‘I’M A WHOLE HUMAN BEING, NOT A BAG OF YELLOW SKIN’
Eddie Huang isn’t happy with me.
It seems the host of Huang’s World on Viceland is tired of answering questions about race. Not to mention ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, the show based on his biography about growing up Asian-American.
“I find it mildly disrespectful that you’re asking me to speak for all of Asian America. I’m a whole human being, not a bag of yellow skin,” he said in an interview.
He’s not alone. I was in Los Angeles when Black-ish creator Kenya Barris seemed to have a breakdown when asked a question about diversity at the Television Critics Association tour.
“I am constantly having to talk about diversity,” Barris said. “It’s ridiculous.”
(Still, it’s probably fair to say if you end up calling your series Black-ish or Fresh off the Boat, be prepared to get some questions on diversity.)
Huang has been outspoken on his views on race in the past, in eloquent articles in New York Magazine, and more recently an op-ed piece in the New York Times talking about the emasculization of the Asian male in media. His Vice series Huang’s World also looks at identity politics.
But this time around, the combative host is having none of it. There were no restrictions on the scope of the interview, but one question seems to set him off. It’s asking his opinion on the controversial equal pay dispute that saw Hawaii Five-0 stars Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park leave the series.
The two stars reportedly left the long-running show because they were not paid the same as their white fellow cast members.
“I’m not signing up for a charity on how much Asians are being paid in Hollywood,” Huang said. “It’s very interesting who the Asian coalition and Asian organizations support in Hollywood. They weren’t supporting me when I was fighting for Fresh Off the Boat on the content.”
Fresh Off the Boat, it seems, is still a sore point with Huang. It was the first American sitcom featuring Asian leads since Margaret Cho’s All American Girl two decades earlier.
But when I first interviewed Huang in Los Angeles before the first season of the show premiered, he heavily criticized the series for being inauthentic: Viewers, he said, “don’t want Panda Express and Moo Goo Gai Pan.”
Ties with producers of the show have also been strained. In Season 1, Huang was the voice-over narrator. But he didn’t return for a second season.
And he says he doesn’t watch the series, which has been renewed for a fourth season.
“I watched the pilot and the next two episodes and I never watched again,” Huang said.
“I watched part of the episode where they went back to Taiwan because I love the Grand Hotel location, but I lasted five minutes with it. I can’t watch that show.”