So that extends to being color conscious about your showrunner — and I don’t mean arbitrarily. So it is antiquated and outdated as a definition. And then the studio came in with Freddie Highmore, whom we both absolutely loved. There were maybe one or two of us that really had job security, and every other one of us was paging through the scripts as soon as we got them to see whether we survived. Adele Lim is a producer and screenwriter best known for co-writing the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians and, more recently, Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon. I was not a very sympathetic character, so it would have been easy for me to get killed off without the show missing a beat. I was very transparent about it with my castmates, with my showrunner, with the studio from the start. These attacks against Asian Americans shouldn’t be a political issue. I’m sure that had a lot to do with my finding a place to fit in. It wasn’t good enough to bring attention to the subject. And so I paid out money from my own pocket to re-up the option, and I redeveloped it for the following year. I’m not digging ditches. My greatest fear was that the pilot of Lost would air but the series would not — because if you were to see the pilot as the totality of my character, you would have been left with that stereotype. There’s one school of thought: Why did it take so long? I’m grateful to theaters in the Asian American community, specifically East West Players and Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, the National Asian American Theatre Company, Ma-Yi, because there were so few opportunities. Were you two in solidarity?I really feel like actors hurt themselves by not working collectively, but there’s a lot in the system that deters actors from working collectively and it works against the studios’ interest for the actors to band together. Those things had never applied to me before that point. So about 20 years later, you’re on the other side producing with 3AD, which eventually led to the hit adaptation of The Good Doctor on ABC. At a certain point, it becomes how much are you going to try and buck this system or how much can you work within it? And then, at that point, the power dynamic shifts. At the same time, people shouldn’t fear the police. His dream role, as a budding actor in NYU’s theater program, was to play Henry V, Shakespeare’s sure-footed military king. The Good Doctor is a critically acclaimed KBS drama that aired in 2013 starring Joo Won as an autistic doctor with savantlike skills and spatial awareness. It’s not standard Korean (표준어) because I speak Busan satoori (사투리). I didn’t realize how far off that idea was from the reality of the business. How did those spaces function for you at the time? It’s no coincidence that I met my wife there as well. All of us were. I was used to apologizing, and this was the first time I never had to. Advocacy is not my full-time job. We pitched it to CBS, where I had a first-look deal, and they passed. I’ve probably worked with more difficult lead actors than good lead actors. Kim is the founder and CEO of 3AD, which he started in 2013 and runs with producer John Cheng. Daniel Dae Kim in Lost. At my best, I can serve to be a mouthpiece for a lot of these issues that don’t often get noticed unless someone with a following on social media amplifies it. In fact, there’s a heist movie we’re working on that I’ll be acting in with Randall Park. I’m glad I didn’t know because, had I known, maybe I wouldn’t have continued to pursue it. Understandably, he struggled, and he got frustrated. And the fact that they do says something negative about our society. In response to a viral video of a man being violently shoved in the Chinatown area of Oakland, California, Kim and Daniel Wu offered a reward of $25,000 for information that could lead to “the arrest and conviction” of the man responsible. So I texted Daniel and said, “Brother, let’s draw attention to this issue in a way that we just haven’t before.” That’s when we came up with the idea of the reward. There were times when I would just ask myself, What’s wrong with me? Is it something you discussed with Grace Park, who left the show for similar reasons? Were the demographics mostly white?Yeah, it’s a heavily Eastern European population and very blue collar. I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are and if they have shifted at all around policing. Still, he was able to use that time to start his own production company, 3AD, which is responsible for the ABC hit The Good Doctor. You could even argue it has had an effect on the way we cast now, if you look at the copycat shows that came out as a result of Lost. CBS was kind enough to give me a space on the lot and money for an executive. Sure.I will say this: Now, whenever I develop a show — and since The Good Doctor, I’ve developed maybe 20 — I specify right off the top what ethnicity the lead is. At the time, one of my sons was in elementary school, one was about to enter high school, and I really wanted them to grow up with a continuity of experience. Times called “very gymnastic,” when he was 34. How do you see your role as a celebrity in this arena with politicians, community organizers, and activists? The other school of thought is it’s not a given for anybody. Still, I think it was meaningful to Asian actors in the industry that you and Grace walked away. The original marketing for the show prominently featured Kim and Grace Park alongside the white leads, Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan. Would you say that’s true?Yes. Fun fact: Another alum is Michelle Zauner, better known as Japanese Breakfast. I remember you had originally tried to sell it to CBS, and they passed on it.CBS was nice enough to give me a production deal, but they never green-lit anything I produced. And I do know that the way things got spun by the end changed my relationships with them. Holy shit, that’s 35 years.Yeah. And that was March of 2020. It is a funny thing about my accent. I had just finished doing A Doll’s House at Pan Asian Rep, and I realized at the time that I had been given a great opportunity to work onstage by Tisa Chang. More Conversations
