn’t about questioning Feldman’s talent because he’s undeniably capable. But in a show deeply tied to Asian creative labor and originally cast with care, replacing the only male Asian lead with a white actor sends a clear message: our place on stage is still conditional.

Representation is not a quota to be met once, then quietly undone. It’s a commitment. And it must be upheld not just when convenient or commercially safe, but when it matters most, when visibility is at risk of slipping back into invisibility.

AAPI actors and creatives are not asking for handouts. They’re asking for integrity. For Broadway to honor the spirit of the stories it chooses to tell. And for the few roles that reflect us to remain available to us, not repackaged when the spotlight shifts.

Maybe Happy Ending was a chance to affirm that progress. Instead, it has left many of us wondering if that progress was ever real to begin with. Broadway, do better. We’ve waited long enough! – Rappler.com