During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we like to take the time to appreciate the cultural identity and experience that informs some of our favorite characters as well as the remarkable talent that comes from those backgrounds. This AAPI Heritage Month, we’d like to recognize six of our favorite Asian American and Pacific Islander actors who have brought the heroes and villains of the DC Universe to film and television.
 

Kristin Kreuk, Smallville (Lana Lang)

As the original primary female lead of Smallville, we don’t think it’s unfair to say that Kreuk’s performance as Lana helped set the tone for the entire CW era of superhero television. All the tumultuous romance and drama to come between the likes of Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak and Barry Allen and Iris West (just to name a few) began with a cheerleader wearing a Kryptonite necklace.

Six seasons of whirlwind melodrama, culminating in a shocking marriage to Lex Luthor, was a definitive element of the first half of the series. The historical tragedy of Lana, created as an artifact of Superman’s past, is that she is fated to never get the boy. And while the comics have recently striven to give Lana a sweeter endgame, that tragedy was one that Kreuk took full advantage of in her time on the show.
 

Ryan Potter, Titans (Beast Boy)

Now that we’ve had some distance from the series, we can admit that the fact that Titans’ Beast Boy was only able to turn into a green tiger, sometimes, for most of the show’s run, was pretty funny. But nobody’s problem with Beast Boy was ever Ryan Potter, who played that character to the hilt.

Especially when sharing screen time with Teagan Croft as Raven, Potter achieved with aplomb what every Titans adaptation strives for: he made his teenage hero feel like a teenager. Though the show’s focus mostly lied with the team’s other members at first, patient Gar and Potter fans who stuck it out to the show’s final year were richly rewarded with a story that took him deep into the heart of the Red (and even, just for a moment, face to face with Grant Morrison). We’re just glad he finally got some space to shine.
 

BD Wong, Gotham (Hugo Strange)

Before BD Wong was chilling us with his ethics-be-damned geneticist in the Jurassic World movies, he was the greatest Hugo Strange ever brought to the screen. As a series focused often on the development of Gotham City’s most notorious criminals before the rise of Batman, Wong plays a pivotal role as Hugo Strange from the second season of Gotham onward as the chief of psychiatry at Arkham Asylum, often present, if not directly responsible, for the shape of the city’s madness to come. Even after four seasons on Gotham, you could say Wong still lives to this day in the shadow of Dr. Strange.
 

Ella Jay Basco, Birds of Prey (Cassandra Cain)

Fair warning, Cass fans, in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), Ella Basco does not play the Cassandra Cain you know from the comics. But sometimes, a character changes significantly in adaptation specifically so they can better serve the story. Basco’s Cassandra is one you can only appreciate when you let yourself shed your preconceived notions of that character. But on her own merit, she delivers one of the film’s strongest performances as a much-needed counterbalance to Harley Quinn, demonstrating exactly the kind of person who can draw inspiration from the liberating chaos she represents.

Basco’s Cassandra would eventually find synthesis with the more traditional Cass in Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner’s Black Label Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey, demonstrating how new approaches to a character—different as they may be at first—can in turn work to enrich the original.
 

Manu Bennett, Arrow (Slade Wilson)

One of the most popular topics among Arrow fans is, with its vastly different arcs each year, what stands out as the best of its eight seasons. (Me, I’m a season five man.) But far and away, the most popular answer we tend to hear is the second. Why? One reason first and foremost: the intense antagonistic performance of Manu Bennett as Slade Wilson, singularly fixated on destroying Oliver Queen’s life in every imaginable way.

With one of the first images of the series’ pilot episode a lingering look at the iconic Deathstroke mask left on Oliver’s island, Slade had long hung like a spectre over the events of the series, paying off in a big way through the second season showdown between Arrow and what many still regard as his greatest nemesis. In the six seasons to follow, Bennett would return to the series on special, rare occasions by popular demand, representing to many the point where the series’ drama was at its highest.
 

Jason Momoa, Aquaman

Before 2016, nobody’s first choice to play the King of Atlantis would have been the horse guy from Game of Thrones. But try telling that to the tens of millions of people who saw Aquaman in 2018. Though a far distance from his traditional image, it wasn’t too long ago that Momoa did what many whose best memories of Aquaman were hazy recollections of Super Friends believed could never be done—he made Aquaman cool.

All of this has us wondering, what would happen if you took one of the most audacious dudes in Hollywood, but this time, cast him as a character he was born to play? If Momoa could launch Aquaman into a billion dollars, what could he do for someone like…well, I don’t know, Lobo? Something to think about. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is projected for release on June 26th, 2026.
 

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.