MICHELLE YEOH CEMENTS OSCAR FRONTRUNNER STATUS
When (not if, mind you) she wins on Sunday, March 12 (Monday morning in Manila), Michelle, a proud Malaysian, will become the first unambiguous Asian to win the highly-coveted Best Actress Oscar.
I was holding this story until after the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards. I had a hunch Michelle Yeoh would cement her Oscar frontrunner status with a Best Actress win. She did.
The bigger buzz came out of her SAG win leading to the Independent Spirit Awards last weekend. It would be the final televised awards show pitting Michelle Yeoh against her top Oscar rival Cate Blanchett, who swept the early Fall awards season with wins at the Venice Film Festival and critics awards. At the Spirit Awards, Michelle prevailed over Cate, and she is now the top Oscar favorite.
When (not if, mind you) she wins on Sunday, March 12 (Monday morning in Manila), Michelle, a proud Malaysian, will become the first unambiguous Asian to win the highly-coveted Best Actress Oscar.
Her march to the Oscars started a year ago this month when Everything Everywhere All at Once premiered at the South by Southwest film festival, where the movie gained a passionate fan base who helped make the film the most successful independent film of the year.
But her success is by no means overnight.
Michelle Yeoh started her movie career starring in martial arts films in Hong Kong cinema as Michelle Khan in the early ‘80s. She briefly retired from acting in 1987 after she married her first husband. In 1992, she returned to acting after her divorce, starring opposite Jackie Chan in Police Story 3.
In 1997, she crossed over to Hollywood, and she changed back her name to Michelle Yeoh.
“I started my career in Hong Kong,” she recalled during a Television Critics Association (TCA) interview last January right after her Golden Globes win. The Philippine STAR was the only Philippine publication invited to the event.
“Then, when everybody looked at Hollywood – that’s the ultimate dream, to be able to come to Hollywood, to be in a Hollywood movie, whether directors like John Wu, Charlie Hawk,” Michelle added.
From 1997 to today, she has appeared in some of Hollywood’s landmark films of the period, including the groundbreaking Ang Lee masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the box-office hit Crazy Rich Asians.
But, yes, nothing came overnight. The words below are from Michelle herself during the TCA event.
“Everybody came because this is their dream, and until you get here and you go, like, ‘What the heck? Okay.’ I come from Asia, and I see us all the time on the screen. Then, when you come here, it’s like, ‘Okay, I don’t see any more faces that look like me.’
“Then, there were not many roles that represented who we really were. People didn’t really know Japan, Korea, China, and they always acted so surprised. They would say, ‘You speak English!’
And you go, ‘Uh, yes!’ I know I tell this horrible joke. I said, ‘The flight coming here was, like, 13 hours, so, I learned on the way. “But I think that got me sort of motivated to say, ‘We have to help each other learn. There’s a bigger world out there, and there has to be better representation, true representation.’ I mean, you can see the times have changed because everybody is talking about inclusivity, diversity, this, but you can’t have them just tick a box off. ‘Oh, I have a Chinese actor there.’ Tick the box. ‘Oh, okay. That means I’m being diverse. I’ve diversified, and I’m embracing everybody.’ But that’s not the truth.” Michelle was at the TCA event to talk about her upcoming Disney+ series American Born Chinese, an upcoming action-comedy television series based on the 2006 graphic novel of the same name by Gene Luen Yang. The series, which mixes Chinese mythology with Western sensibilities, talks about the struggles of a young Asian-American who meets a foreign exchange student at his high school.
Michelle quickly accepted the role of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, after she found the story inspiring.
“I think it was also the right time to be sharing more of our culture with the rest of our friends,” she said.
Coincidentally, American Born Chinese is set to have its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 15. It is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ soon after. Pop quiz: What premiered at “South by Southwest” last year?
American Born Chinese was paved by the change in Hollywood after a little movie with an Asian cast that Michelle starred in 2018 set boxoffice records that year.
“So, when Crazy Rich Asians came along — the last time we had an all-Asian cast was 26 years ago at that point, and it was Joy Luck Club — I think a lot was riding on whether it was successful or not,” Michelle recalled.
“And God forbid, what if Crazy Rich Asians wasn’t as successful as it was? So, thanks to John Chu’s brilliance — he’s such a good storyteller — and that’s what we need is the storytellers, you know, the storytellers like that, because they understand what are the stories that need to be told and give us more opportunities.”
In American Born Chinese, Michelle will again co-star with Ke Huy Quan, the presumptive Oscar Best Supporting Actor winner this year for his performance opposite Michelle in Everything Everywhere All At Once.
That movie indeed changed everything for Michelle and for its entire cast and filmmakers.
“When I received the script of Everything Everywhere All At Once, it was overwhelming,” Michelle happily shared. “It was, like, these two goofballs, who are insanely talented, had the courage to shine the light on a very ordinary woman, aging ordinary woman who was trying to make ends meet, keep the family together, and all of the things that we find so relatable.”
On Sunday, that woman, Evelyn Quan Wang, will fully cement Michelle Yeoh’s name in Hollywood immortality.
“Yes, I think we have broken that glass ceiling,” she beamed, seemingly predicting what’s to come some weeks later.
“But the only way we can keep this going is by getting the right storytellers, having the studio executives understand and keep putting it forward, which will create more jobs, which will create more opportunities. I think that’s what we are asking for. Give us equal opportunities to prove that we are capable of doing all of these things.
“So, I was very blessed with Evelyn Wong. I could do comedy. I mean, five years ago, nobody would believe I could do comedy, that I could do drama. I could bring my martial arts into it. It was all the things that an actor could hope for.”