When actor and writer Joel Kim Booster first started auditioning only recently, he quickly realized the roles available to him as an Asian American were very limited.
“From this point on, no matter how many Chinese food delivery guys you play, you’re not going to get better,” he recalled other Asian American actors telling him.
But Booster persevered, and finally, in 2022, he was cast as a gay Asian American man in “Fire Island,” a groundbreaking romantic comedy that he also wrote. “So much of the movie is a direct transcription of my life,” Booster said.
After all, things have certainly gotten a little better for Asian American men in Hollywood during Booster’s difficult decade, and he feels that momentum has continued in the two years since “Fire Island” debuted.
Many recent stories about Asians and Asian Americans seem indifferent to “the white gaze,” he says, and “for a lot of people, that discussion has moved on in some ways,” he says, adding that his film “feels a little dated now.”
Indeed, since the 2018 blockbuster film Crazy Rich Asians hit box office success, American pop culture has been inundated with Asian and Asian American stories and characters. And after decades of degrading and demasculine portrayals, Asian and Asian American men like Booster are at the center of new films, often playing the kind of rugged hero roles that Hollywood has long found elusive.
The same year Crazy Rich Asians premiered, Alexander Hodge appeared as a love interest known as “Asian Bey” on HBO’s Insecure. The following year, Randall Park starred opposite Ali Wong in Always Be My Baby, which he co-wrote with Michael Golamco. And in 2021, Jimmy O. Young starred in the Christmas romantic comedy Love Hard.
Asian American men like Booster and Park are also seizing the opportunity to work behind the scenes: Park directed the 2023 film “Shortcomings,” which stars Justin H. Min as a troubled, flawed Asian American protagonist, and Shawn Wang’s coming-of-age story “Didi,” released this summer, about what it was like to grow up Asian American in California skateboarding culture during the early days of social media.
Representation comes in waves, and those who study film and television are quick to point out that representation is still lacking, and that many of the characters we see on screen are still often marginalized in frustrating ways.
But as the number of Asian Americans across the country grows and audiences become more interested in their stories, many actors, writers and directors say it’s clear that roles for Asian American men are evolving, and that a smattering of new, more nuanced roles is changing the way Asian American men are perceived.
“We all want to push the narrative that Asian men are more attractive,” said Manny Jacinto, who got his break playing a handsome but goofy “himbo” on NBC’s “The Good Place,” played a Star Wars Sith Lord in “The Acolyte,” and is now preparing to play Lindsay Lohan’s husband in the upcoming “Freaky Friday” sequel.
“And the problem is,” he continued, “these opportunities aren’t really given to us, so it’s up to us to create them.”
Moving away from a history of racism
Many depictions of Asian American men in 20th-century American films have been stereotypical at best: Chinese supervillain Fu Manchu, the gong-ringing foreign exchange student Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles, and the buck-toothed Mr. Yunioshi played by Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Even cinema’s noble early Asian and Asian American heroes, such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Pat Morita, were celebrated for their martial arts masters but were largely perceived as asexual.
(Asian women in Hollywood have frequently encountered the opposite problem: hypersexualization, fetishization and objectification. One notable pioneer, Anna May Wong, got her breakout role in “The Thief of Bagdad” as early as the 1920s, and began to achieve global fame starring in films such as “Shanghai Express.”)
South Asian men, meanwhile, were often portrayed as caricatures of terrorists, taxi drivers or effeminate mother-men. “You’re either the most dangerous thing or the least dangerous thing,” actor Kumail Nanjiani said. “There’s no in-between.”
Over the years, this lack of meaningful representation has taken a toll on many Asian American men.
“‘I’m not interested in Asian men’ – that’s what I heard a lot when I was single,” Park says. “And what do I say to that? I’m like, ‘OK, that’s just how you like it.’ But when you really think about it, that worldview is intertwined with a lot of different factors, and I think the images we’re exposed to influence that worldview.”
That’s one reason why some actors, writers and directors have tried to show audiences a different side of themselves, and offer different ideas about what is possible for Asian American masculinity.
