Wrestling with identity
TIFF honouree Ellen Wong says role in Netflix series was tweaked to fit her Cambodian-Canadian roots
Ellen Wong has a split personality on Netflix’s summer smash series GLOW. Inside the wrestling ring, Wong plays Fortune Cookie, a flamboyant compilation of dumb Asian stereotypes (sample dialogue: “I am cute like panda. Help me! I am fast like dragon.”) Outside, she’s Jenny Chey, perky people pleaser.
Juggling dualities seems to come naturally to Wong, who grew up in Scarborough and now lives in Los Angeles. She is back home to be feted by TIFF’s Rising Stars program — Wong is one of this year’s annual honourees despite not having a film in the festival.
Chatting about some of her favourite places in Toronto while seated at a picnic table in High Park, she abruptly swings between a high-pitched voice punctuated by giggles and earth-shaking enthusiasm.
She furrows her brow as she airs her views on the mugs at College and Bathurst’s Manic Coffee. “You get a cute little cup, with a little squirrel on it!” she shouts, appearing furious.
“You get a squirrel on your cup holding an acorn! I’m sorry, but little details like that make me happy.”
This disarming flip-flop between meek and mighty was what she says charmed
GLOW creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch when they were casting the series, which takes place behind the scenes of a campy, exploitative, all-female ’80s wrestling league. For her audition, Wong, 32, wore a one-piece bathing suit with pink spandex short-shorts and grabbed some pom-poms to play a wrestling cheerleader who bounced between a
Clueless accent and a demon voice. Wong says she has always been a little bit of this, a little bit of that. For all of Toronto’s multiculturalism, she says she never felt like she fit in at her school in Scarborough as the daughter of Cambodian immigrants.
“I either really, really wanted to be just Chinese like my Chinese friends, or I wanted to be as Canadian as possible and to have nothing to do with anything Asian because I didn’t know what my identity was,” Wong recalls.
She did a bit of community theatre in high school, moved on to study radio and television arts at Ryerson and, after some Canadian TV work, landed her breakout role as Knives Chau in the Toronto-centric superhero movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
After that, she starred for two years as Carrie Bradshaw’s BFF Mouse on the CW’s Sex and the City prequel The Carrie Diaries; appeared in Katy Perry’s new “Swish Swish” music video and has recently wrapped a two-season arc on the Space series Dark Matter.
However, GLOW is the first time she has been asked to play a Cambodian character — that’s only because Flahive and Mensch literally sat down with a laptop and spent an hour with her taking notes on how they could bring more of Wong into her role (the series has been renewed for a second season).
“There are people in this industry that are open and collaborative, and
“It’s not every day that you get to play a role that you feel like the creators are still trying to mould and figure out.” ELLEN WONG ON HER GLOW CHARACTER
want to discuss and talk and work together, and that’s such a breath of fresh air,” Wong says.
“It’s not every day that you get to play a role that you feel like the creators are still trying to mould and figure out who she is, and you get to be a part of that journey.”
It’s the right opportunity at the right time for Wong, who feels a newfound power since embracing the eclectic elements of her identity: from animal lover to taekwondo pro to a Canadian championing Cambodian culture in L.A.
“We are always looking for acceptance, but I think it starts from accepting ourselves and embracing who you are and understanding your background,” she says.
“Understanding that is a gift. Once I got there it gave me more confidence to be open about my story. Each person is unique and should be celebrated as an individual. We don’t need to fit into one thing.”