There’s a particular kind of Hollywood apology that arrives with the frantic energy of someone speed-texting their publicist while pacing across a kitchen floor.
By now we all know the tone: a little contrite, a little panicked, and deeply aware that a single comment - eight thoughtless words, in this case - can set fire to an entire reputation.
This week, one long-respected actor found himself exactly there, watching a career built over three decades wobble on its axis after he tried to be funny.
The setup was harmless enough: an Instagram wildlife personality, Mike Holston (aka @TheRealTarzan, which boasts 16 million Instagram followers), with millions of followers, posted a photo a shot of himself and an animal, captioned “Name this animal…wrong answers only.”
A playground prompt. A game, essentially, until actor, BD Wong, whose résumé includes prestige TV, mega-budget blockbusters, and the sort of roles that earn Comic-Con queues, decided to toss in the punchline: “It appears to be a Black man.”
Eight words. A career’s worth of goodwill evaporated on impact. By the time Wong’s name started trending, his reply to the comment black creator’s prompt was already gone.
Wong, Emmy-nominated for Mr. Robot, beloved as Dr. George Huang on Law & Order: SVU, and the original Dr. Henry Wu in Jurassic Park and the Jurassic World trilogy, surfaced on Threads soon after, sounding exactly like a man who’d watched the avalanche come for him in real time.
“Y’all I made a very bad joke,” he wrote. He admitted to pulling the classic hot-water manoeuvre - delete first, regret later - before confessing that he’d tried to follow the “wrong answers only” cue by offering “the wrongest answer.” It worked, he noted, only in being “Super Wrong.”
And then came the part no PR team can coach: the plain shock of someone realising they’d stepped on a racial landmine they absolutely should’ve seen. “I know nobody gets a free pass,” he wrote. “I’m sorry if this #wtfbd moment tarnished any respect you may’ve had for me.”
Hours later, he expanded the apology, dropping the defensive crouch and speaking directly to the harm. He called the line “terrible,” “despicable,” and “deeply injurious,” admitting he should’ve known better, and that trying to explain it would only make things worse.
He was met with a barrage of angry comments on his Instagram page: “That was a not a cool tweet reply dude. And the fact that you had that ‘joke’ just simmering under the surface is shameful. I really liked your work and am incredibly disappointed that you did that,” wrote one fan.”
“You like to tell racist jokes??? It wasn’t funny,” wrote another. “So if we start making asian jokes we’d be wong right !!” asked a third, while a fourth added: “Ah Asian racism against Black ppl.
I really don’t know why any of us are surprised. But the gag is ppl are taking heavy notes, no longer supporting people (no matter the race) who lead with hate. Your apology doesn’t work, take it down and eat it .”
It’s a brutal comedown for an actor beloved across generations: the soft-spoken forensic psychiatrist on SVU, the hacker mastermind of Mr. Robot, the scientist who helped unleash dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
A man who’s played everything from comic-book villains to prestige-drama enigmas - now humbled by a single line on a public platform. This may blow over, or it could be in the words of one of his former fans: “Whelp another one bites the dust!!!”
