I’m not sure if there’s a competition for the cringiest thing to say when discussing why you were hired to direct a 🎥 from a major Hollywood studio, but surely this (more discussion here) would be a very strong contender.
“Although it’s a critically important Chinese story and it’s set in Chinese culture and history, there is another culture at play here, which is the culture of Disney, and that the director, whoever they were, needed to be able to handle both — and here I am.”
Even accepting the argument that not every movie has to be written and directed by people related to the culture depicted, this is just such a nonsense equivalency; that it originated with the producer doesn’t make it worth echoing.