Francis Ford Coppola Is Still Going for Broke
In Conversation: Whoopi Goldberg
Laurence Fishburne Knows Who He Is
See All
Throughout the ’90s and early aughts, Kim performed in a number of theater productions in New York and L.A., including Romeo and Juliet (1991), The Chang Fragments (1996), and The Tempest (2002), in a production the L.A. Do I have it right that the show you’re currently shooting, The Hot Zone, is the first time you’ve been at the top of the call sheet?It is. Chin’s death became a rallying cause for Asian Americans. And the second time, when Shore came aboard, we had a conversation about it. The first time we developed it, it was with an Asian lead. It was the second negotiation where it became clear to me that I needed to get to a place that would make it acceptable for me to go on financially. It could be me! These are really nuanced questions, and you’re right in that a reward isn’t the be-all and end-all. At the time, CBS said it had offered them “large and significant” salary increases. There was no way to get reps — as they say, repetitions — because you cannot get better unless you practice it. East West Players and Pan Asian Rep both accepted me with open arms, and I was able to play roles I probably shouldn’t have played, like Prospero and Torvald even though I was too young. I think it would be obvious to most Koreans watching if I didn’t do that work. I also like to think they didn’t think I was so terrible that I didn’t deserve to be on the show. It’s the very first time in television, and I’ve been working in television for 31 years. I’m not going to say he was the one that wanted a white lead, but I will say that it became less clear to him how an Asian lead would work. 3AD now has a first-look deal with Amazon. Kim declined to go into specifics, as many of these projects are still in development, but he did mention that he’s working with America’s Next Top Model winner Nyle DiMarco on a comedy about being a deaf man in America that’s currently in the works at Spectrum. How big was the difference between your pay and that of your co-stars Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan in the beginning?Significant. It ignores the various levels of aggression that come before that. But the two things we had in common were that our contracts were up at the same time and we were both Asian American on a show in Hawaii, where the Asian American population is significant. And then when the ratings come, the power dynamic shifts again because there’s a studio and network involved. So was it perfect? Are you familiar with it? Did you discuss that with the show’s creators?When I read the script for the pilot, I knew this was a land mine. I grew up in a steel town, and I felt very much like the Other for most of my upbringing. What we were doing wasn’t good enough. I’m talking about kindness and displaying leadership ability. Wow, so how long have you been together?Since 1986. When you start working with a showrunner, it has to be a proper meeting of the minds because he’s the one that’ll be running the show every day. Constantly. Tisa Chang started her career as an actor and dancer on Broadway before moving into directing and eventually establishing the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in New York in 1977. It became much more dramatic because of the way that it didn’t come together. Are you trying to move toward race consciousness rather than color-blind casting?Yeah, I don’t really love that term colorblind casting because it connotes this idea that it doesn’t matter, but it’s actually the opposite. It brings up a number of thoughts, one of which is that these kinds of attacks can only be seen in the context of the greater problem that we have in society. Photo: ABC/Courtesy of Everette Collection
How did you feel about the criticism of your accent from Koreans at the time? So it’s discouraged. Does the fact that the victim turned out to be Latino change anything for you?The victim turned out to be Latino? Subscribe Now! There was a card that said, “Daniel, I’m so sorry about what happened on set the other day.” The PA handed me a garment bag with the $2,500 Armani suit that my character was wearing in that scene. When we first moved to Easton, I was in first or second grade, and that time was actually pretty idyllic. I think that was definitely a part of the decision process. There had been a steady drumbeat of incidents since then, and it just seemed to fall on blind eyes and deaf ears. In 1991, I wanted to call that collective the Asian American Arts Directive. You can develop every show you want, but if none of them ever see the light of day, what’s the point? In terms of representation, we probably hired more Asian American actors than any other show over the same time span. And when you see your leads relaxing and comfortable and not being divas, then everyone else relaxes and focuses on the work. I never faulted him for the situation he was in. I think most people who knew me in high school would not have known I was going through this because the way I presented was very much as one of the gang and someone who was easy to get along with. Would you have done anything differently in hindsight?I honestly don’t think I would have done anything differently because it worked. We got married in 1993. What is the role of police, and how can we make policing effective? But once you sign a contract, you’re onboard. And that’s the time