Just weeks before the release of one of the year’s most anticipated films, The Devil Wears Prada 2, the sequel has already been engulfed in controversy, facing accusations of racism over its portrayal of a new Asian character.
A clip from the film was released earlier this month, showing the young Asian woman, who introduces herself as Jin Chao, the new assistant to Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs. Jin, played by 26-year old theatre actor Helen J. Shen, is zippy, brisk and hyper-animated. She talks at a thousand miles per hour. You get the sense immediately that she can get things done. She’s reliable, quick, and probably a little bit of an over-sharer.
In the 38-second clip that’s causing a lot of anger, Jin is dressed in a tight, button-up shirt (her top button is done up) and pencil skirt, her hair is done up like she’s in a music video circa 2000 with Mandy Moore, and she’s wearing large-frame glasses. She is, even visually, depicted as a non-sexually threatening, ‘cute’ stereotypical Asian office secretary you might associate from the early 2000s.
And then she opens her mouth and reveals herself even more: after Hathaway’s character seems to hesitate at the arrival of her new assistant, Jin freezes, exposing her shaky insecurity without filter:
“You don’t want me”, she projects to her new boss, deadpan.
“I didn’t say that,” Hathaway replies.
“If you don’t want me, you can interview someone else that’s totally fine. I did go to Yale, 3.86 GPA, lead soprano of the Whiffenpoofs [Yale’s famous a cappella singing group] and my ACT score was 36 on the very first time.”
Cue the chorus of angry Asians taking to social media, all across the East. Why? Well, can you get anymore blatantly stereotypical than that superficial characterisation of an Asian person? She is academically brilliant and musically accomplished and (this is meant to make us laugh) socially un-chilled. She’s not laid-back. She’s uptight, insecure, and extremely willing to please.
It’s as if the writers hadn’t moved past the 2000s. After the clip was released on social media, the backlash was swift — users in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong were up in arms about the lazy stereotype. My sister sent me the clip within minutes of its release, telling me that Chinese and Taiwanese Thread had ‘blown up’.
In addition to Jin’s adherence to the harmful “Obedient Asian Female” trope, there is the matter of her name — which many critics have said is as bad as JK Rowling’s naming of Harry Potter’s Asian female character Cho Chang: (Rowling wrote the character in 1999).
“Sounds exactly like ‘Ching Chong,’ bro—real suspicious, or is she just auditioning for the next racist soundboard?” one user complained.
“It’s 2026 already and they can’t even come up with a normal Chinese name,” wrote another.
The first time I watched the clip, I shrugged and rolled my eyes. Yet again, the dominant white cultural soldiers of Hollywood need to dehumanise another category of humans to make their own uber-appealing and shiny. Remember the opening scenes of the original movie, with KT Tunstall’s cheery “Suddenly I See” playing while we see contrasting shots of Hathaway getting ready in the morning before her interview alongside shots of supermodels getting ready?
I reckon the character of Jin is the movie’s way of telling us (in a very lazy way, of course) that Hathaway’s character has now moved beyond her initial ‘nerdy’ ‘fashion-oblivious’ ways. We gotta throw someone under the bus for laughs! And they reached for the easiest (racialised) stereotype afforded to them. It’s disappointing, duh, but Hollywood isn’t exactly the beacon of diversity and inclusion. I have low expectations.
I mean, when was the last time we saw a commercial movie with an East Asian female lead? (Erm, maybe, 2018’s “To All the Boys I’ve Ever Loved?”) What about a movie that was made for folks older than their teenage years and something that didn’t centre romance?
My first point of reference is “Charlie’s Angel”, with Lucy Liu, which came out in 2000. Could it be a depressing truth that in over a quarter of a century, Asian female onscreen representation hasn’t really made any improvements? But then I remember “Everything Everywhere All at Once” which came out in 2022, starring Michelle Yeoh; and “The Farewell”, which came out in 2019, starring Awkwafina. And how could I forget the hugely popular 2018 rom-com “Crazy Rich Asians” — which was celebrated as the first major Hollywood studio movie with an all-Asian cast in, like, decades.
Perhaps I wasn’t super angry upon seeing the clip of Jin in The Devil Wears Prada 2 because I know many East Asian women who are nothing like her. My Asian female friends are all shades of complexity and coolness and charm, and they are fully-realised human beings, with all sorts of fashion sensibilities and style and politics. But the harm perhaps lies in the fact that most of the people who will watch this don’t know the range of Asians I know. They probably have only encountered a few in their lives. Perhaps they work with one or two. Perhaps by seeing yet another depiction of the stereotypical ‘Good Asian Girl’ in such a huge blockbuster movie — their perception of every Asian woman they meet will be set by Jin Chao.
Image credit: 20th Century Studios