A win for representation
Actress Lana Condor is proud that the film, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, shows Asian-Americans and their experiences as universal.
ROMANTIC-COMEDIES are often dismissed as fluff, teenage ones even more so.
But To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before – now on Netflix – stands out from cookie-cutter teen swoon-fests because of its Asian-American protagonist, Lara Jean Covey.
She is played by Vietnamese-American actress Lana Condor, one of the two Asian females to top the bill in a major Hollywood film since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club – an honour she shares with Constance Wu of Crazy Rich Asians.
The significance is not lost on the 21-year-old who lives in Los Angeles.
Condor, however, argues that the win for representation here is that the story does not make a fuss over Lara Jean’s ethnicity (her father, played by John Corbett, is white, and her late mother was Korean).
Instead, she is just a typical teenager grappling with the death of her mother and the usual high-school dramas, including the alarming fact that some love letters she wrote to boys but never intended to send are suddenly delivered to them.
The actress, who played the superhero Jubilee in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), says: “Yes, it is a huge deal – having an AsianAmerican lead hasn’t happened in 25 years for a rom-com (in Hollywood).
“However, what I loved about the movie was that it normalised the situation and made it everyday life and relatable. And I think that it’s important to show Asian-Americans and their experiences as universal.”
The actress was born in Vietnam and adopted as an infant by her white American parents, Mary Carol Haubold and Pulitzer Prizenominated journalist Bob Condor.
Lana Condor is glad there are only a couple of passing references to the Covey family’s Korean heritage – the youngest sister loves the yogurt drinks from a Korean supermarket for instance.
“Because if we kept pointing out Lara Jean’s differences, then we might unknowingly still be putting the lead in a box. From my perspective, it was important that Lara Jean and her family were just represented as a normal family.
“Having an Asian girl as the lead shouldn’t be ground-breaking, that should’ve already been happening for a long time,” she adds.
“Unfortunately, it is groundbreaking because we haven’t had representation. But I like the fact that our film doesn’t play on it; it’s not stereotypical.
“And it’s also important to note that this is not an ‘Asian rom-com’, it’s a rom-com that happens to have an Asian lead,” she says.
“I like that our movie doesn’t separate us and make us stand apart from the world because I just don’t think that’s the answer.”
Like the film it inspired, the best-selling 2014 book of the same name, by young-adult author Jenny Han, focuses more on the universal teenage experience than any AsianAmerican one.
Condor says the 38-year-old Han, who is Korean-American, “was very involved and present during filming”, but the only tip she had for the actress was to remind her that romantic encounters are new territory for Lara Jean.
“She said, ‘You have to remember that this girl is an innocent 15-yearold’.”
At the same time, Condor is aware how powerful it is for Asian moviegoers to see an Asian lead.
Fans have approached her in the street to say as much.
“That’s the most gratifying part of this experience, having younger girls come up to me.
“Just the other day, a girl walked up to me and said, ‘Thank you so much – as a half-Chinese girl, I’ve never seen a face that looked like mine on screen in a position like Lara Jean.’
“And older women have come up to me saying they wish there’d been a movie like this when they were younger.”
Her voice cracks a little at the memory: “It brings me to tears. It’s very emotional to be able to bring that to others. I always wanted to help others, but didn’t know this was going to be the way I did it.”
Condor also tears up talking about Crazy Rich Asians, even though it is a far more culturally-specific film than hers.
“I cried while watching it because it’s just such a moving experience that I didn’t know I so badly needed.
“Because we’ve become so used to not seeing Asians in leading roles that we kind of just settled.
“But now Hollywood is shifting – they’re starting to realise that they have to have us.” – The Straits Times/Asia News Network