Dr. Ken actress embraces diversity, ‘gwishins’
Dr. Ken Fridays, ABC
As a BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. child, Suzy Nakamura recalls, she was content to quietly observe and leave the talking to others. These days, the actress and comedian is making noise as a smart, self-possessed sitcom wife on ABC’s Dr. Ken.
It’s a career milestone for Nakamura, co-starring on a successful series after being part of about 20 pilots and a few short-lived series — which, she says cheerfully, brought her variety as well as paycheques.
“I haven’t gotten bored,” she said. “And I’m very proud of that (the tally). It’s difficult to get a pilot every year.”
If she’s finally in a durable show, she’s glad it’s Dr. Ken. The comedy about an Asian-American family does more than use ethnicity as window-dressing, Nakamura said, which she’s found to be the norm. Characters she played often were “my face with some white person’s story,” Nakamura said.
“What we need is to have the stories be more diverse.”
This Friday’s Halloweenthemed episode of Dr. Ken, starring and produced by physician-turned-actor Ken Jeong (The Hangover, Knocked Up), exemplifies just that, she said.
“We’re doing a Korean ghost story, and (the producers) researched the crap out of it” to make it authentic, she said, down to the look and contents of a Korean peasant hut. “It’s not the money or the time given. It’s the respect to someone else’s story.”
In the story, Nakamura’s character frets that son Dave (Albert Tsai) is leaving childhood behind because he appears blasé about Halloween. Ken’s father, D.K. (Dana Lee) comes to the rescue with a tale about Korean “gwishins” — often-fearsome spirits that linger in the world — with the ghosts portrayed by the Park family and friends.
Watching the actress hold her own as psychiatrist Allison opposite the high-energy Jeong’s Ken, or chatting during an interview, it’s hard to picture the child who was so softspoken in a grade-school production of HMS Pinafore that the teacher told her she needed to scream to be heard.
Jeong is a big fan of his Dr. Ken co-star, who played his spouse in a deleted scene of filmmaker Judd Apatow’s Funny People.
“Our chemistry was so good I told her she has to play my wife again in the future,” Jeong said.
“She has a unique ability to steal a scene and keep it grounded at the same time.”