Diversity, ‘gwishins’ the right medicine
Dr. Ken
Fridays, ABC BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. As a child, Suzy Nakamura recalls, she was content to quietly observe and leave the talking to others. These days, the actress and comedian is making noise as a smart, self-possessed sitcom wife on ABC’s Dr. Ken.
It’s a career milestone for Nakamura, co-starring on a successful series after being part of some 20 pilots and a few short-lived series — which, she says cheerfully, brought her variety as well as paycheques. “I haven’t gotten bored,” she said. “And I’m very proud of that (the tally). It’s difficult to get a pilot every year.”
If she’s finally in a durable show, she’s glad it’s Dr. Ken. The comedy about an Asian-American family does more than use ethnicity as window-dressing, Nakamura said, which she’s found to be the norm. Characters she played often were “my face with some white person’s story,” Nakamura said.
“What we need is to have the stories be more diverse.”
This Friday’s Halloween-themed episode of Dr. Ken, starring and produced by physician-turned-actor Ken Jeong (The Hangover, Knocked Up), exemplifies just that, she said.
“We’re doing a Korean ghost story and (the producers) researched the crap out of it” to make it authentic, she said, down to the look and contents of a Korean peasant hut. “It’s not the money or the time given. It’s the respect to someone else’s story.”
In the story, Nakamura’s character frets that son Dave (Albert Tsai) is leaving childhood behind because he appears blasé about Halloween. Ken’s father, D.K. (Dana Lee), comes to the rescue with a tale about Korean gwishins, often-fearsome spirits that linger in the world, with the ghosts portrayed by the Park family and friends.
Early on, Nakamura embraced dancing and then gave comedy a try.
“I wasn’t funny, I don’t think. But I wanted to be funny,” she said, recalling her first attempts.
On an impulse, the Chicago native applied to fabled The Second City improv company and, to her surprise, was accepted to start with its touring company. That meant the end of her studies at Columbia College Chicago and, ultimately, joining a sphere that included Second City performers Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell and Tina Fey.
“It was bananas,” Nakamura said, recalling everyone involved as “just normal, kind of weird, doughy losers like me” and the “nicest, funniest people” she’d ever met. After almost five years there, Nakamura headed for Los Angeles.
She has accumulated more than 100 credits, including recurring roles on The West Wing and Curb Your Enthusiasm and guest parts on Veep, How I Met Your Mother, Castle and Grey’s Anatomy.
Jeong is a big fan of his Dr. Ken co-star, who played his spouse in a deleted scene of filmmaker Judd Apatow’s Funny People.
“Our chemistry was so good I told her she has to play my wife again in the future . ... She has a unique ability to steal a scene and keep it grounded at the same time,” Jeong said.