Golding Boy
Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding opens up about his new gay film role in Monsoon, diversity in Hollywood and — of course — those James Bond rumours
On the day of my interview with Henry
Golding, my roommate suggests we re-watch Crazy Rich Asians that evening — before casually adding the caveat: “Well, we’ll wait and see how the interview goes — you might not want to see him again.”
So, I am pleased to report that Henry was a thoroughly charming chap, and I was able to enjoy the cockleswarming rom-com for the umpteenth time.
Post-Attitude cover shoot at the stunning Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, Henry cuts a relaxed yet somehow still impossibly dashing figure in a black baseball cap. The British-Malaysian actor begins our Zoom chat with an update on how he is adapting to lockdown life in Los Angeles, after moving across the pond with his wife Liv last year.
“It’s our first time living in America. I was like, let’s do it while I can work here, then, six months in: lockdown,” he sighs. “There could be worse places to be in quarantine than California, I mean, you’ve got the sun and the ocean.”
He quickly applied the brakes to a shortlived stint as a daredevil mountain biker, mind: “I bought myself a mountain bike and I hit up this YouTuber who took me on these socially distanced rides. I did that solidly for about two months and then I had my first fall. It was downhill mountain biking and I thought, hmm, maybe it’s not the best time to go to the hospital right now, so I put the cooler on it.”
Before catching his big Hollywood break in 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians (his acting debut, no less), Henry was best known for his telly work as the host of the BBC’s The Travel Show – but he had long harboured hopes of getting an acting career off the ground.
“I’ve always been a little sensible and practical, [thinking] there will come a time where I’ll be able to concentrate on it. Over the years, it was like, not now, not now, and then suddenly I said to myself, ‘Right, this is the year I’m going to do it.’ I enrolled in an acting group in Singapore and then six months in of already changing my direction, I get this email from the BBC offering me a job and I was like, ‘Well, if that isn’t a sign to get back on track, I don’t know what it is,’” he recalls.
Then Crazy Rich Asians director Jon Chu reached out with the offer of a lifetime – not that Henry made it easy for him. “I initially turned it down a couple of times because I was like, ‘Nah, I’m not an actor,’” he chuckles. “Jon got me on Skype and said, ‘This is an amazing opportunity, I’d love for you to read for this role we have in mind for you, it’s the lead, Nick Young.’
“I was like, ‘Whoa! Shit! I better pull up my socks and get on board that.’”
Henry became so committed to the cause that he cut his honeymoon short in South Africa. “Five days into the trip, they [the studio] called, ‘Hey, we need you to come out and do a screen test.’ I told them, ‘Erm,
I’m kinda in South Africa,’ and they said, ‘We promise this is going to be the last hurdle,’ he says. “The rest is history.”
The rising star insists his wife doesn’t hold a grudge. “I’ve made up for it with other trips,” he smiles. “It paid off.”
Paid off is putting it mildly. The blockbuster, co-starring Constance Wu, Michelle Yeoh and Awkwafina, grossed over $230million worldwide and has seen Henry rocket to the top of casting wish-lists, including landing the plum lead role in the upcoming film, Monsoon (read our review on page 113).
Directed by Hong Khaou – who earned a Bafta nomination for his 2014 debut, Lilting, with Ben Whishaw – the delicate character study follows a young gay man named Kit (played by Golding) as he returns to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to find a resting place for his parents’ ashes.
Kit hasn’t been back there since he was six years old, when his family fled the country in the aftermath of the Vietnam-American war. Struggling to make sense of himself in a place he is no longer familiar with, he ends up on a journey of self-discovery that sees him cross paths with American designer and bona fide fittie Lewis (Parker Sawyers), who is wrestling with his dad’s legacy as a veteran Vietnam soldier. If you like your cinematic romances to be as light and fluffy as cake mixture, this isn’t the one.
Coming from a mixed cultural background himself, 33-year-old Henry says the part spoke to him on many levels. “I’ve always struggled with the sense of identity and ownership of my identity, so growing up in the UK but obviously looking different, and spending time in Malaysia but not being able to speak the language. There is no concrete sense of belonging,” he reveals.
“The journey that Kit goes through is that he feels British, but he isn’t because his parents came over on the boats from Vietnam. They never spoke about the past and he has no notion of ligament to Vietnam, so when he’s searching for a resting place for his parents’ ashes it leads him back to try to understand their history and in doing so understand his own history.