when hormones start to rage, and you start looking at girls and then automatically you think about your appearance more. And so when I saw the murder of Vicha Ratanapakdee and then the incident involving the man who was pushed on the street, both within a couple of days of each other, I really just got angry and exasperated and frustrated and hurt. Do you feel like that placed more responsibility on you than there should have been?It was a lot more work than is typical. And I feel much more comfortable speaking out regarding those issues than I do necessarily talking about liberal versus conservative politics. I’ve learned a lot since then, but it hasn’t changed my basic outlook that, in order to solve these issues long-term, it’s going to require a combination of things: investment in our communities through community organizations, education, and deterrence in some form. Everyone loves a good medical drama. Yeah. I was proven to be wrong. [Laughs] I also played Torvald in A Doll’s House in New York when I was 23 or something. Thank you for supporting our journalism. I worked harder on the preparation for that role than any other role I’ve ever done, especially on a day-in, day-out basis, because we were constantly getting revisions. (Kim developed it from a Korean drama.) Now, at age 52, he has his first lead role, on The Hot Zone: Anthrax, an anthology thriller on the National Geographic Channel, a Netflix movie Stowaway coming out April 22, and has evolved into a Hollywood spokesman, testifying in front of Congress on Asian American issues during an acutely violent year. I thought it was going to be more of an ensemble show, and if you look at the early marketing and promotion for the show, where Grace Park and I were featured equally as prominently as anyone else, it led me to believe that it could be. I wanted their personalities to grow in such a way that was free from the standards of beauty or standards of physicality that I grew up with that affected me in ways that I wish they didn’t. I did not want to put them in a situation where we went back to the mainland and they experienced that for the first time in the halls of high school. I made a lot of friends in the neighborhood, and we formed this posse that was fairly multicultural. So there was no reward, per se, to be paid out. When I was done a few days later, I got a knock on my door by a PA on NYPD Blue, and he said Jimmy had a gift for me. The first time I had developed Good Doctor, it was 2015 with Adele Lim. And in some ways they coincided with mine, and in some ways they didn’t. I was class president. So what was the goal at the negotiating table?Make us all equal. I mean, who contributes best to the authenticity of the story you’re telling? There are community organizations that believe in the need for alternative safety measures rather than introducing more cops. How did you cope with it?I tried to be very gregarious. It allowed people like me, who were younger and had a lower standard of living and lower expectations, to play roles like that. Were there other Korean writers in the room?There was Monica Macer and then one Korean American woman named Christina Kim. So it feels like a nice milestone, especially because so many actors who are much more talented than I never get to experience this. There are much smarter people than I who have dedicated themselves to these efforts full-time. The standard Korean pronunciation, pyo-jun-uh (표준어), comes out of Seoul. Was that how it had been pitched to you?I specifically asked if this was going to be an ensemble, and I was told that it would be. In 1982, Vincent Chin, was celebrating at his bachelor party when he was murdered in the parking lot by two white men who worked in the automotive industry. I had such a good experience on his movie Always Be My Maybe with Ali Wong, and I thought to myself, There’s no reason why this can’t continue. I remember that gesture even though it was 20 years ago. I don’t think it’s uncommon for people of Asian descent living in America to go through a period of self-hatred or self-denial. The police arrested the perpetrator, a homeless man who had allegedly shoved other people in Chinatown that day. Which ones? And let that race or gender or sexual orientation be reflected in those choices right off the top. It wasn’t. Not at all.And the thing is, it wasn’t a source of conflict for me. They thought Chin was Japanese (he was Chinese American) and allegedly yelled racial slurs at him, blaming him for the decline of American auto manufacturing. It wasn’t 2020. Ultimately, the show’s A plots would go to the two white leads, while Kim and Park played secondary characters. She lobbied for me. These are human issues. A lot of the perpetrators are suffering from mental-health issues. And it’s always been my dream, literally since 1991. What saved you?There was a writer there named Monica Macer, who’s a friend to this day. And so he had to have a level of comfort with it. We have hard days on set, but he went that extra step to make sure I knew he felt bad about it. *A version of this
