JK Rowling defends casting Korean actor as snake Nagini

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Press Trust of India London
Last Updated : Sep 27 2018 | 2:50 PM IST

Author JK Rowling has defended the decision to cast Korean actor Claudia Kim as Voldemort's devoted pet, Nagini, in "Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald".

In the final trailer of the film, starring Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law and Johnny Depp, Kim is shown transforming into Nagini, who is later revealed to be one of the Dark Lord's Horcruxes in Rowling's Harry Potter books.

The casting drew the ire of many on social media for being racist, while some called it a classic case of Asian actors playing submissive characters on-screen.

A user on Twitter called out Rowling: "Listen Joanne, we get it, you didn't include enough representation when you wrote the books. But suddenly making Nagini into a Korean woman is garbage."
Calling out the film for showing a subservient Asian to a white man, one of the users tweeted, "You can't be admitted to Hogwarts unless you're English and we don't know if there's any wizarding schools in Asia, home of 4.4 billion people ... (and) a homicidal white man traps an Asian woman inside a snake form and brainwashes her."

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First Published: Sep 27 2018 | 2:50 PM IST

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