I didn’t realize I was Asian until I was eight.
I can’t remember who pointed it out to me. But once I knew, it became hard to ignore. I started noticing just how little Asian representation there was onscreen. Who were my Asian role models growing up? Jackie Chan? Lucy Liu? That’s it?
Growing up, my family spent a lot of time overseas or in small towns in the United States, mostly on military bases. My dad was a naval flight officer, my mother a homemaker with three kids. We moved every two to three years to a new state or country. By the time I was six, I’d already been to thirteen states. My parents loved sightseeing, experiencing different cultures, and trying new food. I was always surrounded by Caucasian kids and I never really considered myself any different from them. No one ever treated me differently, at least.
I didn’t encounter racism until our move to Temecula, California (which, for a city in an area known for its wine and hot-air balloons, has a lot of racial tension).
My first day as a junior at Chaparral High School, I was told: “Go back to China, chink!” I stared at the weird white guy with platinum-blond buzzed hair and said, “I’m Japanese.” He spit in my direction and walked away.
After that, racism continued to play a role in my life, but I didn’t let it affect me. People can call you names, they can assume stereotypes are true, they can be assholes. None of that mattered. Until I started acting. What mattered then was the very real but invisible wall that came down between me and my career because of my race.
My theater program in high school was the usual group of misfits: mostly horny white kids who liked classic movies and musicals and plays. They were all pretty accepting of me, and I never really clashed with any of them.
My drama teacher, on the other hand, was a different story. He had tried to make it in Hollywood as a Latino actor. But he was only able to book stereotypical Latino roles (Gangster #3, for instance) and found it too discouraging, so he left LA and became a teacher in Temecula. Now, I have nothing against him or the path he chose. I think everyone has to do what they feel is right in their life. I don’t think toughing it out in a career your heart isn’t in is the right way to live. But he was clearly angry at the way the industry had treated him and he took it out on his students, telling me that I’d never make it in Hollywood because I was Asian.
I’ve always been kind of stupid when it comes to color. When a friend of mine and I co-directed a Christmas play for our drama class, we cast a white mom and black dad with two kids—one Asian and one Mexican. We didn’t realize how absurd it was until someone pointed it out after the production.
One time I showed up at the auditions for our school’s production of The Diary of Anne Frank. Our drama teacher stared at me and said, “Why are you here?” I told him I was there to try out for the part of Anne Frank. It took me nearly six months to realize that what he was really asking was why I, an Asian person, was trying out for the role of a Jewish girl.
Maybe it was naive of me to show up for the audition. But if I could cast color-blind, why couldn’t he? After all, it was high school drama! It was make-believe. If I could pretend to be Victoria from the Spice Girls, couldn’t I pretend to be Anne Frank?
In my eyes, acting meant pretending, and if you were pretending, you could be anything you wanted to be! Why couldn’t I play a black person? Or a white person? Why couldn’t they play me? We could all be aliens, for goodness’ sake! Why couldn’t we just pick whoever was best for the role, regardless of what they looked like? I didn’t get it.
Years later, when I’d surpassed a million subscribers on YouTube and had a few TV/film credits on my resume, I was up for the lead in a movie that I will call Repeat. I’d auditioned, gone through callbacks, met with the head of the production company, and lo and behold, I booked it. My first starring role. This was a huge step for me! I’d had supporting roles before, playing the best friend or colleague, but I’d never been the star in anything I wasn’t creating myself. I told everyone: my friends, my family, people I worked with. I had booked it! I was a lead! I cried in my car on the way home from the meeting, singing pop songs at the top of my lungs.
A week later, when I was on a set for a short film I was directing, I got a call from my manager. The paperwork had come in, and they were now offering me the best friend role. Would I take it?
Wait, what?
Hold up.
Why?
My manager had no idea. He said it came out of nowhere. Was I sure that the meeting had gone well? Yes, I was absolutely sure. They’d expressed so much delight that I was going to work with them. We’d even talked about the role at length, and what we each loved about the character and the movie. We’d left shaking hands, smiling, and excited for production.
Finally, I asked, very softly, very tentatively, “Is it because I’m Asian?”
My manager was quiet on the other line. After a moment, he said, full of confusion, “Honestly…I thought that too. What else could it be?”
