Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan Noonien Singh
Even though the original actor who depicted Khan Noonien Singh in the 1960s Star Trek series wasn’t actually Asian, he was still a person of color… unlike Benedict Cumberbatch, who was cast as the Indian genetically engineered superhuman. J.J. Abrams received flack for casting a white British man as an Indian for obvious reasons. Rachel Edidin of Wired said, “The racial politics of casting a British guy as an Indian man originally played by a Mexican actor are dubious as hell.”