Nanjiani, for example, has become a superhero: He appeared in the 2021 Marvel blockbuster “Eternals,” and Simu Liu appeared in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” (Though it’s notable that neither character has a love interest.)
“I didn’t want the first brown superhero to be the first nerdy superhero,” Nanjiani said.
“I wanted to be someone to rival Thor or Captain America,” added Nanjiani, who transformed his physique and bulked up for the role. “I wanted this guy to be like a playboy. I wanted him to be like a brown Iron Man or Batman.”
A love story without “exaggeration”
Many Asian American actors cast in lead romantic roles in recent years emphasized that they didn’t choose those roles specifically to counter outdated tropes. Instead, they said, it’s worth studying the smaller, more subtle creative choices in the films and series they appear in, because that’s where shifts in representation can be most noticeable.
In “One Day at a Time,” Park plays Wong’s average best friend, competing for his affections with Daniel Dae Kim, who plays a rich, popular guy, and Keanu Reeves, who plays a parody of himself, but ends up marrying Wong.
“The goal was to tell a great love story and not try too hard to counter certain stereotypes or make any grandiose statements about Asian American identity,” Park said.
Min, who recently starred opposite Lucy Boynton in “Greatest Hits,” said her character wasn’t written specifically to be Asian. When it was decided the character was Korean-American, “suddenly there was no need for a scene where I’m eating kimchi jjigae with my parents,” Min said.
And in the Christmas romantic comedy “Love Hard,” Yang plays Josh Lin, who initially tries to woo a love interest but ultimately gets his happy ending.
Yang said Lin is “a really good guy who finally gets the girl. I think he’s very romantic.”
Revealing flaws
When given the opportunity, Asian actors and writers have tried to portray themselves and their love lives in ways that are complicated or intentionally unsavory.
Booster said he was confident and sexually active before graduating college and downloading Grindr, but he quickly realized that as an Asian man, he wasn’t wanted.
“It made me hate myself in ways I hadn’t realized I’d ever hated,” he said of the racism he encountered. “I never realized I was unwanted until I moved to a big city and was exposed to that gay community.”
He parlayed that experience and others into “Fire Island,” co-starring with “Saturday Night Live” favorite Bowen Yang.
Wang’s new film, “Dìdi,” similarly reflects aspects of his own life growing up in the Bay Area in the 2000s.
The main character, Chris, is told by his crush that he’s “cute even though he’s Asian.” In one scene, Rhys tells Chris that no one loves him. And in an attempt to impress his new skateboarding buddy, Chris claims he’s half Asian after he’s called “Asian Chris,” which later turns out to be a lie.
“Girls would tell me, ‘You’re the cutest Asian girl I know,'” Wang said. “When I was 13, I wore it as a source of pride. They said it as a compliment. No one was trying to be subtly racist.”
“But then when you turn 13, you take it all personally,” he added.
Uneven progress
Actors and scholars agree that a few years of improved Asian American storylines will not be enough to undo a century of poor portrayals of Asian Americans, and some acknowledge that progress is usually followed by regression.
While 2023 saw the Oscar win for Best Picture for Everything Everywhere All at Once and the release of shows like Beef and a few films like Joy Ride, 2024 has been relatively quiet aside from Didi, which debuted in late July.
Gedde Watanabe has seen many such stops and starts in the 40 years since he played Long Duk Dong in “Sixteen Candles.” He knows that film is powerful, and he wonders what it would have been like if he had had more power on set in the 1980s. How would he have dealt with the gongs, the accents and the use of the word “Chinaman”?
But Watanabe argues that despite his character’s flaws, Long Duc Dong reflected some important aspects of reality.
“He wanted a girlfriend and he wanted to fit in,” Watanabe said. “That’s something I can universally understand.”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.
This story is part of a series on how Asian Americans are shaping American popular culture. The series is funded by a grant from the Asian American Foundation. The funders have no control over story selection, focus or the editorial process, and do not screen stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control over the series.