article appears in the April 12, 2021, issue of New York Magazine. But that also speaks to the pipeline of actors that were pursuing this career at the time. And really, the question is, now that we have that attention, how can we further refine the solution? While we were shooting, I remember sitting down with Damon Lindelof and J.J. From what I understand, it was planned for me to be killed off in season one. The real question is, how are we looking at the nature of policing now, and how can we change policing so that the stigma attached to it isn’t what it is? We have a lot of income inequality, we have a lot of underprivileged communities who are struggling, and that struggle often becomes manifest in criminal behavior. When I saw The Good Doctor, I thought it was unique in that it had all of those soapy elements that we love in K-drama, but it had an engine to it that was very familiar to American audiences. I know that not every representation is 100 percent something we can stand behind all the time, but I choose to look at things as whether they’re moving the needle of progress on a larger scale. Can you talk about how those conversations went?It was 2017. I knew what my high-school prom king and queen looked like, I knew what all the popular kids looked like, and I knew that wasn’t me. I also made a donation to NextShark because they were doing such great work journalistically. And when I go to a writer, I say, “This is what it is.” I have ownership of the project only until a showrunner comes aboard. Instead, he made his way in the ’90s with small TV jobs and meatier parts with Asian American theater groups before becoming sexiest-man-alive famous through ABC’s blockbuster show Lost. And did you feel that was just not a hill you could die on at that point?Yeah. I’m trying to square the person who is playing Prospero in theater productions doing a hard-core CBS procedural.It’s pretty simple, and it’s that my family is my priority. I think we need to talk about the good with the bad. But it was something to spark the conversation. But was it good enough? Like? Always Be My Maybe is a 2019 rom-com starring Ali Wong and Randall Park as childhood friends who find their way back to each other as adults. So I’m grateful for it. But in sixth grade, I moved to the next town over, which was Bethlehem. Politics is not my full-time job. Did you pay the reward to anyone?It turns out that the police department already knew who the suspect was and then arrested him. So when we first started, because Yunjin spoke standard Korean, it was decided that I was going to try and change my Busan to standard Korean. So that was generally the process. I thought maybe I can parlay my time on the show into trying to direct and produce. Make us all the ensemble that I thought we always were, and get me back to where I was with Lost. In a profile in a local paper in the ’90s, Kim said his decision to become an actor had caused “some friction” with his parents. How did the Korean dialogue come together? Do you watch a lot of Korean dramas?I’ll sample a lot, but it takes a big commitment of time to go through them all. Once you were 40 or 50 in the ’90s, chances are you weren’t able to make a living acting. And I would also say I was proud of the fact that we as a show hired a lot of Asian Americans. I was also really naïve to think I had any real chance of making a living as an actor because I didn’t realize how much the deck was stacked against actors of color and Asian American actors at that time. I still am grateful to her for giving me that chance. Those of us in the Asian American community have known about these attacks for over a year. Were there conversations around casting a white actor versus a nonwhite actor or an Asian actor?I wanted an Asian lead. And then when your lead actor comes aboard, the power dynamic shifts again. When did you realize Hawaii Five-0 wasn’t the ensemble show you had thought it would be?By the middle of season one. Are you producing dream projects that you want to act in yourself? And I didn’t think that was an unreasonable position to take. The laws are considered from a perspective of, well, let’s be frank, white men, which is why the criminals who murdered Vincent Chin in 1982 never served a day in prison because “these are not the kind of men you send to jail.” The judge said that. Now, whenever I develop a show I specify right off the top what ethnicity the lead is. A lot of people may not know that you did a lot of theater in your career before Lost, particularly with Asian American theater groups, like David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child as well as the part of Prospero in The Tempest — which is funny given how young you must have been. I think I made a total of $13,000 for the entire year living in New York City. What did that mean for you?Let me put it this way: One thing that has never really properly been reported is the amount of pay cut I took to do Hawaii Five-0 from Lost. What are the social services that are available or not available to them? But there’s no doubt it stung when I felt like the people I was trying to respect and please the most were the ones who were critical of me. What is that math? You think, Why am I not considered attractive? Though I knew what a CBS procedural was, whether this was naïve or not, I had hopes that Hawaii Five-0 would be different because it was a show set in Hawaii, where the majority of people are not white. So that, plus thinking about the acting of it and realizing I did have an American accent — it became this weird mix of things. After Lost, you signed on for Hawaii Five-0. Nobody knew me, so I was easily labeled the “chink.” Good at math, nerdy, not an athlete. Where were you in 1991? Usually, in that circumstance, the project just dies, but I still believed in it. If you look at my very first video, when I contracted COVID and revealed my diagnosis, I mentioned to please stop the attacks against Asian Americans. When your contract was up for renegotiation, did you see that as an opportunity to have this conversation around equal pay?Yes. They pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served no jail time. That’s a false paradigm. The only time that, as a developer, I have real control is at the beginning. Kim grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania. If people like Grace and I cannot make those kinds of decisions, how can we expect anyone else to? Anyone who wants to commit a hate crime can easily avoid it being designated a hate crime just by understanding the law and how