“After the Scars of ‘Fresh Off the Boat,’ Eddie Huang Took Control on ‘Boogie'”

“What were the challenges of getting this movie made? Not just to bring Focus on board but to get your first film as a writer and director greenlighted?

Focus believed in it from the beginning. They were the only ones that believed in it. We went all around town. Nobody raised their hand. Everyone was like, “We’re interested in you. We love what you did with ‘Fresh Off the Boat.’ This feels a little less easy.” It was like, “You want to come back with something with an all-Asian cast? You want to give Awkwafina a call?” Nobody wanted this. I fought to get somebody to sign onto this, but once I was at Focus, there wasn’t that much fighting.

I do a lot of explaining about my culture and a lot of explaining about downtown New York culture, or Black or Latino culture, and I end up having to explain stuff. But that’s part of the job, and I accept that. And to be honest, I don’t complain about that. That is my journey and that is my experience.

I had a lot of good partners at Focus who wanted to understand my journey and wanted to get in my head, and once I allowed them into my head and I wasn’t scared of explaining, things really took off…”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/scars-fresh-off-boat-eddie-171237112.html

“Oscars: Diverse Field Sees Asian Actors Finally Break Through”

“Last summer, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it had met its A2020 targets to double the numbers of women and people of color in its membership. Although that doesn’t necessarily mean gender and racial parity have been achieved, the first post-A2020 yield of nominations are promising.

For the 93rd Academy Awards, performers of color comprise the majority in both actor categories, with Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and Steven Yeun (Minari) in the lead race and One Night in Miami‘s Leslie Odom Jr. competing with Judas and the Black Messiah duo Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield in supporting. Ahmed is the fourth Muslim actor (after Omar Sharif, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Mahershala Ali) to receive an Oscar nomination, and the first in the best actor category, of which the Korean-born, Michigan-raised Yeun is the first Asian American nominee.

Yeun and co-star Youn Yuh-jung also finally snapped Hollywood’s “bamboo ceiling” (a phrase originated by leadership strategist Jane Hyun to describe the difficulty Asian Americans in the corporate world face in breaking through to senior executive roles). The disheartening streak had heretofore seen Asian actors shut out of recognition from their otherwise decorated films (Parasite, The Life of Pi, Slumdog Millionaire, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and The Last Emperor all garnered multiple Oscar nominations, including best picture, without a single acting nod). A year after Korea’s Parasite swept the Academy Awards (except in the acting categories, of course), the two have become the first performers born in that country to earn Oscar recognition…”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/2021-oscars-diversity-asian-actors-shatter-a-bamboo-ceiling

“The Resurrection of Kelly Marie Tran: On Surviving ‘Star Wars’ Bullying, the Pressures of Representation, and ‘Raya and the Last Dragon'”

“As the first woman-of-color Star Wars lead and first Southeast Asian Disney princess, Tran is well aware that she is a symbol of representation, and is getting better at wearing the mantle without letting it suffocate her.

“I understand why there’s that sort of label on the things I’ve done. As a kid, I saw people working in this industry and thought they were somehow elevated human beings, and that if I ever got to that place, I would never feel any insecurity or doubt, and that’s just not true,” she says. “So I acknowledge and validate the label of these things being historic, and I’m so grateful to be part of them, but for my own sanity I have to not think about that too much….”

Tran was an outgoing theater kid from San Diego, performing in local musical productions and an active participant of too many high school clubs. Her parents were refugees from Vietnam who did what they had to in their new country (including working at a funeral home) to provide for their three daughters.

Tran, the middle child, studied communications at UCLA and then joined Los Angeles’ aspiring actor ranks. While working a day job as an office assistant, she honed her comedy chops in local improv shows and video sketches…”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/resurrection-of-kelly-marie-tran-on-surviving-star-wars-bullying-the-pressures-of-representation-and-raya-and-the-last-dragon

“Raya and the Last Dragon: Creating Disney’s First Southeast Asian-Centered Movie”

Raya and the Last Dragon is Disney’s first animated feature starring characters of Southeast Asian descent. And the team behind the film did a significant amount of research to create a world that was at once vivid and fantastical — a world where dragons once roamed and where a fantasy villain could turn living beings into stone — while being realistically grounded in elements of Southeast Asian culture and geography.

Raya is set in the fantasy world of Kumandra, which is split into five distinct dragon-inspired regions: Fang, Heart, Talon, Spine, and Tail. Each region has its own topography, architecture, and personality, influenced by the countries of Southeast Asia. To bring this world to life, artists took trips throughout Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. “We committed ourselves and all of our collaborators to do deep, deep research, community engagement, and constant collaboration with our cultural departments,” said co-director Carlos López Estrada.

Disney also worked closely with their “Southeast Asia Story Trust,” a coalition of specialists in various fields, including visual anthropology, linguistics, botany, choreography, architecture, martial artists and others. Producer Osnat Shurer, who had previously worked with a team of Oceanic experts for Moana, described the creation of the Southeast Asia Story Trust as, “a really organic process. We met many people as we were preparing for the research trips, and we met some people on the research trips….”

https://www.ign.com/articles/raya-and-the-last-dragon-creating-disneys-first-southeast-asian-centered-movie