trolls who took issue with her playing Queen Elizabeth’s confi-
dante, Bess of Hardwick, in the period piece Mary Queen of
Scots because she isn’t white. “Why are actors of color, who
have fewer opportunities anyway, only allowed to play their own
race? And sometimes they’re not even allowed to play their own
race,” Chan says. “In the past, the role would be given to a white
actor who would tape up their eyes and do the role in yellow-
face. John Wayne played Genghis Khan. If John Wayne can play
Genghis Khan, I can play Bess of Hardwick.”
“I feel like Hamilton opened minds a lot. We have a black
man playing George Washington. They describe it as ‘America
then, told by America now.’ And I think our art should reflect life
now,” Chan says. And life then, too. Last year, Chan worked on a
documentary about the Chinese Labour Corps. “I studied the
First World War three times at school. And I never heard that
there were 140,000 Chinese in the Allied effort,” she says. “We
would not have won the war without them.”
I never heard about those Chinese laborers, either. In large
part, it’s because of the images that remain. Chan tells me about
a mural made to commemorate that war. It was massive, she
says. There was a whole section dedicated to the Chinese, but it
was painted over when the Americans joined the war effort.
“They left one kneeling Chinese figure, which you can still see,”
she says. “If people understood that, my parents [might not]
have been told, ‘Go home, go back to where you came from’
multiple times. If we portray a pure white past, people start to
believe that’s how it was, and that’s not how it was.”
Chan playing Bess of Hardwick is a step toward visibility.
Chan playing Minn-Erva is, too (the Marvel character is blue and
has dark hair, but the alien’s race in the comics is ambiguous).
Chan’s newfound media prominence gives her a platform, and
she’s embracing it. Wu is just one of several Asian designers
whose clothes Chan has worn in recent red-carpet appear-
ances. After seeing photos of a New York City screening of
Crazy Rich Asians hosted by Prabal Gurung and other promi-
nent Asian-Americans in fashion, and attended by Asian design-
ers, editors, and makeup artists, Chan committed to wearing
Asian designers (Prabal Gurung, Kenzo, Altuzarra, Adeam) for
the majority of that press tour. “I was just so moved,” she says.
Chan repeatedly underscores that it’s not just about Asian
representation. She mentions Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and
Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther as important for their nearly all-
black casts. Captain Marvel features the first stand-alone
woman title character in the Marvel franchise. It’s also the first
Marvel movie directed by a woman. Chan also celebrates “what
Prabal Gurung’s been doing—putting models on the runway
who are plus-size, who are transgender,” she says. “I love open-
ing up a magazine and seeing a whole mixture of body types,
gray hair, dark skin, wrinkles—we’re saying that we find these
things beautiful.”
Chan could talk about this all night. We nearly do. And don’t
get her started on U.K. politics (I do anyway)—it’s such a mess,
she tells me. “My issue with politicians like David Cameron, of
the Conservative Party, whose fault all of this Brexit stuff is—he
went from Eton to Oxford, then I think he worked for a time in
communications before going straight into Parliament. He’s
lived such a privileged life without any real interaction with any-
one who’s having to live under his government’s policy. And I
think that distance, that disconnect, is so damaging,” Chan
says. “I’m so grateful for my work. But sometimes it feels almost
absurd to be going onto a set to play kind of make-believe.
There are so many things that demand our attention.”
Like Time’s Up—Chan is involved with the Justice and
Equality Fund, the U.K. equivalent of the movement’s Legal
Defense Fund. “You have to attack [the problem] on a regulatory
level while also trying to change the culture,” she says. “This is
all going to take time.” She also partnered with fellow British
actress Ruth Wilson and the British Film Institute to do educa-
tional workshops with more than 400 drama-school students
on how to protect yourself from compromising audition situa-
tions, understand nudity clauses, and recognize other abuses of
power. “What’s going to be expected of you if you have to do a
sex scene? What if you get asked to do something you’re not
comfortable with? How can you say no?” Chan says. “These are
things they don’t teach you in drama school.”
Between aiming to shift industry norms and taking on super-
human roles, what could be next on Chan’s list of things to do?
Being vulnerable, it turns out. In an as-yet-untitled Dominic
Savage drama coming out later this year, she’s playing an ordi-
nary (OK, ridiculously beautiful) woman “who is feeling very
under pressure to start a family,” Chan says. “Everyone she
knows is having babies, settling down, becoming a mother, and,
um, she feels like she’s an anomaly for not being sure whether
she wants that.” She doesn’t share details about her own rela-
tionship, but it’s been widely reported that Chan is dating actor
Dominic Cooper after splitting from longtime beau Jack
Whitehall more than a year ago. She and Cooper made their first
public appearance together at the British Fashion Awards in
December. Something about Chan’s tone of voice, the way she
talks about this role, makes it feel a little nearer than fiction. But
I don’t have to ask. “It’s drawing on a lot of me in it,” Chan
admits. “It’s exciting and terrifying in equal measure.”DRAMA QUEEN “I feel like this year the motto is just ‘Go big or go home,’” says Chan of her sartorial strategy for her first awards
season as a red-carpet fixture. From left: Chan in a Valentino Haute Couture dress at the Golden Globe Awards, a custom Jason Wu gown
at the Critics’ Choice Awards, and a hand-pleated Oscar de la Renta dress at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.