Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, TV | Tagged: Alaqua Cox, devery jacobs, disney, Echo, Marvel Studios, Marvel's What If

Echo/What If …? Star Devery Jacobs: Maya Lopez, Kahhori Stories Matter

Echo & Marvel's What If ...? star Devery Jacobs pushes back on critics, explaining the need to tell Kahhori & Maya Lopez's different stories.

It's embarrassing when anyone has to justify someone's existence, especially for Devery Jacobs, who's emerged coincidentally in back-to-back Marvel projects voicing the indigenous hero Kahhori on the animated anthology series Marvel's What If …? and Bonnie, a cousin of the title character Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), in the live-action series Echo. Ignorant racists online apparently felt having two Native American character heroes would be "repetitive" despite having distinguishingly different backgrounds. The Reservation Dogs star addressed the issue in a far classier way than most would.

Echo & What If …? Star Devery Jacobs Spells Out to Racists Maya & Kahhori's Stories

"Would somebody go up to a white guy and say, 'This is the one perspective for a white story that is out there'? Would somebody go and say that?" Jacobs told The Hollywood Reporter at the Echo premiere. "That's egregious; that's insane that anybody would say that." The actress spelled out the differences between Kahhori and Maya. "I don't even know if it's justifiable for an answer, but I'll give one anyway," she continued. "I think that the story of Kahhori in 'What If …?' is astronomically different from that of Maya Lopez in Echo. I think one is talking about colonization and history and features Mohawk cultures and communities — the community that I come from — and the other is about an antihero, kind of a villain, who is coming back to her Choctaw Nation and to her family, and it's really a dark crime noir family drama," she added. "And so, they're both individual stories that absolutely deserve to be told."

If people needed a reminder of why representation continues to be an issue in pop culture and Hollywood, can you imagine any other POC actor being asked the same question? Echo, which also stars Chaske Spencer, Tantoo Cardinal, Zahn McClarnon, Cody Lightning, Graham Greene, and Vincent D'Onofrio, is available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu. Both seasons of Marvel's What If …? are available on Disney+.

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