Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of Bojack Horseman, has opened up about hiring a white actor to play Diane Nguyen, a character with roots in Vietnam. He was responding to a query about why Nguyen's character on Twitter.

"This is something I am happy to talk about! I can tense up when asked about my mistakes (because I'm worried I'll say the wrong thing) but it's good for me to reflect on them and I hope others seeing me do so will help them not make the same mistakes!, He said and added, "In the first few seasons of BoJack, I was asked about the casting of Diane a few times on Twitter and Reddit but I evaded the question, mostly because my own understanding of the issue was evolving (it still is!) and I didn't want to give a defensive or half-thought-out answer."

According to Raphael, he was waiting for 'right time' to address the issues:

"I thought when I was ready I'd write something - like a blog post or twitter thread - explaining why I had cast a white actress to voice an Asian character and why it was okay, but the more I thought about it (and listened to other people) the more I felt like it WASN'T okay," the creator said and added, "After season 4, I felt like I was never going to feel "ready" to talk about it, and I just had to do it, ready or not. I decided to do the interview. One of the reasons I wanted to do an interview instead of writing something myself is I knew a journalist would hold me accountable in ways I wouldn't necessarily do on my own. I like that Pilot calls out some of my hedges in that piece."

Raphael also talked about Diane's trip to Vietnam in Season 5 and having no Vietnamese writers on the show.

"Some people took my answer to Inkoo's question about if there were Asian writers on staff ("As of Season 5, no, there are not.") to mean we'd NEVER had Asian writers, which isn't true, but it is true we never (in all 6 seasons) had a Vietnamese writer, and that was a mistake."

The writer also addressed Diane's experience as a woman of color:

"Even in the small ways we wrote to Diane's experience as a woman of color, or more specifically an Asian woman, we rarely got specific enough to think about what it meant to be SPECIFICALLY VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN and that was a huge (racist!) error on my part," the comedian said and added, "The intention behind the character is I wanted to write AWAY from stereotypes and create an Asian American character who wasn't defined solely by her race. But I went too far in the other direction. We are all defined SOMEWHAT by our race! Of course, we are! It is part of us!"

Raphael concluded that the show should have hired a Vietnamese writer and a Vietnamese actor to play Diane.

"We should have hired a Vietnamese writer, and a Vietnamese actress to play Diane - or if not that, changed the character to match who we did hire."