high the bar is for it to be required to be labeled that way. Yeah, according to the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, his name is Gilbert Diaz.That’s the first time I’m hearing that. So it was the work of going through the translation process and then thinking about the Korean of it, the pronunciation, and then going back and thinking about the character and his mannerisms as a Korean person as opposed to an American person, which, obviously, I am. We each took that money for the reward and gave it to community organizations throughout the country. It’s really about all the people who exist in the margins and telling their stories. I also really appreciated what Hawaii had to offer an Asian American family. Yonsei University in Seoul has one of the most popular Korean-language programs in South Korea. To me, I’m not so sure. I remember working with Jimmy Smits on an episode of NYPD Blue. There’ve been sets I’ve been on that have been miserable and lead actors I’ve worked with who I don’t feel were kind people. We had the luxury of being able to say no. What does the name mean? And it needs to be looked at, not from the perspective of the perpetrator but from the perspective of the victim. I was struggling to find any work. Through a lucky confluence of events, I was able to stay on and last the whole six seasons. The tone is set from the top down. “If you’re not aware of politics in any industry, you’re missing all of the ways to navigate it,” Kim says. In the way that Lost transformed that helped my character, this didn’t have the same trajectory. He confirmed his status as a TV staple with a role on the CBS reboot of Hawaii Five-0, which he left after seven seasons when the network wouldn’t raise his salary to match his white co-stars’. Clearly, it was. What helped you pull yourself out of that adolescent self-hatred?One of the biggest things was after my senior year of high school, I went to the Yonsei program. But to be clear, I’d renegotiated before that as well, and that’s how I was able to direct and start my production company, 3AD. The reboot of Hawaii Five-0 premiered on CBS in 2010. Photo: Jingyu Lin for New York Magazine
Daniel Dae Kim’s career is a study in the steady accumulation of power. And then I was an outsider and an Other, and my entire experience changed. So it’s hard for me to collectively say whether they were allies in this. That reward might have been a Band-Aid; it’s certainly not a cure for the systemic problem. It was drastic, and it was never made up. Were you afraid of your character, Jin, dying early on? Is the answer no police? And so it shifted the focus to creating a diverse ensemble. When Lost premiered in 2004, it was such a phenomenon with a huge ensemble cast. Aliens 3 was casting, and I remember thinking, Why can’t there be an Asian American in that group of people who get killed by the alien? That’s a matter of perspective, too. Kim plays Brandon Choi, a successful restaurateur and boyfriend to Wong’s celebrity chef, Sasha. Can you talk a little more about those standards? Lost was ahead of its time with its casting and story line, but I was curious about what was going on behind the scenes. I don’t see myself as an expert in any of these endeavors. I was getting paid well to live in Hawaii, and I was getting paid to act, which is ultimately what I always wanted. And so I felt like it was a bit of a unicorn. Understanding that my family was the priority dictated that I was going to stay with it because, look, I’m not mining coal. So what happened to the $25,000 reward you offered with your fellow actor Daniel Wu for the attack against the man in Chinatown? Why did you decide to do that? So you probably had a second job that limited your ability to pursue your craft fully. Abrams and saying, “Guys, this character cannot progress in this same way.” They basically said, “Trust us.” I did, and it turned out for the best. And that’s when showrunner David Shore came aboard and it [ended up at ABC]. Both Kim and Park left Hawaii Five-0 at the end of season seven after CBS reportedly refused to pay them equal to their white co-stars, O’Loughlin and Caan. One has to ask, What are the policies that are leaving people like them on the streets? Early on, there was some criticism from Asian American viewers about how Jin’s relationship with his wife, Sun [Yunjin Kim], relied on the stereotype of an overbearing man and a submissive woman. The opportunity to be able to learn Korean on an American TV show is once in a lifetime. I thought she would be a great person to shepherd this. And sure enough, there was a greater awareness that came about of Asian American hate. The greatest benefit of it all was that my Korean was never better. He was having a hard day on set because he got a monologue that was written for him 30 minutes before we were scheduled to shoot it. How did you come across The Good Doctor? Can you be more specific?[Shakes head] I’ve spoken more about it here than I ever have, so …
Photo: Jingyu Lin for New York Magazine
I want to return to your upbringing: What was your own experience growing up in Easton, Pennsylvania, that you wanted to be different for your kids?I just didn’t want them to always feel like they were on the margins. It was very clear and simple. And it’s completely understandable given the space we occupy because we all have to figure out a way of coping with it. If you don’t have the opportunity, then you’ll forever be at a certain level. So I think it’s really important just to see how a common system affects all the people of color and not focus on how communities of color are against one another. You received criticism for calling for police involvement. As an Asian actor, you’re just looking to get hired. NextShark.com bills itself as “the leading source for Asian American news.”