We got off the phone. He promised to call me when he had more information. I cried. I was Asian when I auditioned. I was Asian when I went into callbacks. I was Asian when I was in the room talking to them, shaking their hands, looking at their faces. I still am Asian. I’m always going to be Asian.
Why would they give me the role and then take it away? Could it really be for something as simple as the color of my skin?
My manager and I decided to pass on the best friend role. Repeat came back and asked that I take it. They’d cast the lead with a star; surely I could understand. Yes, she was Caucasian, but she was an experienced actor with a brand name. Although I can’t argue with the logic of casting a bigger star to sell your movie, I still felt bitter that the role I had initially been offered ultimately went to a white actress.
Eventually, after a lot of negotiating and talking to the director (who I loved and really wanted to work with), I decided to take on the best friend role. Two weeks before we were supposed to start filming, our Star Name walked away from the project. It fell apart. The director tried to pitch me as the lead so the production could go on—after all, they had given it to me once before—but the company couldn’t be convinced. The project died.
This whole experience scared me. Before this point, I had always assumed that the role went to the most talented actor. When I saw white actors being cast in shows I’d auditioned for, I’d shrug it off, assuming the girl was a better actress than me and she’d won the role fair and square. I would audition for parts that were specifically written as Asian in the script, and even those roles would end up going to white actors. I figured she probably brought that character to life in ways that no one else did. She probably WAS that character.
I’ve been in casting rooms before. I know what it’s like to find someone who just IS that person or has that look. I wanted to give casting directors and producers the benefit of the doubt. Surely you wouldn’t cast someone just because of their race.
And don’t get me wrong. Token roles are just as bad as no roles. I’ve gone out for more hypersexualized Asian women and geeky best friends than I’d like.
But there comes a time when every person of color in the entertainment industry has to ask themselves: Is my race going to limit my career?
There are parts I will never be able to play. I will never, for example, star in a period piece set in the Victorian era. I want to dress up in one of those petticoats, dammit. Have you ever seen one on an Asian? No! And if we ever were to be cast in one of those movies, we’d probably play a servant or a railroad worker or a sex geisha or a mail-order bride or something.
Now I look at the casts of TV shows and movies and I take note when there’s not a single person of color onscreen. I look at stereotypical, two-dimensional characters onscreen with resentment and rage.
I obsess over the projects Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer and Amy Poehler are in…and then I feel a twinge of sadness. Where’s the Asian one? Where’s the Indian one? Where’s the Latin one? Why are all the It girls white girls?
Sometimes I wish that I was white so badly and so earnestly that I cry. I obsess over the fact that I never have the same opportunities to do juicy roles like Brie Larson in Room or JLaw in Winter’s Bone. I’m saddened by the fact that I always imagine white people as the characters in the stories I read, unless a specific race is stated in the text or revealed in the name. I’m depressed by the fact that the only role models I had growing up were Lucy Liu and Mulan, and both were best known for their martial arts skills.
I’ve been forced to confront the very real, very scary possibility that maybe, just maybe, the way I look is going to get in the way of—and limit—what I want to do. And that’s a horrible fucking feeling. That’s a damaging, insane thought. The idea that there is a ceiling, a barrier, or a wall in the form of the color of my skin fills me with such unspeakable anger that I don’t know what to do with myself.
Then there are moments where you have to say no to roles because of your race. I booked a guest star spot on a TV show and ended up turning it down. My agent was pissed. I understood—she has to protect her relationships. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d gotten the audition while I was in New York. I should have read the material before confirming my attendance, but my agent loved the show and I trusted her opinion. We hadn’t been working together for very long at this point, so it was definitely my fault for not warning her about my boundaries. I don’t do anything I can’t show Dad; that’s my rule. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll totally do a sex scene with Chris Pratt, but in that case my dad would be the one walking out of the theater. I’d proudly sit with him at the screening, shouting, “DAD! LOOK! THAT’S CHRIS PRATT! OMG!” It’s his choice whether or not to actually watch it.
