This week, Warner Bros. released the final trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and while it contains plenty of new details for fans to pore over, not all of them were well received. One of the biggest reveals from the trailer is that Nagini, Voldemort’s serpent from the original Harry Potter films, is a maledictus, or a human woman cursed to transform into an animal. However, some fans found the reveal that Nagini is an Asian woman, played by South Korean actor Claudia Kim, to be racially insensitive. On Twitter, fans argued this was a poorly thought-out attempt at some otherwise much-needed diversity. “I feel like this is the problem when white people want to diversify and don’t actually ask POC how to do so,†author Ellen Oh tweeted. “They don’t make the connection between making Nagini an Asian woman who later on is the pet of a white man. So I’m going to say it right now. That shit is racist.â€
Kim herself recently spoke in an interview about the role, though her comments were not in response to the controversy. “You’ve only seen her as a Horcrux,†Kim told Entertainment Weekly. “In this, she’s a wonderful and vulnerable woman who wants to live. She wants to stay a human being and I think that’s a wonderful contrast to the character.â€