interview with john cho

Great interview with John Cho (Star Trek, Harold and Kumar) in Asia Pacific Arts ("The Game-Changer") (h/t angry asian man). My favorite excerpt, which speaks to why Cho has been so successful at transforming the industry for APIA actors:

Right, right, right. I've heard it all. It's funny. It's almost perverse how much I've thought about my Asian American audience, and my whole career, every job -- every audition -- that I've ever been offered, I think about how it will serve the community or not. If people will appreciate it or find it offensive, and it's almost the single factor by which I take jobs or not. Because as soon as I started, I realized it was so important to people. From my experiences as a boy, I realized that those images meant something to me. Mostly, it's not grandiose to where I thought I could affect positive change. I was really just trying to avoid doing damage to the Asian American psyche. I just figured, I don't need to contribute to that. But it's funny, as much as I've thought about Asian America, I've had to ignore them as well, after I make my decision, because you can interpret it any way you want it. Earlier, we talked about how I felt like I was battling a stereotype that Asians weren't funny and can't do comedy and couldn't make the jokes. We're always the butt of jokes, and we're never the funny guy. And I was in Korea a few weeks ago at a junket and one of the journalists asked me, "Why is it that Asians are always the funny people?" And I thought, "well, this is really strange." Whatever it is, it's like statistics. Sports statistics, you can see the pattern you want to see. You can tell the story you want to tell based on these numbers. So, I've heard that. Harold and Kumar, I believe, is largely a positive portrayal and there are people who don't appreciate it. What can you do?