‘No whitewashing’: Matt Damon defends being cast as lead in Zhang Yimou’s Great Wall

Matt Damon criticised “outrageous” stories in the era of fake news as he responded on Tuesday to accusations his role in the new China-Hollywood co-production The Great Wall should have gone to an Asian actor.

Some critics have said Damon’s casting as the lead character amounted to “whitewashing,” in which Caucasians are chosen for roles that should have gone to actors from other ethnicities.

Watch: Matt Damon on fake news and ‘whitewashing’

The American actor said he thought of whitewashing as applying to Caucasian actors who wore makeup to appear to be of another race, as was common in the early days of film and television, when racism was overt.

“That whole idea of whitewashing, I take that very seriously,” Damon said in an interview, using the example of the Irish-American actor Chuck Connors, who played the lead character in the 1962 film Geronimo, about the famed Apache chief.

Damon, 46, plays a British mercenary in the upcoming US$150 million adventure fantasy about a Chinese army battling monsters, helmed by acclaimed director Zhang Yimou.

The star of the “Bourne” franchise and Interstellar questioned whether the critical stories on online news sites based on “a 30-second teaser trailer” would have existed before the era of fake news and headlines designed to make people click on them.