I was on the way to the audition, reading the sides, when I had a horrible realization. The guest star role was for a stereotypical hypersexualized Japanese girl. In the first scene, all I’m doing is making out with one of the douchey guys. In the second scene, I’m basically giving him a hand job offscreen, but not discreetly. I hated the material instantly, but I knew it was too late to back out. Besides, I love auditioning. And I particularly love auditioning when I don’t care about the role. Those auditions are always the most fun, but they are also the most dangerous because you are likely to book the role. When you don’t care, you’re loose and in the moment and do your best work. You’re not trying so hard to be perfect. You let the magic happen.
I went in and did the role. I nailed it. I went big and silly, and because I didn’t care, I was relaxed and funny. The casting director and associate loved me. They tentatively asked if I’d do a Japanese accent as well, just in case the role called for it, and I thought, Here we go. Since I spent four years overseas in Japan attending public school and learning the language, my accent was spot on. One of the characters I had crafted and performed in my improv group at Groundlings was Michiko, an earnest and enthusiastic foreign exchange student. She’s a crowd-pleaser.
Actors like Aziz Ansari refuse to do accents. That’s cool, that’s their call, and I respect them for it. Why can’t the person just be American? Why do they need an accent? I hear you, dude. Most of the accent-riddled characters on TV aren’t even characters. They’re stereotypes. They’re cartoons.
I have a different attitude. It’s not better, just different. Why do you have to hide a very important part of who you are because of how other people are going to see you? Does having an accent make you stupid or ignorant? No. Acting stupid or ignorant WITH an accent is offensive. Trying to be funny just because you HAVE an accent is offensive. A character with an accent is just…a character with an accent. An accent is like a piece of wardrobe. It’s supposed to accentuate the character, not be the entire thing.
I’ve encountered a lot of comedians who won’t joke about race. Some of them say, “I’ll never do jokes about my race. It’s cheap. And I don’t want to become that comic who jokes about their ethnicity.”
I love jokes about race. I think there’s a tactful way to do them. I may not always hit a home run with them, but as with any category of joke—dating, sex, friendships, family, relationships—you’re either relying on clichés or you’re rising above them.
With all that said, my Japanese accent kills. Michiko is the character I use whenever someone wants an accent. She’s a person I can play with the accent. She’s confident, fun, and engaging, and I’ve often used her in my videos when delivering sponsored messages, because she’s loud and jovial.
So I did the accent. I didn’t care. I played the hypersexualized hand-job-giving bartender in this audition and made her the best version of Michiko possible.
I booked the role. Of course.
I read the full script, and she had two other scenes in the episode. After the make-out and hand-job scenes, she reappears and lowers out of frame to give the guy a blow job. Raising the stakes! Heightening! Wowee, didn’t see that coming. In her last scene, she shows up at the guy’s house to move in. Because now that she’s fulfilled her sex goddess duties to a man she’s known for twenty-four hours, she has to complete the “crazy bitch” stereotype and assume that they are now in love.
I turned down the role.
As I said, my agent was disappointed. She likes the show, and she didn’t want to jeopardize her relationship to the casting agency. But I don’t regret my decision. I know I would’ve had fun on set, and I know that I would have been funny. But I couldn’t in good conscience perpetuate a stereotype that I actively fight against. I didn’t want to take that job and compromise my integrity.
Now, I totally understand when people have to take those jobs. After all, the first movie gig I ever booked was a scene where I was being taught how to drive by a racist. The entire movie was riddled with horrible race jokes (written by white people) and perpetuated harmful stereotypes. But when I booked it, I took the job. It paid my rent for a month, and I don’t regret it. Now that I have the luxury of choice, I can be more mindful of what roles I want to take part in. Not everyone has that opportunity, and I get that.
Will the color of my skin affect my career? Yes, of course it will. I can’t deny that now. The whitewashing of Asian roles in entertainment (Emma Stone in Aloha, Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell, Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in Doctor Strange) speaks volumes. But that only furthers my desire to inspire other Asian Americans to pursue their dreams in the creative industry, make conscious diverse choices in my own projects, and be a voice that stands up for my community.
I’m proud to be an Asian American woman. So much of who I am comes from the color of my skin: my values, my work ethic, my point of view. I don’t know who I’d be without those things.
I used to tell myself that I would succeed despite my race. Now I know I’ll succeed because of it.