Personality
ONE of the first things Kevin Kwan did after answering my call was thank me for being willing to reschedule our interview. We were originally supposed to have talked earlier in the day, but he was accidentally double-booked.
That’s not surprising considering he’s the author of the 2013 best-selling novel Crazy Rich Asians – the book behind Hollywood’s first studio film in 25 years to have an all-Asian cast and feature Asian-Americans in lead roles.
The film was just a few days away from being released in theatres across the US.
The Crazy Rich Asians movie has generated excitement worldwide, some lauding it as “historic”, “a watershed moment for Asian representation” and the “dawn of a new era”. But for Kwan, the high expectations surrounding his work are a lot of pressure – “too much pressure”, he said with a laugh.
In conceiving the story, Kwan did not set out to revolutionise Hollywood with a film that would bring about a sudden change in an industry rooted in tradition. When asked if he had ever anticipated his work would have such an impact, he responded instantly and emphatically: “Not at all.”
Just seven years ago, Kwan was at a different place in his life. He wasn’t posing for photos alongside famous actors such as Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Constance Wu (Fresh Off the Boat) and Ken Jeong (The Hangover). He was in Houston, driving his father, who had been diagnosed with cancer, to daily chemotherapy appointments. On these drives, with long stretches of highway in front of them, he and his father, who died in 2010, passed the time by reminiscing.
“I just felt it was so important at the time to reconnect with our past, our shared history,” said Kwan, who was working as a creative consultant in New York at the time. “There was so much I didn’t know that I wanted to know, that I tried to get to know without seeming morbid, without trying to say, ‘I don’t know how much time you have left, but I want to know all this stuff.’”
One of the things they talked about was life in Singapore, where Kwan was born and lived before his family moved to Houston when he was 11 years old.
This is an origin story Kwan has retold numerous times since 2013 when his debut novel, a glittery gold book about Singapore’s super rich, first hit shelves. The book, and now the movie, tell the story of a Chinese-American economics professor named Rachel Chu who accompanies her boyfriend, Nick Young, to Singapore to meet his family for the first time. What Rachel doesn’t know is that Nick is the “Prince Harry of Asia”, the heir to one of Singapore’s largest family fortunes.
The fictional book is full of vivid descriptions of sprawling mansions, exotic getaways, high fashion and gluttonous feasts. While some of the details, such as a living room with a sunken pond full of baby sharks, seem almost too fantastical to be real, they are. Much of the novel is inspired by Kwan’s personal experiences and its characters are loosely based on real people he knows. Kwan’s paternal grandmother was the daughter of a founding director of one of