“He feels like an alien at the beginning and it’s so overwhelming, especially a place like Vietnam. It reminded me of the time I moved back to Malaysia. As you journey through with Kit, you see him soften, he allows himself to be at peace,” Henry continues. “It resonated with me so much.”
That feeling of displacement never goes away, Henry adds. “A lot of people feel it if you’re of multi-cultural heritage. But now I’m at a stage where I don’t really care if I don’t belong because I feel as though I’m global. I wouldn’t want to put up barriers, like, ‘I’m this,’ ‘I’m Asian,’ ‘I’m half white.’ I’m so happy about having such a broad perspective of the world, an understanding of east and west. I
“I’m so happy to have a broad perspective of the world, of east and west. I have found a sense of identity and belonging in myself”
have found a sense of identity and belonging in myself.”
The movie provides all the feels when
Kit hooks up with Lewis – and there is no shortage of fizz between Henry and Parker. “When I was talking to Hong in LA, he already had Parker in mind for the role and so I Googled his name and his image and was like, ‘Damn, he’s handsome, he’s tall, he works out, I could be in worse positions!’” he exclaims.
“We hit it off. Parker is such a lovely guy. It felt so natural and Hong created a really safe environment on set and that’s what you hope for as an actor on any production. I think my wife was more excited about Parker than I was – trust me, she was loving it.”
In keeping with the rest of the film, the sex scenes are stark and tender; there isn’t a sudden splurge of WAP-level horniness. “Hong, myself and Parker, we’d sit down and talk, ‘What do we want, what do we need, what kind of mood do we want?’ You have two instances where the fireworks are going off, right, the first where it’s really lust, it’s heavy and, you know, kind of rough, and then you have another part where he’s later in his journey and he’s feeling at peace as he opens himself [up] to more than just something physical and you see the tenderness in the love-making,” Henry explains.
“He’s almost blossoming as a young man because he’s allowing himself to be who he is. Before he understood what Vietnam meant to him, he was always very guarded and closed off.”
Kit’s sexuality is not at the forefront of the character; yes, he is gay, but it isn’t a ‘reveal’ accompanied by any fanfare. That was part of the appeal for Henry, who is more than aware of the ongoing conversations around cis actors playing LGBTQ+ roles. Indeed, he brings the issue up.
“We live in times where it is a sensitive topic to have a straight actor play a gay role. From my point of view, with this particular role, it was the fact that his journey wasn’t hinged on the fact he is gay. It’s almost like, yes, he’s a young gay man, but the bigger issue is who he is as a person,” Henry begins.
“A lot of people were like, ‘Are you worried about having love scenes with a man on set?’ I was like, ‘No!’ I come from an understanding that love is love… you know what I mean, it doesn’t matter if you’re black, Latino, gay, straight, bi, it’s that feeling of yearning and that return of that.
“It didn’t phase me. I’m going to accept this role because of the journey it represents in this man. It’s not a journey into his queerness, it’s a journey into his history.”
However, Henry acknowledges that the scales of casting opportunities need to be rebalanced and that certain parts probably should be reserved for LGBTQ actors.
“At any possible point should you have authenticity in your casting? A hundred per cent… a lot of the time, these insensitive castings happen and it’s almost a mockery of the culture, you know, put a straight guy in a wig and put some fake boobs on him.
“I feel as though when it comes to important historical figures, characters that are defined by being from that community, you really need to take a moment to think,
this is important for a true member of the LGBTQ community to be a part of… [But] at the same time you don’t want to close off roles completely. It goes the same route as, ‘Can a member of the LGBTQ community play a straight guy? Is that right or wrong?’ You get those weirdos who say that.”
It is a tricky subject to navigate, but Henry is appreciably unfazed. “They’re conversations that need to be had. You can’t turn a blind eye, you need to keep people in check, that’s the most important thing,” he notes.
“The question has to be asked of me: why did you even consider this role? This should be the case. It can’t go unquestioned because there lies a problem in itself. You need to hold people responsible for their decisions.”
Henry mentions, too, that the biggest mentors in his life when he was growing up were gay men. “I was a hairstylist from 16 till 21, when I left to do television stuff in Malaysia. All the men around me were these proud gay men. It was never an issue for me of having to try to understand what it was like,” he says.
“I keep in contact with most of my pals there. The salon I worked at was in Duke of York Square in Chelsea. I had this amazing stylist who taught me pretty much through the start of my adult life. His name was Cristiano Basciu, a little Italian guy, teeny tiny, who just wore Dolce & Gabbana the entire time.
