Bowen Yang can officially add Emmy nominee to his already-impressive résumé. After just two on-camera seasons on Saturday Night Live, the 30-year-old actor nabbed a well-deserved nomination for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series on Tuesday, making him the first featured player to do so in the show's 46 seasons.
Read More“People in Hollywood, nowadays, they all celebrate reflections and representation. I’m looking past that,” he said. “I’ve been past reflection of representation for the last 20 years. I can see myself in a mirror, thank you very much.”
Read More“As a young girl, I never got to see a Cinderella moment where the girl looked like me. This is the most important part of the story for me is being able to represent our community. It’s creating a space for Asian-Americans to tell their story and have a moment.”
Read MoreAwkwafina on Sunday night became the first Asian-American woman to win a Golden Globe Award for best actress, winning in the musical or comedy category for her role in “The Farewell.”
Read MoreLulu Wang (“The Farewell”) and Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) are both in the hunt for Best Director at the Oscars, and both of their candidacies would be historic. If they both make the cut, it would be the first time in history that two Asian filmmakers are nominated for the award at the same time.
Read MoreBeginning their careers in the 1910’s silent film era, Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa defied miscegenation laws and Yellow Peril sentiments by becoming overnight Hollywood sensations. Throughout their careers, they experienced the highs and lows of being Asian onscreen, gaining leading roles and Oscar nominations along the way. True icons often left out of history, we celebrate their lives and are inspired to build the world on our own terms.
Read More“Our immigrant parents came to America with a dream. That dream was for their children to land a first look television producing deal, scripted and unscripted, at a major Hollywood studio,” the trio said in a joint statement.
Read MoreFew Hollywood stories can match the career highs and heartbreaking lows of James Wong Howe, whom Variety recognized in its July 15, 1976, edition as “one of the world’s foremost cinematographers, and usually considered without peer in the black-and-white field.” More than 40 years later, that still holds true.
Read More“I am not what you would think of when you think of a movie star. I don’t look like one. I don’t sound like one. I don’t act like one,” she said. “I want to show girls, young Asian-American girls, that you can be literally what you don’t see there and you can still do it. You have to open the door for the next generation.”
Read MoreFinding that community of Asian American creatives wanting to work and make things together is key. Nancy Wang Yuen emphasizes that “The talent has been there. There is more support, more platforms, [people are] more nurtured. There are more Asian Americans behind-the-scenes working on Asian American projects…a desire for Asian American writers to tell the story.”
Read MoreYang joined SNL last season as a writer and will be the show's first full-time Asian American castmember. He also co-hosts the Las Culturistas podcast. He appeared on camera as Kim Jong-Un last season in a sketch with Sandra Oh.
Read More“It's also a great way for Filipino-Americans to have representation in America right now because I didn't have that sh*t growing up,” Eva says, “For me, it was finally a chance, where I felt like this made sense. This is my story, this is the girl next door's story. This is the girl in the Philippines' story. This is a Filipino story.”
Read MoreIn doing so, we’re reinforcing the basic premise of critics: that adherence to Western masculinity should be the yardstick by which manhood and sexual appeal are universally measured. Instead of rejecting objectification and fetishization—realities that Asian women face every day—Asian men are aspiring to such circumstances.
Read MoreBut there’s a clear objective to this objectification: detonation — to blow up the stereotype of the emasculated Asian man. If you’re not familiar with Hollywood’s troubled history of portraying Asian men, it’s a given that if an Asian man pops up in a mainstream movie, he’s going to be asexual.
Read More“They’re the ones who always do the right thing, stand up for the little guy and then fly away into the sunset. What could be more cool than that? I think seeing yourself represented in that way can have a profound impact on how you view your place in society, your cultural identity and what you are capable of achieving.”
Read More“There’s nothing else to call him but the butt of the joke, because everything that makes him powerful is the very thing that makes him laughable in the film,” said Yuen, who found the depiction and her theater’s reaction to it insulting. “His kung fu becomes a joke, and his philosophizing becomes a fortune cookie, and the sounds that he makes as he does kung fu are literally made fun of by Cliff. They made his arrogance look like he was a fraud.”
Read MoreThere is growing desire to see hot Asian men up on the small and big screen. However, it’s still an unfortunate world that we live in when actors of color have a more difficult time landing leading roles, as Hollywood remains overwhelmingly white.
Read MoreBut while the current wave of movies makes the necessary first steps of representation, we must interrogate whose stories are being told. Judging by the roster of what's hitting theaters, Hollywood—and the people talking about its successes—seem stuck in the problematic loop of conflating "Asian" with "East Asian," boiling down the "Asian American experience" to one phrase that doesn't actually suit all.
Read MoreThe Chinese-Canadian actor, 30, was announced as Marvel’s pick for the role of the kung fu master in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings at Saturday’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con. The upcoming film marks Marvel’s first feature with an Asian lead.
Read MoreOh, yeah. It was a full-body experience. It’s a unique experience, to leave America and go to where you are “from.” Your whole life, you’re being told that you don’t belong here [in America]. Then you go there [to China] and really realize that you don’t belong there. But then you think about how this is your history too, and you can’t forget that part about yourself. That’s what happened to me.
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