One of the world’s top photo agencies is getting a dressing down after it mislabeled Oscars photos of “Last Jedi” actress Kelly Marie Tran with Olympic skater Mirai Nagasu.
Getty Images made the goof Sunday night after the women showed up at the Oscars in similarly hued periwinkle dresses. However, there was a world of difference between the Vietnamese-American Tran’s halter dress and Japanese-American Nagasu’s V-neck dress.
There are also physical differences between the two women.
The mistake inspired many face-palms on Twitter, because it reminded people of that old racial stereotype that all Asians look alike.
The frustration was palpable.
Getty Images released a statement Monday apologizing to Tran and Nagasu:
“Getty Images sincerely apologizes for the images of Kelly Marie Tran that incorrectly identified her as Olympian Mirai Nagasu and was licensed by customers who trusted the accuracy of the caption information.
“Getty Images holds itself to a high standard of editorial integrity and has robust measures in place to ensure our content ingestion process upholds these standards. We, like all news agencies, regret when these measures fail to capture an error.
“We distribute the work of a number of excellent image partners who are also covering major events such as The Oscars and as soon as the caption error was brought to our attention, the caption was amended and the correct images provided to our customers.
“We apologize to Ms Tran and Ms Nagasu for this error and meant no disrespect.”
Meanwhile, Tran and Nagasu did meet on the red carpet and had a mutual love fest.
“This is my sister! Asian representation,” Mirai told AccessOnline.com. She joked about the similar color scheme on her and Tran’s dresses.
“We got the memo,” she said.
This isn’t the first time Getty has screwed up the IDs of Asian women in photo captions.
The photo agency previously mixed up actress Kimiko Glenn from “Orange Is The New Black” with “Downsizing” star Hong Chau, something Glenn noted on her Instagram page.
This story has been updated with a statement from Getty, which later updated its statement to correct the spelling of Tran. An earlier version also misspelled Mirai Nagasu’s first name.
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