The New Legends of Monkey writer responds to ‘whitewashing’ accusations

REMEMBER rushing home after school and kicking back with some adventures of the Monkey King? The remake is finally here, after having to defend its controversial casting.

WHEN it was announced nine months ago the ABC, TVNZ and Netflix were rebooting beloved children’s classic Monkey, often colloquially referred to as Monkey Magic, audiences were thrilled.

Memories flooded back of after-school afternoons watching the Monkey King kick butt and defeat his enemies with his wishing staff and quick wit.

That excitement soon turned sour. Accusations of “whitewashing” drowned out the initial enthusiasm.

Based on a 16th century Chinese book called Journey to the West, tales of the Monkey King are revered in Chinese literature and wider Asian culture. It continues to be adapted across TV, film and gaming. The best-known version to Australian audiences was the Japanese TV series with an English dub that aired on the ABC after school in the early 1980s.

A lot of commenters on social media platforms found the casting problematic — this new series had only one actor of Asian descent (Chai Hansen, whose father is Thai) among its main cast.

Craig Irvin, writer and director on several episodes of The New Legends of Monkey, told news.com.au when the team adapted the show, they set it in a mythical world, rather than ancient China. He said he knew people would understand what the series was trying to do once they saw it.

“This mythical world we’ve set it in has a lot of diverse ethnicities,” he said. “We took elements of the original story and developed it and pushed it in different directions.

“The cast is really diverse — more than half of them are non-European. We have cast members who are Chinese-Thai, South Korean, Maori, Tongan and European. When you see this, you’ll see the world is incredibly varied.”

Of the four main leads, Luciane Buchanan and Josh Thomson both have Tongan heritage while Hansen is Australian-Thai-Chinese — not a classic case of “whitewashing”.

Irvin pointed out the series also departed from the original Chinese stories by turning half of its main characters into female leads. Buchanan’s Tripitaka is traditionally a male Buddhist monk while Emily Cochrane’s water god Sandy is also traditionally a male character.

The New Legends of Monkey is set in a world in which the demons have ruled the realm for centuries and hope is starting to fade of a better time.

It’s easy to see the parallels between that and the fractious social order of our current era. But it’s not intentional.

“We wanted to create a series which was about the importance of love, belonging and friendship,” Irvin said. “It’s a series about people in the margins — they’re lonely and misfits but they find each other, forming their own family in a world that is harsh and trying to keep hope and good alive.

“It wasn’t directly a response to what’s happening but the focus we wanted was the idea of acceptance and love and people finding their place in the world.”

The show isn’t only about all the mushy stuff. It’s also really funny, helped along by the presence of comic Thomson and comedic actor Rachel House who plays a gruff tavern owner.

“We always wanted it to be funny but a lot of the humour really came through when we got the cast and we started to rehearse with them,” Irvin said. “Josh is talented — he writes, directs and performs so we worked through the scenes. We’d throw around ideas to try and bring the humour out.

“Once we got to know our cast, you’d see the way their humour works and we’d make changes to the script for that, to see what worked best. The process was very open like that. “It’s nice for a set to a creative place, especially when you’ve got people as funny as Josh and Rachel. You want to use that potential.”