Racist Hollywood or what's in a name?

"I never felt like he got it from an outward perception. I don't say this as a knock on anything. He always had to be part of something else to legitimize himself. He was rarely alone. And when he was alone, it took several years to convince people to be on his own."

His comments certainly reflect the reality of most actors of colour, who, for the most part, are given secondary roles (usually the best friend, the geek, the sidekick or a trope) to their white co-stars and are rarely given lead roles who have their own story line.

The character of Glenn also received "secondary" treatment in the media.

In the interview, Yeun explained that his colleagues Norman Reedus, Andrew Lincoln, and Danai Gurira have all been featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and noted that Glenn only got his own cover after he was killed off.

"I didn't think of it as racism, where it's like, 'Oh, this is racist,'" Yeun said. "I caught it in a way of 'Oh, this is how we're viewed all the time — as part of some glob, some amorphous, non-individualistic collective.'

"We're like a Borg, and so because of that, they're like, 'Well, we don't need to give the shine to that character. There's all these other characters who are so cool!'"

Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park, two Asian American actors, will no longer star in Hawaii Five-O, a show set in Hawaii, a state where well over half the population is of Asian heritage. The reason? As Elizabeth Wagmeister reported for Variety, apparently Kim and Park wanted better pay parity with the television show's two other costars, Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan. But CBS essentially said, "Hawaii Nuh-O." In a Facebook post, Kim stated, "The path to equality is rarely easy." Did Park and Kim then make a mistake by taking a "harder" route financially rather than settling for less pay? Well, peace of mind and emotional health may be good longer-term reasons for Park and Kim to have walked away from the roles of Kono Kalkaua and Chin Ho Kelly, which they have played successfully for the past seven seasons.

Was this a case of a small pay gap? A few thousand dollars here and there? Apparently, no. Laura Bradley wrote for Vanity Fair that Kim's and Park's final offers were nowhere close to O’Loughlin's and Caan's: 10% to 15% less in pay and without the same (if any) percentage of show profits, including those from syndication...which can really add up. (Just ask Dawn Wells, a.k.a. Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island, who told the Huff Post that she missed out on getting profits from the show's reruns..and by the way, never hooked up with the Professor.) That's like being stuck on the islands when the other two stars are on the mainland. Furthermore, keep in mind that O'Loughlin and Caan aren't exactly Brad Pitt (or even Dawn Wells), meaning that they aren't so much more famous than Kim and Park that they deserved a huge premium.

In his Facebook post, Kim thanked the rest of the cast and crew and then said "I will always be grateful for their faith in me to bring Chin Ho Kelly to life. As an Asian American actor, I know first-hand how difficult it is to find opportunities at all, let alone play a well developed, three dimensional character like Chin Ho. I will miss him sincerely." He then said, "I’ll end by saying that though transitions can be difficult, I encourage us all to look beyond the disappointment of this moment to the bigger picture. The path to equality is rarely easy."

As Cynthia Littleton reported for Variety, CBS countered in a statement, “We did not want to lose them and tried very hard to keep them with offers for large and significant salary increases." Well, it's nice that they didn't say "we wanted to lose them and didn't really try to keep them", but such a statement doesn't address the pay equity issue. "Large and significant salary increase" still does not mean equal. And once you have enough money to not worry about survival (which based on some estimates is about $75,000 a year, unless you live in a place like the San Francisco Bay Area), equality and fairness in pay are much more important than amount. Park's and Kim's stand was not about money...otherwise they would have just taken the salary increase.

Pun Bandhu’s training at the prestigious Yale School of Drama didn’t help much with the skill he needed for so many auditions after graduation – the “Asian accent”.

The Thai American actor – who has appeared in a wide range of TV shows and films over the last 15 years – said he was once told that an accent he used for a Thai character, modeled after his parents, was not working for an “American ear”. Instead, the director went with a Chinese accent.

While much of the recent debate around Asian representation in Hollywood has centered on whitewashing – when white actors are cast to tell Asian stories – working actors said a lack of opportunity was only one part of the problem. Asian American actors said they rarely, if ever, got auditions for leading roles, and when they did get parts, they were frequently secondary to the plot or portrayed offensive tropes.

Asian men said they were often relegated to roles as tech nerds, assistants, doctors – sometimes highly emasculated, desexualized characters. Asian women, meanwhile, regularly go up for parts as masseuses and sex workers or characters described as submissive, fragile or quiet.

“We’re the information givers. We’re the geeks. We’re the prostitutes,” Bandhu said. “We’re so sick and tired of seeing ourselves in those roles.”

Asian American actors said there had been an increase in diverse roles in recent years, though, and some were hoping that the recent controversy surrounding Ghost in the Shell – which starred Scarlett Johansson in the remake of an anime classic – would inspire directors and producers to stop whitewashing Asian characters. The film flopped, earning only $19m in the US in its opening weekend, a small sum relative to its $110m budget. One Paramount executive said the casting backlash was partly to blame.

Emma Stone, Matt Damon and Rooney Mara have all faced whitewashing criticisms for their roles in films that ultimately performed badly at the box office. But improving diversity and representation in film and television goes far beyond avoiding casting blunders in commercial movies.

“We’re so desperate for opportunities,” said Kanoa Goo, a mixed-race actor who is Chinese, Hawaiian and white. “Often it’s pretty one-dimensional. It’s the tech computer analyst who doesn’t have much to say. His role is really just in service of the leads.”

Goo, who appeared in the 2016 film Other People, said most of his auditions were for parts specified for Asians or non-white actors, and sometimes those roles could feel tokenized – designed to check off the diversity box.

“Within the sort of marginalized group of diverse actors, Asian American actors are still at the very bottom. They are still the underdog,” he said.

Asian characters made up only 3%-4% of roles in scripted broadcast and cable shows in the 2014-15 season, according to a recent University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) report. Of the top 100 films of 2015, 49 had no Asian characters, and zero leading roles went to Asians, according to another study.