When the first photo of Scarlett Johansson as the star of Ghost in the Shell dropped online on Thursday, fans of the beloved manga series took to Twitter in outrage. They denounced Hollywood for casting a white actor as a Japanese character from a distinctly Japanese narrative. Their anger was further fueled after it was reported that the film's producers tested visual effects on Johansson that would make her appear more Asian.



Among those who spoke out on Twitter were Fresh Off the Boat actor Constance Wu and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star Ming-Na Wen. And during a panel on Saturday at the Committee of 100 conference in Los Angeles, Wu slammed those reported attempts at altering Johansson's appearance, calling the alleged acts "heinous." Altering a white actor's features to appear more Asian, Wu said, "reduces our race and our ethnicity down to mere physical appearance. And as we all know, our ethnicity, our races, and our culture are so much deeper than how we friggin’ look."

The panel also included Marco Polo's Joan Chen and Saving Face's Lynn Chen. The discussion got heated after Joan Chen — who grew up during the Cultural Revolution from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, a time in China when the arts were heavily censored — defended the filmmakers' freedom to cast whomever they saw fit to play the protagonist of their films. "If an American director is making a Japanese cartoon, adapted into an American story, it is his creative freedom," she said. She warned against the dangers of too much "self-censorship" and instead urged her fellow panelists to encourage "young people to get into the business" and to write their own stories.