Darren Criss will return to his role as Oliver in Maybe Happy Ending after Andrew Barth Feldman's nine-week run. Feldman will perform from September 2 through November 2, when Criss resumes his planned leave of absence; the length of Criss's subsequent return is unconfirmed. Feldman's casting prompted criticism because Oliver is a helperbot in South Korea and Feldman is a white actor. Fans known as Fireflies called the choice regressive. BD Wong described the pain of being passed over and noted how rare Asian shows are. The Asian American Performers Action Coalition expressed profound disappointment. Writers Hue Park and Will Aronson said the character was never written as Korean and that the robots "were meant to be products created by a global company." Helen J. Shen plays Claire, Oliver's love interest.
"We must express, though, how painful it is to be passed over, yet how used to it we've become," actor BD Wong said in a statement at the time. "How rare 'Asian Shows' are."
The Asian American Performers Action Coalition, meanwhile, expressed "profound disappointment at the Broadway production Maybe Happy Ending 's decision to cast a non-AANHPI actor in the role of Oliver."
The writers of the show, Hue Park and Will Aronson, defended Feldman's casting by saying that they never wrote the character as Korean and that the robots "were meant to be products created by a global company."
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