Hallmark's New Mahjong Movie Forgot to Cast Asians
By J. J. Ghosh | 24 Apr, 2026

"All's Fair in Love and Mahjong" premieres during AAPI Heritage Month with a predominantly white cast and a redesigned tile set.

The poster for "All's Fair in Love and Mahjong"

Hallmark Channel has a new movie coming out in May called All’s Fair in Love and Mahjong.

The film’s plot, per Hallmark’s own description, follows a school nurse who “turns her love of the game Mahjong into a new path, inspired by a jovial contractor fixing up her home.”

A still from the new film which premieres during AAPI Heritage month despite little depiction of actual Chinese culture. 

I’d be lying if I said I remembered the last time I watched a Hallmark movie.  I am absolutely not their target demographic.  But still, this sounded like a win for representation.

I could already picture the Hallmark aesthetic: images of a multigenerational mahjong table in a Guangdong living room.  Maybe a fireplace and some cheesy dialogue from a crotchety but well-meaning auntie.

I was curious who was in the film.

The film stars Fiona Gubelmann, Paul Campbell, Tamera Mowry-Housley, Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe, and Melissa Peterman.

"Doesn’t sound like a very Asian cast," I thought, before scolding myself for judging someone by their name.  Would I have known that Tiger Woods or Nikki Haley were Asian American just from reading their name on paper?  Of course not.

But there was simply no way that a movie about Mahjong would star just one Chinese American, Yan-Kay Crystal…right?

Wrong, it turns out.

Mahjong

The climax of Crazy Rich Asians featured a Mahjong showdown between character splayed by Michelle Yeoh and Constance Wu (pictured)

Mahjong is not a generic “Asian” aesthetic — it’s specifically Chinese, with a history stretching back nearly 200 years.

The tiles carry Chinese symbols representing currency, numbers, and cultural values.  For Chinese families across the diaspora, it is a national pastime — a game that connects blue-collar workers and billionaires alike, passed down through generations.  It is the sound of Sunday afternoons at grandma’s house.  It is how elders communicate across language barriers.

We know what mahjong done right looks like because we’ve seen it.  The climactic scene of Crazy Rich Asians is built entirely around a mahjong game between Rachel and Eleanor, and it is widely considered the best scene in the film.

Director Jon M. Chu hired a mahjong choreographer to ensure the hand played out in a way that commented on what each woman was saying — with layers of symbolism in the tiles that rewarded Chinese and Chinese American viewers with an insider depth that didn’t exclude anyone else.

As one cultural commentator noted, mahjong “is a national pastime for all Chinese people everywhere, not just in China, but also the Chinese diaspora — it’s a game that brings families together across all sectors of society.”

That’s the weight the Crazy Rich Asians mahjong scene carried.  It worked because the people who made the film understood the game from the inside.

The film features a new mahjong set designed by an e-commerce site called Miss Mahjong, using non-traditional symbols in a purple, green, and white color scheme — a palette that has the energy of an Anthropologie throw pillow rather than anything connected to the game.

This sadly isn’t the first time in this decade that Mahjong has been very prominently whitewashed.

In 2021, a brand called The Mahjong Line — founded by three white women — came under fire for redesigning mahjong tiles meant to suit the aesthetic preferences of its founders, at a price point critics called out of touch with the working-class accessibility of the game.

It’s not even the first time this year.  Just last month the New York Times ran a Sunday magazine cover story on mahjong featuring two white American women who “design” mahjong tiles to match a home’s décor, reducing them to an aesthetic flourish rather than a reflection of their roots.

The casting issues, of course, are the bigger story.

A Hollywood Tradition

Sadly, this is far from the first time that Hollywood has done this.  For every Crazy Rich Asians, it feels like there are 10 problematic counters.

In recent years, Emma Stone was cast as a Chinese-Hawaiian woman in Aloha.  Tilda Swinton played a Tibetan mystic in Doctor Strange and Scarlett Johansson played a character named Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell, which ultimately lost more than $60 million at the box office.

Analysts pointed to the whitewashing controversy as a meaningful factor in its underperformance.  Hollywood has been told, repeatedly and financially, that this approach doesn’t work.

The AAPI entertainment community wasted no time letting their feelings be known.  Philip Wang of Wong Fu Productions responded to the poster with two words: “collective ancestral sigh.”

Scholar and author Nancy Wang Yuen wrote simply: “What in the appropri-Asian.”

Actor Simu Liu posted that Asian actors are “fighting a deeply prejudiced system” and called the backslide in representation “f–king appalling.”

Glee star Jenna Ushkowitz reacted with a simple “This is…” which honestly covers it.

Comedian Jenny Yang imagined what a culturally authentic depiction of mahjong might look like: “Excited to see them play mahjong wearing white undertanks and flip flops with a cigarette in their mouth and a single foot hiked up on their own seats.”

The Timing

On top of everything else, the film is scheduled to premiere on May 9 — right in the middle of AAPI Heritage Month.

Hallmark did respond to the backlash, because it had to.  A spokesperson told CBC News that the film “honours the heritage of Mahjong by recognizing the game’s Chinese origin and its unique ability to connect cultures, generations and communities.”

We haven’t seen the film yet so it’s certainly possible that they do honor the game’s Chinese origins in some ways.  But everything we’ve seen so far — what they’ve chosen to make public — doesn’t exactly instill confidence.

Like I said, I don’t usually watch Hallmark movies.  But I might have to make an exception in this case. 

Some things you just have to see to believe.