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“Purist comic-book fans are one thing; out-and-out racism is another,” the 38-year-old actor told journalist Leslie Gornstein in a Q&A published Sunday. “Of course, the more I speak on this topic, the more I fuel it. But, look, if people have a problem with me playing the character, just don’t go see the movie, you know?”

There’s a website calling for a boycott  of Marvel for inserting “left-wing social engineering into European mythology” with the casting of Elba and the dust-up has been covered in the British press dating back to last year.

Early on Elba took the stance that in a film as fantastical as “Thor” it seems a bit odd to fixate on one authenticity topic. The Guardian picked up this quote in April 2010:  ”There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character? Hang about, Thor’s mythical, right? Thor has a hammer that flies to him when he clicks his fingers. That’s OK, but the color of my skin is wrong? I was cast in ‘Thor’ and I’m cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don’t look like me but there you go. I think that’s a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that’s good.”

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