“Having a window as a 16-year-old who grew up halfway around the world, but also grew up outside of London [Surrey], it gave me an understanding of my own sexuality. I’m straight, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t love other people. It was a beautiful young adult life… it’s interesting because you don’t know people’s histories with any community, but people make presumptions, ‘Oh, he’s just doing it for the money, it doesn’t matter to him.’
“It was some of the greatest times of my life growing up with these iconic mentors.”
Apart from one incident, that is, where he accidentally snipped a child’s ear – eek. “Because I was young, I would always get clients for blow-outs and stuff, but I’d also get the clients’ kids. I remember I had these two siblings, a boy and a girl, and I was cutting the boy’s hair, and as siblings do they’ll make fun of the other one… he turned his head as I was doing scissor [work] and I nicked his ear,” Henry shudders.
“The ear has so many blood vessels that it just [makes a gushing sound]. It was the worst memory of my life, this kid bleeding profusely. The kid was fine, but wow, it was the most horrific moment of my career as a hairdresser.”
It hasn’t stopped him from wielding his scissors again. “I cut my wife’s hair in quarantine. She was so desperate, and I was like, ‘All right.’ She hates my haircuts, though, and always takes the piss!”
With action flick Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe already in the bag, Henry will soon turn his attention to the Crazy Rich Asians sequel. Well, hopefully.
“I live two blocks from Jon [Chu], we’re very good friends, almost like brothers, really, and he gives me updates if I ever ask because I always get asked – everybody wants to know,” he teases.
“He says the challenge really is getting the
“We live in times where it is a sensitive topic to have a straight guy play a gay role”
scripts in shape to go against that first film. You don’t want to make a script for the sake of making a script, you need to make the script as good, if not better, than the first movie because there are expectations now.
“The second and third books are a little difficult to adapt because they go all over the place, so it’s about finding a through line… Everyone is raring to go, but we want to get the writing down.”
The film – based on Kevin Kwan’s book of the same name – was the first US studio production to feature a majority-Asian cast since 1993’s
The Joy Luck Club. It was a giant leap forward for Asian representation and storytelling, and Henry is positive about the strides being made in terms of diversity in Tinseltown.
“Black Panther was a huge moment for the black community, the Asian community had Crazy Rich Asians, the Latino community will have In the Heights – Jon is doing Lin Manuel’s show focusing on the community in Washington Heights,” he lists.
“All of these moments are coming and hopefully they’re opening the floodgates, the doors for writers, producers and directors to consider characters of colour or [just] characters, it doesn’t matter what their background is… it doesn’t matter if they are black, Latino or Asian… we want to be at a stage with normality where it’s normal to see different heritage, but not have to question it. What was it like being an Asian actor? How about just being an actor?”
As I prepare to wrap things up, I force myself to ask the question Henry faces in every single interview: how does he feel
“Why the hell can’t we have a black Bond, an Asian Bond, a mixed-race Bond…?”
about rumours he should be the next James Bond? I’m pretty sure I even eye-rolled while asking it.
“It does seem to be a question that always comes up. It was definitely from Crazy Rich, maybe [the scene with] the white suit coming out of the park. [And] because I’m Asian and everybody’s fighting for a diverse Bond – sorry, white guys,” he grins.
“I don’t know. It’s an honour to even be in the conversation. It’s one of the greatest film roles ever, you’d be stupid to be like, ‘I don’t want to do that shit.’ Fuck, no, it would be the wildest ride. I’m super excited to see Daniel Craig’s last venture… but isn’t it great that we’re having that conversation? Isn’t it great that people are like, ‘OK, now’s the time, why the hell can’t we have a black Bond, an Asian Bond, a mixed-race Bond, a non-distinct Bond?!’”
To be fair, he does look hot in a tuxedo. Given his whirlwind rise to fame, Henry has become used to rubbing shoulders with A-listers, but there is one man with a penchant for tight green bodysuits adorned with ping pong balls that he will never fail to be starstruck by…
“I always geek out about Andy Serkis. He’s legendary. I think he is a phenomenal actor and he is the nicest dude. Every time I see him – he doesn’t know who the hell I am – I go up to him, ‘Andy, I’m a huge fan.’ He’s the only person I’ve done that to,” he gushes.
Bet that moment was really, ahem, precious… “Oh, damn…” Henry groans, with a fully deserved shake of his head.
Monsoon is released in cinemas and on digital on 25 September