WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — In January 2017, the director Jon M. Chu announced an open casting call for Asian and Asian-American actors for his movie adaptation of “Crazy Rich Asians.” Recorded in the kitchen of his West Hollywood home (you can see his fridge in the background), the online plea instructed anyone interested in joining his all-Asian cast, from aspiring actors to “cool personalities with hidden talents,” to post a two-minute video of themselves on social media. “We are looking for you,” he beamed.
The call was an enticing one. The romantic comedy was going to be a major feature film, with a reported budget of $30 million; its inspiration, the best-selling novel by Kevin Kwan, had already sold millions of copies. And then there was the sheer singularity of it all. How often did a Hollywood filmmaker go looking for a whole bunch of Asians for anything? The last time a major Hollywood film set in the present day showcased a majority Asian cast was a whopping 25 years ago, with “The Joy Luck Club” in 1993. Many of the folks Mr. Chu was seeking now weren’t even alive then.
For Asian and Asian-American viewers, the film, which opens on Aug. 15, is important not just as something of a cinematic Halley’s comet — before “Joy Luck Club,” there was “The Flower Drum Song” in 1961, and then, what? There’s also an eager hope that if this movie succeeds, it just might stave off another quarter-century drought. Producers use something called “comps” — recent films similar to the ones they’re pitching — to help sell studios on their ideas and budgets. For the producers of “Crazy Rich Asians,” there weren’t any. For scores of Asian-themed films to come, the hope goes, “Crazy Rich Asians” could be that comp.
When Mr. Chu made his online pitch, the film seemed a godsend for Asian actors, aspiring or otherwise. Forget a few token parts here and there; in this one film, Asian actors would play everything: the romantic leads and sympathetic sidekicks, the comic foils and cads, the faces in the crowd. With more than 4 billion Asians on the planet, how hard could it be to cast this thing?
When I texted my Singaporean aunt that I’d seen the movie Crazy Rich Asians, she immediately wrote back: “Terrible portrayal of Singaporeans. Was given the book — couldn’t finish. So materialistic.”
She has a point. The film, set mostly in Singapore and Malaysia, is about Rachel Chu (played by Constance Wu), a young Asian-American woman who discovers that her hot boyfriend, Nick Young (played by Henry Golding), is secretly a billionaire when he takes her home to meet his Singaporean parents.
I’m Malaysian, and nobody in my family is a billionaire. We do okay, but the only designer item I’ve gotten from my family is a knockoff Chloé handbag from Petaling Street. Which is why, if Crazy Rich Asians is all about money, it was a little surprising for me to burst into tears 10 minutes into the movie. One character texts another person, “Wah, so many Rachel Chus lah!” Another character texts back, “Alamak!” (Essentially, the Malay version of “Oy, vey!”) That was it — I heard people talking like they had in my house growing up, and ... waterworks.
Those tears didn’t shut off for the rest of the movie. When I heard an aunt’s Malaysian accent, an uncle’s more bougie, British-educated Malaysian accent, a friend’s Malay accent — I cried. When I saw a Bible study group like my aunt’s, I cried. And the food! Rows of kuih talam, pastel hawker plates piled with satay. Mascara everywhere.
I’d waited a long time for this. The last American film with a mostly Asian cast was 1993’s The Joy Luck Club. After Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl was canceled in 1995, it took a full 20 years for television execs to give another Asian TV series a shot with Fresh Off the Boat. In the meantime, execs have gone to great lengths to whitewash Asian roles from films, including casting Scarlett Johansson as Major Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell and Emma Stone as Allison Ng in Aloha. But these erasures were just part of a long film tradition— Yul Brynner played the King in The King and I, Boris Karloff played Fu Manchu. An early producer actually suggested casting a white woman for the lead role in Crazy Rich Asians.
As a radio journalist, I’ve crafted hundreds of intimate narratives for Snap Judgment and This American Life. I understood the power of story and of representation in media. But I couldn’t have predicted how impactful seeing my story onscreen would be. And yes, despite the whole gobs-of-money thing, it did still feel like my story, because Crazy Rich Asians is not so much about money as it is entitlement — especially the entitlement to unapologetically be yourself.
TV and movies taught me how to be American
I moved to America from Malaysia when I was almost 3, and I was not taught this sense of entitlement. My parents worked hard to fit in in our adopted country. We invited white American families over for Thanksgiving and combed through recipe books to learn how to make turkey and mashed potatoes. They signed me up for the Girl Scouts; my mom joined the PTA.
