A breath of fresh air
Fresh Off The Boat’s cast is surprised by sitcom’s longevity and success.
AS Fresh Off The Boat airs its fifth season, its stars can scarcely believe their sitcom has lasted this long, much less launched a couple of movie-star careers along with a new conversation about Asianamerican representation on screen.
Speaking at a question-andanswer session in Los Angeles last December, actor Randall Park admits he expected the series – which is based on the memoir of Taiwanese-american chef Eddie Huang – to be cancelled after season 1 in 2015.
“From the pilot, I felt we were doing something very special – but I never expected it to keep going,” says the 45-year-old, who plays Eddie’s father Louis and portrayed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the comedy film The Interview (2014).
“Especially early on, I just thought we were kind of doing something really against the odds. I was trained to think that something like this could not succeed in this industry. So I thought, ‘We’ll do one great season, and then we’ll get cancelled.’
“And then we got another season. It was in the middle of the fourth season that I was, like, ‘I think we’re OK’,” says the actor, who also appeared in the 2018 superhero films Aquaman and Ant-man And The Wasp.
For his younger co-stars, it took a bit of time for the cultural significance of the show – the first American sitcom in two decades to revolve around Asian characters – to sink in.
Says Hudson Yang, the 15-yearold who plays the young Eddie Huang: “I didn’t know the importance of an all Asian-american show when I first started. It was just like, ‘Oh, I want to try acting let’s see what this is.’
“When the pilot got picked up and I started getting interviewed, I started realising how much this actually meant.”
Creator Nahnatchka Khan still has to pinch herself when she thinks about how well the show has done, and how much more Asian-american content there is on screen today.
“It’s weird to me to imagine that we’ve been on for five years, and to think of the changes that have happened in society in five years.
“And I think continuing to tell these stories and continuing to encourage other people to tell their stories, you can’t undersell how important that is,” says Khan, 45.
Constance Wu, 37, plays Eddie’s mother Jessica, and is the show’s biggest breakout star following her lead role in the hit romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians (2018).
She notes that the sitcom helped pave the way for the film because it sparked a new discourse about the need for more Asian faces in Hollywood.
“I think Fresh Off The Boat was a contributing factor not necessarily to my career but just the movie.
“Jon Chu, the director (of Crazy Rich Asians), said he realised he needed to do something when he saw a bunch of tweets about representation, and our show kind of kicked off a discussion on that.
“There was a 20-year drought of (Asian-american) content, and nobody really talked about it during those 20 years,” adds the actress, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress In A Comedy for Crazy Rich Asians.
“It took a really evocative, different voice to demand attention, and I think that was Eddie Huang’s voice. It was his book, which people loved, and then we made it into a show, and that really got the ball rolling.”
But she cautions that the success of shows and films such as these does not mean she or any of the other actors can rest on their laurels.
Wu, who had done small supporting roles here and there for 25 years before Fresh Off The Boat, has learned “not to think about it in terms of goalposts and breakthroughs”, she says.
“There are plenty of people who don’t have incomes that come from jobs where they pursue their passions, but they still pursue them.
“So I was going to be an actor no matter what, even if I had to be a waitress for the rest of my life – which I did for a big part of my life.”
Wu – who stars opposite Jennifer Lopez in the upcoming crime drama Hustlers later this year – says that while she is “excited for the opportunities (Fresh Off The Boat) has afforded me, I’m also very aware that Hollywood has a very short attention span”.
“So just enjoy what happens when it’s happening, keep (being) professional and keep doing good work – that’s what I’m trying to do.”- The Straits Times/asia News Network
Fresh Off The Boat airs every Sunday at 9.25pm on Fox HD (Astro Ch 724).