In 2002, Benedict Wong played Chiwetel Ejiofor’s chess buddy in Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things, a thriller set in London’s underworld of illegal immigrants. A decade and a half later, the actors are together again as Wong and Baron Mordo, masters of the mystic arts in Marvel’s Doctor Strange, making wizard hands to battle ancient evil alongside Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sorcerer Supreme.
It’s kind of weird to see these two reasonably serious actors together again in a gigantic effects movie, and kind of great.
“I know!” Wong laughs over the phone. “We’re both in The Martian as well. It’s a trilogy of buddy movies!”
Wong – whose resume includes everything from cult UK TV shows like Look Around You, The Peter Serafinowicz Show and Black Mirror to big studio productions like Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and the Netflix series Marco Polo – came to the project as a relative newbie, unaware that the Doctor Strange comics featured a manservant named Wong when Ejiofor told him about the movie.
“I looked it up on the net and there I saw – you know, with my jaw to the ground – a picture of Strange and Wong,” he laughs. “I was like, ‘What? This is clearly a sign! I have to claim this!’ For my ancestors alone, you know.”
But landing the role was just the start of it. As originally conceived, the character of Wong was … not something a modern Asian actor would find desirable. Fortunately, Marvel Studios felt the same way.
“Just looking at the old source material – I mean, it was back in the 60s and yes, it needed this update,” he laughs. “I remember a meeting with Kevin [Feige] and Stephen [Broussard], and I just said, ‘We’re not doing this tea-making manservant business, are we?’ And they were vehemently like, ‘No no no, not at all.’ And I said ‘Good, because neither am I,’” he laughs. “We were all on the same hymn sheet, and that’s it. It’s fantastic.”
Thus, a deferential sidekick became the stern librarian of Kamar-Taj, guardian of the most sacred texts … and possessor of very little patience for the arrogance of his latest student.
“I really wanted to create this sense of this drill sergeant,” Wong says. “He’s Strange’s intellectual mentor, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly he’s seen it all before, and he’s just there to sort of guide this egotist into the darker forces that lie ahead. And I think it’s a great setup, you know.”
Wong’s character’s evolution from one-dimensional manservant to heroic wizard was somehow overlooked in the controversy over recasting the role of The Ancient One – Strange’s teacher, originally an elderly Asian man – as a Celtic woman, played by Tilda Swinton. When the film opened theatrically last fall, director/co-writer Scott Derrickson framed the choice as part of a larger strategy to update and diversify the world of Doctor Strange, but his arguments were drowned out in accusations of whitewashing.
For his part, Wong thinks Derrickson was on the right track.
“I think this movie champions diversity,” he says. “We have two strong female leads in Tilda and Rachel [McAdams, who plays Strange’s New York colleague Christine Palmer], and Baron Mordo was Caucasian [in the comics] and we now have Chiwetel.
“With the Ancient One,” he continues, “the true essence of the Ancient One is this timeless, ethereal quality, and people really realized that there isn’t another actor or actress on the planet but Tilda Swinton to play that role. If anything it’s a masterstroke and should be applauded.”
Wong (both the actor and the character) will return alongside Cumberbatch’s Strange in Avengers: Infinity War, though Wong (the actor) can’t disclose any details beyond that just yet. He’s just delighted to be part of the whole thing.
“When you’re a kid that’s spent all your pocket money buying Spider-Man comics, and then as an adult, you’re in the Marvel Universe and you get to meet Stan Lee,” he says. “It’s wonderful.”
Doctor Strange is now available on demand, and comes to Blu-ray and DVD February 28 from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.
