Broadway Casting Shake-Up Raises Questions about Representation
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 29 Jul, 2025

The decision to replace half-Filipino actor Darren Criss with Andrew Barth Feldman in Maybe Happy Ending didn't quite sit right with me. But I struggled to articulate why.

After taking home six Tony awards last month including “Best Musical” and “Best Actor”, Broadway hit Maybe Happy Ending might have heeded the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Of course, the musical’s producers can’t be blamed for lead actor Darren Criss’s decision to leave the cast, which seems reasonable. By taking home a Tony for the role, Criss has already achieved the pinnacle of Broadway success. 

What we could blame the producers for, however, is their choice of whom to replace Criss with. 

Actor Andrew Barth Feldman is taking over the lead role of Oliver, a robot who falls in love with another robot played by actress Helen J. Shen. Feldman’s casting is notable for a couple reasons: 

For one, Shen and Feldman are dating in real life.

And another thing: Feldman, who is replacing Criss, a half-Filipino actor, is White. 

While the musical has taken Broadway by storm, it was first staged in South Korea in 2015. Since then, all iterations have featured Asians not only as the lead actors but as their understudies as well.  The play’s casting has drawn widespread praise, especially given that nothing in the script requires the roles to be portrayed by Asians. After all, they’re robots. 

So why would it matter what ethnicity the actors are? And if we’re really being honest, Criss himself does not necessarily epitomize AAPI identity. For one, he is in his own words “White-passing.” 

In a 2018 interview with Variety, Criss said that it would be “unfair” to identify as Asian American given his White features.

“I think that’d sound like I’m reaching for the minority card on a college application…maybe if I looked a little more pan-Asian and I was put in that box then I would be like, 'Yeah, I identify as Asian-American.'"

Last week, when I first read that Criss was being replaced by a White actor — I admittedly know very little about Feldman so none of this is about him, specifically — my knee-jerk reaction was disappointment. 

But while I instantly felt that replacing an Asian actor with a White guy was bad, I admittedly struggled to articulate why, exactly. 

I was failing to conjure up the same emotional reaction that I felt recently when White actor Andrew Schultz was cast as a Japanese character in the upcoming Street Fighter film. I thought back to my disappointment that the able-bodied Brian Cranston was portraying a wheel chair-bound quadraplegic in the movie The Upside. 

The nagging cynic inside of me thought through some of the reasons why Feldman’s casting might not be so bad:

Even with Feldman’s addition, Maybe Happy Ending can boast one of the most Asian Broadway casts in history. Should our ire not be reserved for the casts with even fewer Asians? 

By nitpicking one casting decision, are we allowing perfect to be the enemy of good?

If Criss had replaced an actor of fully Asian descent, would we also feel like the role’s Asian-ness was being diluted since he’s just half-Asian?

Should we be taking other factors into account as well when it comes to assessing casting decisions, like gender, sexuality and socio-economic status?

In the days since I first read about the casting, I’ve had some clarity. 

Ultimately, it no longer matters whether the script requires an Asian or not. Once the decision was made to only cast Asian actors in the lead roles, the play had taken on a new form. From that point on, a decision to do otherwise would be taking something away from the Asian American community. And given the rise in AAPI-targeted hate crime over the past few years, representation on stage and screen feels more important than ever. 

I do stand by the idea that we should take other factors into account. But why not promote intersectionality? An actor can be queer AND Asian. Or be Asian AND come from a working class background. 

It also turns out that I don’t need to articulate these thoughts perfectly. Plenty of people are already paying attention on their own. 

On Sunday, Broadway actor Conrad Ricamora, who is of Filipino descent, launched “The Right to Be There” campaign. It’s “a scholarship fund for Asian American male actors pursuing a BFA or MFA in acting.” The GoFundMe account has already raised over $40,000. At least $15,000 of that money has come from Ricamora directly. 

While the Instagram caption accompanying his announcement of the fund did not explicitly mention Maybe Happy Endings, there seemed little doubt about what he was referring to:

“There’s a lot of pain right now. Pain from being told—subtly and explicitly—that we don’t belong. 
Pain from watching history repeat itself, even as we fight for representation.
Pain that I know so many other Asian American men in this industry have felt before me.”

If I'm being honest, that cynic in me needs to know why this fund is specifically for men. But maybe I’m just nitpicking again. 

Ultimately, Ricamora's response has been a strong statement about how to turn a positive into a negative. 

And if the names of the donors listed on GoFundMe’s website are any indication, it's an important reminder of the collecting power that the Asian American community wields. 

Those in a position to make casting decisions would do well to remember that in the future.