But the main way we learned to be American was by watching television. As a kid, I said, “No way, Jose,” because Michelle Tanner did in Full House. As a teenager, I fought off suicidal thoughts after watching Claire go from hot mess to success in Six Feet Under. When I started dating, I asserted myself and my worth for the first time after watching Carrie do it in Sex and the City. Movies and TV have taught me how to make a joke, how to love, how to be an adult: how to be an American.
But none of these narratives taught me how to be Asian-American. The TV kids failed their math quizzes; that felt different from the shame I felt from failing all of my Chinese tests, when my parents would shake their heads and say, “But your grandmother’s dying wish was that you learn Chinese.” The TV bullies stole lunch money until the main characters stood up for themselves. My Vietnamese and Chinese bullies pushed me into a dumpster for being too “whitewashed,” while my white friends gagged at the smell of the bánh bèo I brought to school to prove my Asianness.
When TV parents found out their daughters were on their periods, they gave them tampons and awkward, heartwarming chats. My mom force-fed me dong quai soup, which I think is supposed to make your period easier but mostly just made me dry-heave at the kitchen table.
Even when I did see the rare Asian-American girl on TV, she never felt like me. We Asians had the Yellow Power Ranger, Claudia from The Baby-Sitters Club, and the Asian Rugrat. All of them were perfectly assimilated sidekicks, and if they were giving me advice on how to be an Asian woman in suburbia, it would have been: Be beautiful. Be wholesome. Be American.
Crazy Rich Asians features Asian Americans of all types
But watching Crazy Rich Asians made me wonder what I could have learned about being Asian-American if I’d seen this film when I was 13. How could it have changed my life and what I thought I deserved?
Maybe if I’d seen the absurd yet totally relatable best friend character Peik Lin, played by the irreverent Awkwafina, I would have joined my high school improv group instead of being the fangirl who brought them sandwiches. Maybe if I’d seen Asian musicians like Kina Grannis, who sings in the movie, I would have known Asians were capable of having powerful voices. Maybe I would have taken singing lessons instead of piano, which I hated.
I’d have watched Americanized Asians misbehaving and acting rude, blunt, and badass. I’d have seen evil Asians and conniving Asians and friendly Asians and lecherous Asians and ethical Asians and brave Asians and complicated Asians.
Maybe when people in high school told me I was “basically white” because I was loud and inappropriate, because I listened to punk and guffawed with my mouth wide open instead of hiding it behind my hand like the good, quiet Asian girls on TV did — maybe I would have disagreed with them.
Maybe all of us would have understood that “Asian” is a shared ethnic background and not a personality type. Maybe I would have understood that I did not have to be white in order to be myself.
And I would have watched Rachel struggling to be Asian enough. When I went back to Malaysia five years ago, I got into an argument about politics with some family members, and just like Rachel, I was told that I was “too American,” that I had forgotten how to respect my elders properly, that I had changed too much to belong.
In bed alone that night, I opened Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem to distract myself, and wound up reading “On Self-Respect.” The last line eviscerated me: “Without [self-respect], one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”
Where was home, even? If they didn’t want me here, and they didn’t want me back home in America, how could I believe I was worthy of self-respect?
And what if I’d seen Crazy Rich Asians before that moment? Over the course of the film, Rachel overcomes discrimination from Asians who called her “too American” by defining her own identity and demanding that others recognize it. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but suffice it to say that instead of doing that using money, she channels that entitlement with courage and, yes, self-respect.
Despite having read Didion’s “On Self-Respect” a hundred times, despite pinning up sections of it in my office for years, I don’t think I fully understood how to reconcile and respect both my Asian and American selves until I watched myself do it onscreen.
So, yes, the characters in Crazy Rich Asians possess a fair amount of rich people entitlement, and some good old American entitlement as well. For those of us who’ve been “ching-chong ching-chonged” or catcalled to “go back to China” or called a “zipperhead” or asked if we speak English, for those of us who ever held ourselves back because we didn’t see people like us living those dreams, who for so long never dared to hope to see a reflection of themselves, for those of us who anxiously hold the mainstream acceptance of a single film as a judgment on whether we’ll ever really belong in this country — well, we could use a little entitlement.
Stephanie Foo is a writer and radio producer. She has worked on staff at This American Life and Snap Judgment, and her work has been featured on shows like 99% Invisible and Reply All.