Tags: You recently spoke in front of the House Judiciary Committee about the importance of hate-crime legislation and designation in the wake of ongoing attacks against Asian Americans. I do believe that the police have a role to play. What did you want out of your career at that point?When I first started acting, I always envisioned a community of actors and artists much like Andy Warhol’s Factory, where Asian American actors, writers, directors, poets, playwrights, visual artists, and musicians come together and have a place to work collectively. I’ve always tried to be forward looking, and I thought, Well, since Hawaii Five-0 hasn’t turned out the way I was hoping as an actor, what more can I do here? But it really is an homage to — gosh, homage is such a pretentious word — it’s a callback to one of my original goals when I started in this business and the fact that I’ve been able to get to a place to have that dream actually become a reality. And it’s not that my company is necessarily about Asian Americans now. Could you talk a bit about why it’s important to name something a hate crime?In many cases, the standard is just unreasonable. I don’t think you can question the positive effect Lost had on representation. And also, let’s be honest, I was able to make a good living. I also did Yonsei.It was an inflection point in my life because it was that feeling of community that I’d never had before and that feeling that I’d met people who went through the same thing that I was going through. I hope it’s going to be an all-star Asian cast. It’s about working within the system to try and change it when you have the opportunity. I don’t think this is necessarily just about race, but I grew up thinking I was really ugly because I did not look like the traditional standards of what was considered beautiful. How did the casting for the lead come about? That’s the kind of environment that I enjoy the best because I’ve had plenty of the opposite. I felt like we were so close to getting a show made, and ultimately that is the goal. For people to have to yell a racial slur before they physically attack someone in order for it to be designated a hate crime is a little ludicrous. All it takes is working in the New York theater to realize how many incredibly talented actors there are at any given moment. And I think there were some ways where I worked harder to prove myself as American by leading. His father was an anesthesiologist at Easton Hospital, and his mother worked at home. The way the dialogue was put together was they would write it in English and then I would go to someone in Hawaii and translate it together with that person. It’s both an opportunity for me and emblematic of how difficult it was for older Asian American actors to maintain a career. I asked for both of those things, and that’s how I was able to start my company. She is African American and Korean American. Kim was born in Busan, in the southeastern province of Gyeongsang-do, which has its own regional dialect that has often been rendered in popular media as the tough guy’s. I gave to Stop AAPI Hate, Hate Is a Virus, the GoFundMe that was the AAPI Community Fund. That said, I was transparent with Grace about my goals, and Grace had her own goals. That’s a very diplomatic answer. Then I would learn it in Korean. Did you feel like your castmates were allies to you in this?I think any time you have an ensemble of actors, everyone’s objectives are unique and individual. So it also touches on the issue of mental health. Those are the stories I will tell till the cows come home because they inspire me to keep going. But my kids blissfully had never had to experience that. The character grew to a place where I don’t think you’d call him a stereotype by the end. I thought the stakes needed to be raised somehow. I wanted them to feel like if they were going to succeed or fail, it wasn’t because of what they looked like. It was painful because, as my career since then has borne out, I take a great deal of pride in being Korean American.