#SaveDaredevil Con is in full swing, celebrating the life and times of the fan-favorite Netflix show which was canceled nearly two years ago. During a roundtable discussion with Daredevil actors Peter Shinkoda, Geoffrey Cantor, and Tommy Walker, an alarming claim was made about one of the creatives behind the development of the show. According to Shinkoda, former Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb allegedly told the writers involved with that show that “Nobody gives a sh-t” about Asian characters, enough so the room had to scrap plans to dive into a backstory involving Shinkoda’s character Nobu and Wai Ching Ho’s Madame Gao.
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“I’m kind of reluctant to say this, but I’m going to take it and I apologize to Tommy [Walker] and Geoff [Cantor] that I’m going to take this moment, but I have to because…I just have to. I’m not really into protecting certain things anymore.” Shinkoda said in the Zoom livestream. “Jeph Loeb told the writers room not to write for Nobu and Gao — and this was reiterated many times by many of the writers and showrunners — that ‘nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people. There were three previous Marvel movies, a trilogy called Blade that was made where Wesley Snipes kills 200 Asians each movie because nobody gives a sh-t, so don’t write about Nobu and Gao,’ so they were forced to put their storyline down and drop it.”
It’s not the first time Loeb’s been under fire for a similar situation. In 2018, the writer donned a karate suit to a panel at San Diego Comic-Con in promotion of Iron Fist Season Two, a move many considered to be whitewashing.
The actor then went into the backstory itself, which followed Nobu and his journey to America under the guise of a medical procedure, only for him to get here and help Gao and The Hand with their Black Sky plans. Shinkoda says those plans were later scrapped.
“It was a very interesting storyline about having to go there under the guise of having some kind of a transplant because of medical reasons,” the actor added. “A lot of paperwork and bureaucracy was fudged so that Nobu could get into the country and carry out his Black Sky plans, but all that backstory was dropped. The writers told me they regret it and they were reluctant to do it because they were stoked about including that in the storyline but they were prevented so I had to concoct this other storyline and rock that material I was given.”
Shinkoda played Nobu Yoshioka in the first two seasons of Daredevil, a high-ranking member of The Hand. Throughout his time on the show, Nobu played a variety of roles from an acquaintance under Kingpin’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) criminal empire to serve as a keeper of the Black Sky, a mystical being essentially worshipped by The Hand.
ComicBook.com has reached out to reps for Shinkoda, and Disney for additional comments but none were unavailable as of press time.
All three seasons of Daredevil are now streaming on Netflix.