First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.
New Yorker Rachel Chu accompanies her longtime boyfriend, Nick Young, to his best friend’s wedding in Singapore - but Nick has neglected to mention a few key details about his life. Not only is he son of one of the country’s wealthiest families, he's also one of its most sought-after bachelors. Soon jealous socialites and, worse, Nick’s disapproving mother are taking aim at Rachel. While money can’t buy love, it can definitely complicate things. Based on the best-selling novel, starring Henry Golding, Constance Wu, Michelle Yeoh, Chris Pang, Awkwafina.
IF YOU’VE been hearing people say the words Crazy Rich Asians followed by an excited squeal, there’s a reason for that.
The upcoming movie is inspiring elation among audiences for two reasons — the first is that’s based on a best-selling book and already has a fanbase, and the other is that it’s the first non-period Hollywood movie in 25 years to feature an all-Asian cast.
The movie comes out in the US next week but Australians will have to wait until the end of the month to check out what all the fuss is about.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Based on Kevin Kwan’s 2013 best-selling book, the movie is about Asian-American woman Rachel Chu who accompanies her boyfriend Nick Young to Singapore for a wedding.
Unknown to Rachel, Nick’s family is rich, like crazy rich, and they’re old money with the fortune going back generations. Nick’s family, especially his mother Eleanor, thinks Rachel isn’t good enough for Nick because she doesn’t have the right “breeding”.
Arriving in Singapore, Rachel is inundated with untold wealth and exposed to the kind of opulence she’s never experienced. But that flashy glamour is laced with snobby attitudes.
It’s a universal meet-the-parents story, except surrounded by endless designer labels, incredible houses and the kind of extravagant parties that would make Jay Gatsby jealous.
WHO’S IN IT?
Even though it’s a Hollywood movie made by Americans, you won’t find any white actors, at least none with speaking roles. Instead, its cast features some of the most high-profile actors of Asian heritage from the US, UK and Australia, plus Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and more.
Rachel is played by American actor Constance Wu who is best known for her role as Jessica Huang in the US sitcom Fresh Off The Boat, a 90s-set show about an Asian-American family in Florida. The American-born Wu has been vocal about Hollywood’s diversity problem, calling out films such as the “white saviour” in The Great Wall or whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell.
Nick is played by Brit Henry Golding who has mostly hosted travel shows for the BBC up until now. He will also play Blake Lively’s suspicious husband in the thriller A Simple Favour, out later this year.
Michelle Yeoh will play Nick’s mother Eleanor. Yeoh has had a long career on both sides of the Pacific since the mid-1980s but is best known to Western audiences for her starring roles in Hidden Tiger, Crouching Dragon, the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies and in Memoirs of a Geisha.
Additionally, British actor and model Gemma Chan (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Sherlock, Humans) has a supporting role as Nick’s cousin Astrid, Korean-American actor and rapper Awkwafina (Ocean’s 8) plays Rachel’s friend Peik Lin and funnyman Ken Jeong (The Hangover, Dr Ken) is Peik Lin’s dad.
Australian-based Malaysian comedian Ronny Chieng is leading the Australian contingent alongside Remy Hii (Better Man, Neighbours, Marco Polo) and Chris Pang (Tomorrow When the War Began, Marco Polo).
Other members of the cast include Jimmy O. Yang (Silicon Valley, Patriots Day), Sonoya Mizuno (Maniac), Nico Santos (Superstore), Lisa Lu (The Last Emperor, The Joy Luck Club), Harry Shum Jr (Glee) and Filipino talk show personality Kris Aquino.
What it’s not is #starringjohncho.
WHY PEOPLE ARE EXCITED
Kwan’s book had printed nearly a million copies when Warner Bros bought the movie rights. With that kind of popularity comes a built-in fanbase. Fans of the book loved the novel’s indulgent name-dropping of designers, amazing locations and the way almost every character splashed the cash with no sense of tomorrow.
But the real reason Crazy Rich Asians could become a cultural phenomenon is that in an era where conversations about representation on screen are becoming louder, this is the first contemporary Hollywood movie in 25 years to feature an all-Asian cast.
The Joy Luck Club (based on the popular book by Amy Tan), released in 1993, was the last movie to do this, with the sort-of-exception of Memoirs of a Geisha in 2005, which was a period film set in pre-war Japan.
