‘A CULTURAL MILESTONE’
Comedian-actor Ken Jeong rides the crest of a wave generated by Crazy Rich Asians
Considering he’s just come off a summer that saw him co-starring in one of 2018’s biggest box office hits, you’d be forgiven for thinking funnyman Ken Jeong ’s year had peaked with Crazy Rich Asians.
The film, based on Kevin Kwan’s bestselling novel, made a dent both culturally — it was the first Hollywood film in 25 years to feature an all-Asian cast — and financially.
But Jeong, fresh off a Toronto gig as part of JFL42, says his high point this year has been rediscovering his standup comedy roots.
“This is my first time doing standup in 10 years,” he says of the act that is being filmed by Crazy Rich Asians’ director Jon M. Chu for a Netflix special. “I got bitten by the bug again.”
Unlike the raunchy routine he used to perform onstage, the one that caught the eye of Judd Apatow and led to Jeong being cast in 2007’s Knocked Up and 2009’s The Hangover, the comic says that the material fans will hear in his current show is drawn from his personal life.
“My act is a love letter to my wife and I talk about her fight against breast cancer,” the star of Community and Dr. Ken says. “So needless to say this show is more heartfelt and real.”
Before he headed out on the road, Jeong called from Los Angeles to reminisce about his first big break, the impact of Crazy Rich Asians and tell us why we’ll likely never see Leslie Chow from The Hangover again.
Q You were a real doctor. For most immigrant families, becoming a doctor is the dream. So how did you go from practising medicine to doing standup and then going on to movies and TV? A It wasn’t a dream for me to become a physician, it was more my parents’ dream. I always joked that I was Korean-ed into becoming a doctor (laughs). I discovered acting in high school. I started doing improv and when I went to college I thought about taking an acting class, but I was pre-med at the same time. It was a very difficult time for me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
I wanted to try out acting, but the Korean side of me was telling me, ‘I don’t know if this is a viable profession for a guy that looks like me.’ There weren’t a lot of short Asian guys acting. So I didn’t know if that was what Hollywood was looking for. That’s why a movie like Crazy Rich Asians is so important because I don’t want any Asian in America or Canada thinking that. I want them to know that there’s a place in this business for them and that if they follow their heart, anything can happen. I’m living proof of that. In a lot of ways, I’m not supposed to be here. My career has been a very, very pleasant surprise.
Q What was your biggest break?
A I always say that Knocked Up opened the door, but The Hangover burst it wide open. Knocked Up was the first movie I did and after my performance in that movie, Judd Apatow said to me, ‘You’re my discovery’ and he put me in all his movies. I will never forget what Judd Apatow did for me. He basically told Hollywood, ‘If I can work with him, so can you.’ That led to Todd Phillips casting me in The Hangover and that just changed my life. The last 10 years of my career are thanks to the combination of Judd and those movies.
Q Crazy Rich Asians has been a huge hit. What were your expectations for that movie?
A The expectations we had for Crazy Rich Asians has been exceeded for all of us. None of the actors in that movie could have predicted the success. I have never experienced anything like this in my career. But even if this movie wasn’t a box-office hit, it still would have been a cultural milestone. This was the first all-Asian film since the Joy Luck Club 25 years ago, that right there, even if the movie hadn’t been a success, is still a cultural milestone. But the fact that it was such a hit, that’s the dream.
We all wanted this movie, not just for us, we wanted this movie to ripple out to other talented Asian-American filmmakers so that they could get their films and TV shows made on a studio level. The heart that went into this movie — by all of us — we knew that this had the potential to be something bigger and it is. My co-star Nico Santos said, ‘It’s a rising tide that lifts all boats’ and he was right.
Q I loved Leslie Chow in The Hangover. Will we ever see him again?
A I would love to do a Mr. Chow spinoff. But I think knowing Todd, Hangover III was the last one. You want to leave on your own terms. So often in this business they want you to go on and on and on until you can’t monetize any more out of it. My show — Dr. Ken — was cancelled and I kind of wish that I had gone out on my own terms. But there’s something about leaving The Hangover just right. I think the way Todd left those characters was just perfect.
Q And what about the sequel to Crazy Rich Asians? Is your character Goh Wye Mun coming back for part 2?
A There is a sequel. Everything is in development right now. If they ask me, of course I will be down. Jon Chu has become one of my dear friends. Nina Jacobson, the producer, Jon and Kevin Kwan, the author, fought the good fight on this one. There were producers in Hollywood that wanted to make the female lead white and they fought off the typical whitewashing instinct. Now we have a movie that turned out to be a cultural milestone.