Jon M. Chu Responds To Accusations of 'White Washing' Afro-Latinx Roles in 'In The Heights'

Jon M. Chu is responding to accusations of “white washing” the roles of Afro-Latinx characters in the In The Heights movie.

After streaming the movie on HBO Max or seeing the new flick in theaters, many people took to social media to air some grievances about not seeing more Black Latinx performers.

Click inside to read what Jon said about the issue…

One of the people who spoke out about the lack of Afro-Latinx actors in the film pointed out that there was “a CLEAR casting choice not to cast any dark skinned Afro-Latinxs that should be discussed.”

“In the end, when we were looking at the cast, we tried to get the people who were best for those roles and we saw a lot of people,” Jon responded in a new interview when asked. “People like Daphne [Rubin-Vega] or Dascha [Polanco].”

He added, “Listen, we’re not going to get everything right in a movie. We tried our best on all fronts of it. I do think there’s something to be said about sharing in experiences and me never trying to say, ‘I know what I’m doing’ but just to give room to everybody to speak up about what we’re doing in that moment.”

Leslie Grace, who plays Nina Rosario in the movie, is Afro-Latinx and also spoke to The Root on how she hopes the movie will crack “that glass ceiling” with Latinx representation.

“I didn’t realize until making this movie that I didn’t really get to see myself or people that looked like my siblings, that are darker than me, on-screen,” she shared. “I didn’t realize how much that affected the limitations that I put on myself.”

Leslie went on, adding that she feels “so blessed that we get to express the diversity that is within the Latinx community [with 'In The Heights'] in a way that we haven’t been able to see on-screen because so many times we’re put on-screen in one particular way and since we get so little opportunity, everyone wants to claim that one story. Because it’s all we got.”

Just a week ago, Jon opened up about his same regret with Crazy Rich Asians.