Lo these many years ago, I did a raceswap of Firefly, which happened to include Jamie Chung as Kaylee. Since Sucker Punch happened, she's been on my Tumblr dash a lot, which reminded me that I really need to update/revise this whole picspam. Several hours of Googling later, here we are!
Andy Lau as Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds
"You're on my crew. Why are we still talking about this?"
Dichen Lachman as Zoe Washburne
"There's a little pop, and three guys that just sort of . . . end at the ribcage."
J. August Richards as Hoban "Wash" Washburne
"Oh my god, who's flying this thing? Oh right, that would be me."
Jamie Chung as Kaywinnit Lee "Kaylee" Frye
"It's shiny! I like to meet new people; they've all got stories."
Dante Basco as Jayne Cobb
"You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I beat you with til you understand who's in ruttin' comand."
Meagan Goode as Inara Serra
"There's nothing wrong with being a virgin. It's a state of being."
Dev Patel as Simon Tam
"I don't think my last act in this verse is going to be betraying my sister."
Shefali Chowdhury as River Tam
"They're not mine! These memories, they're not mine, and I shouldn't have to carry them!"
Yvonne Elliman as Shepard Derrial Book
"You don't fix the Bible, River. It fixes you."Notes
You may have noticed that I cast the main "rebels" (that is, the war veterans) and most of the characters from the outer planets as Asian. There is a method to my madness. The idea behind this is that this 'verse- mixed Chinese and American, as per Word of God- is largely populated by people of Asian descent, but run by a small American minority. I wanted to do something interesting with the idea of imperialism and dominant powers here- something the show never really explored, but in all fairness, they didn't get that much time to.
I know people generally assume that the Tams were meant to be East Asian but, well, I fell in love with the idea of Dev as Simon. :D He seems like he could pull off sweet and dorky and socially inept really well. So I cast him, and naturally his sister had to be Indian as well. You may or may not recognize her as Parvati Patil from the Harry Potter movies.
Meagan Goode was cast for two reasons. One, she's gorgeous, and I could easily see her pulling off the warmth and down-to-earthness that Inara does in the series, as well as the banter with Mal. The second is a bit more complicated. I didn't want to cast an East Asian woman in the "prostitute" role, since it carries so much baggage, and especially in light of the recent Psychology Today fuckery about how black women aren't attractive, I wanted to refute that a bit.
J. August Richards and Dichen Lachman are the only cast members who were also in other Whedon shows. Richards just seemed like a natural choice- I know he's talented, and episodes like "War Stories" would give him a chance to show off what he can do when given the material. Dichen was actually the last person I cast- both because of the Asian majority idea I mentioned above, and because I can see her pulling off the warm and loving/cold and ruthless dichotomy very well. Also, I want her and Richards to put their faces together. Fund that screenplay plz, Hollywood?
Lastly, you'll notice that I also genderswapped Book. I had no real reason for doing so, besides Yvonne Ellison being awesome and the idea of a former female member of the Alliance turning to religion fascinated me (you know how I feel about evil girls with feelings.) If you're wondering "where have I seen her before?" you're probably remembering her as Mary Magdalene in the 1973 version of Jesus Christ Superstar.