Asian communities across Western cultures are excited to see themselves on screen and in main, speaking roles playing characters who are successful and confident, rather than relegated to supporting roles or have white actors play the main role in an Asia-set story.
Kwan and the producers recently revealed they turned down a more lucrative deal from Netflix to ensure the movie will be released on big screens around the world, with the kind of highly visible marketing campaign to match.
The flipside with Crazy Rich Asians is that these touchpoint movies then become representative of what’s possible going forward and is faced with enormous pressure to succeed — like Black Panther was for African-American communities and Wonder Woman was for the cause of female-centred superhero flicks.
So it needs to attract audiences and make money, because Hollywood is still a business machine not overly concerned with doing the right thing unless the right thing is also profitable.
WHEN CAN YOU SEE IT?
Crazy Rich Asians will be released in Australia on Thursday, August 30.
Share your movies and TV obsessions with @wenleima on Twitter.
Tan Kheng Hua, Constance Lau and Janice Tan are three of the "Crazy Rich Asians" stars who opted to wear outfits by Asian designers at their film's premiere in Hollywood. (Photo: Getty, AP)
If you know two things about the new movie "Crazy Rich Asians," you probably know these: 1. It's the first Hollywood studio film about an Asian-American character's story in over 25 years and 2. It features luxurious fashion.
Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabbana, Céline -- all of those designers are name-checked in the film adapted from the book of the same name. After all, the "Crazy Rich Asians" novel was written by Kevin Kwan, a man who described his relationship with fashion this way:
"As my mom always says, I wasn’t born to shop; I was conceived to shop," Kwan said at the "Crazy Rich" Hollywood premiere Tuesday night. (The movie hits U.S. theaters on Aug 15.) "I was basically (my mom's) bag carrier all around the boutiques of Europe and Asia" before going to Parsons School of Design and later producing magazine shoots, he said.
CLOSE At the Los Angeles premiere of rom-com "Crazy Rich Asians" stars Michelle Yeoh, Constance Wu and Henry Golding show off their haute couture. (Aug. 8) AP
And so it makes sense that the cast of the "Crazy Rich" movie would be dressed to impress at their Hollywood premiere. But several cast members took it a step further on the carpet for their landmark film: They wore ensembles by Asian designers as they posed for photos and gave interviews outside of the TCL Chinese Theatre.
Two of the movie's stuffy "aunties," Janice Koh and Selena Tan, used their outfits to pay homage to Singapore, their hometown and the setting of the movie. Koh wore a mandarin-collared black gown with flared sleeves by Singapore-based label Ong Shunmugam, and Tan rocked a navy and black frock by Singaporean designer Frederick Lee Couture.
Tan Kheng Hua, who stars as the mother of Constance Wu's fish-out-of-water protagonist Rachel Chu, showed off a kimono dress from Singaporean designer Thomas Wee. Constance Lau, who is a Radio1 Asia personality in the film, wore - as she described it - "a take on the Chinese dress, what we call a Cheongsam in Singapore." Her version was made by Singaporean designers of brand Time Taken to Make a Dress.
Jimmy O Yang, the wild Bernard in "Crazy Rich," walked the carpet in a custom-made suit by Ge Wang of ESQ in Chicago. "I wanted to support the local Asian designers," he said about his choice to rock the opulent jacket. (His watch, meanwhile, is a Cartier purchased on Ebay. "I’m still not sure if it’s real or fake," he said.)
Gemma Chan, fashionista Astrid in the movie, said she's been making a point to spotlight several different Asian designers on the "Crazy Rich" press tour. For the Hollywood premiere, she was in Oscar de la Renta. One of his protégés, Laura Kim, is Asian. "I am representing!" she said.
Nicos Santos, who's a style expert onscreen, is not that dissimilar from his character in real life. "I used to work in retail," he said at the premiere. "Neiman’s, Dior, Jimmy Choo... after my shift, I would go do (comedy) open mics." Though Santos didn't wear an Asian designer on Tuesday-- he wore Paul Smith-- he did find a different way to spotlight a designer that's important to him.
"Because I used to work for Bottega Veneta, I did suggest that we drop that name (in my character's dialogue), because it is one of the most luxe labels out there. And I wanted to give a shout out to my old employers."
CLOSE "Crazy Rich Asians" director Jon M. Chu says the all-Asian set made cast emotional, while stars Constance Wu, Gemma Chan and Henry Golding talk about the film being a stepping stone for Asian representation. (Aug. 8) AP
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