"Not Everyone Needs To Be White": How To Train Your Dragon's ...

How to Train Your Dragon remake director Dean DeBlois responds to the Astrid casting backlash by clarifying his team's overall casting strategy. In adapting the 2010 DreamWorks film to live-action, the team has kept a lot the same, while also making a few notable changes. Familiar elements include the character design for the lovable dragon, Toothless, as well as Stoick actor Gerard Butler returning to the role. Astrid's casting, however, is shifted from the original version of her. In the animated movie, she is a white woman with blonde hair, but in the live-action version, she is played by Nico Parker, who is of mixed race.

In a roundtable interview for the How to Train Your Dragon trailer preview event attended by ScreenRant, director DeBlois spoke about Astrid's casting, which has prompted some online backlash. The director praised Parker, noting she "could actually play" the character "with confidence," and pointed out that "not everyone needs to be white in this community" because it is "an expanded mythology." Check out his response below:

Astrid was one of those situations where, in the first movie, it felt like she was pretty thin, but she potentially had more [depth]. This was a chance to just get in there [and] to better understand why she's got such an acrimonious relationship with Hiccup in the beginning. She's worked really hard for the attention that she gets.

With Stoick, she's the kid he would have loved to have had, but he ended up with Hiccup. Hiccup is never focused on this destiny. His mind goes elsewhere. He has the benefit of privilege. He's the son of the chief, and so he coasts by, and it's a great dynamic because Astrid can really call him out on that. In her mind, she's going to be chief one day. She's been really focused and working hard to get there, and she has to give up a lot to fall from grace with Hiccup. It excited me in that way. It's a better character to watch.

Then we found Nico Parker, who could actually play all of that with confidence. People who are online who are complaining she's not blonde enough or not white enough, just wait till they see the performance. The performance tells me [everything I need to know]. It's also an expanded mythology, so not everyone needs to be white in this community. They are a gathering of warriors from all of these different places, under the same Viking banner.

It sort of broadens the world, and it gives them a real purpose for why they're on this island in the first place. They're now generations in, they've been mixing it all in. All that sort of nonsense [surrounding the diverse casting], I just discount it. They don't know what they don't know. Once you see the movie, the things answer themselves.

He then went on to elaborate on the remake's expanded mythology, which was based on both history and real-world dragon lore, and gestured at how that change actually made the movie better:

The truth is, the Vikings did travel far and wide. They were on the Silk Road. They're in the Far East. They're in North Africa. They even had a name for North Africa, which is called Bláland. They interacted with all of these cultures and traded with all of these cultures. So it makes sense. [In this world], there are dragons. It's the truth. Dragons are a part of so many cultures that, in my mind, if they were a menace to all these cultures, that could be sort of the basis of them coming together for the purpose of wiping the dragons out.

Then it gives a sense of urgency and purpose to the start of the story in Berk. In generations, they haven't even found the nest, never mind actually killing off all the dragons. They're being beaten at their own game. It puts Stoick under a lot of pressure, and it makes Hiccup's screw-ups more consequential. It ratcheted up the tension.

What This Means For How To Train Your Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon Is An Expanded Mythology, Not A Historical Fact

In defending Parker's casting as Astrid, DeBlois brings out one clear point: This is a fantasy world. The detractors of the How to Train Your Dragon live-action casting are too focused on the "historical accuracy" of the Viking community, which they believe was predominantly white. The movies may be historically inspired, but they already make obvious departures from the truth by living in a world that includes dragons. As such, DeBlois and his team did not pay attention to Astrid's race when deciding who was best fit for the role.

While Astrid's race should not matter at all in this fantasy world, it is also interesting to hear DeBlois talk about how her non-whiteness could be historically based. This is due to the Vikings traveling via the Silk Road, which expanded to places including North Africa. Because "dragons are a part of so many cultures," Astrid as a descendant of a multicultural effort to resist dragons has logic to it.

Parker is also not the only person of color to be cast in the live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon. The film is also set to feature Deadpool 2 actor Julian Dennison, who is a Native New Zealander of Maori descent. Dennison will enter Berk to play Fishlegs in the movie, and as in the case of Astrid, the original Fishlegs is a blond-haired white person. The casting of Dennison in the role shows that the live-action How to Train Your Dragon was not married to the characters' original races when casting the film, beyond just Astrid herself.

Astrid's Race Is Not The Only Character Change

Her Backstory Will Be Given More Depth

DeBlois and his team did not just change the race of Astrid when adapting her character for live-action. At the beginning of his quote, DeBlois, who also directed the animated original alongside Chris Sanders, mentions that she was "pretty thin" in 2010 version. He saw this as an opportunity to give the character more depth, and as a result, took the time to flesh out Astrid and her motivations. Now, How to Train Your Dragon will give more insight into "why she's got such an acrimonious relationship with Hiccup in the beginning."

That said, it becomes more clear that this is not just a race-swapped character. Rather, the live-action How to Train Your Dragon will present a new version of Astrid entirely. Her physical differences make even more sense in this context, because the team is not so much trying to make a statement, but instead creating a new character out of the outline that the original film gave them. Some of these changes are already evident in the most recent How to Train Your Dragon trailer.

Our Take On The Astrid Casting Backlash

This Echoes Backlash For Other Live-Action Remakes

The resistance to a non-white person playing Astrid is unfortunately reflective of how audiences often treat casting that changes the race of a traditionally white character. There was similar vitriol when Halle Bailey, a young Black woman, was cast as the new Ariel in the 2023 live-action The Little Mermaid, despite the character being a complete fantasy to begin with. With more of this race-blind or race-flexible casting being done in major movies like How to Train Your Dragon, hopefully some of this often prejudicial resistance will die down over the years as people become more accustomed to it.

Beyond the racially biased complaints, audiences have raised some legitimate qualms with the remake of How to Train Your Dragon. While DeBlois has confirmed the film will not be a complete shot-for-shot remake, many franchise fans have argued this movie is unnecessary. The film's decision to create a CGI model for Toothless that is nearly identical to his animated counterpart, for example, led some to posit that this live-action version is just a less charming revisit of the original.

So far, however, they have only had access to trailers, and highlighting the two versions' similarities could just be a marketing tactic. It will take until How to Train Your Dragon's release this summer to determine whether the full feature can win over its skeptics.