Randall Park Breaks Out of Character
The New Yorker | Hua Hsu | February 20, 2023
Randall Park, director of Shortcomings, in The New Yorker!
I don’t remember when I first saw Randall Park, only that one day he seemed to be everywhere.
Park, a forty-eight-year-old Korean American actor, has been on television and in film for nearly two decades, becoming one of those faces you recognize instantly—but from what? For years, he had cameos and guest spots, playing a doctor, a friend of a friend, another doctor. He’s been on “The Office,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and “Veep,” and he is one of the few actors currently working in both the Marvel and the D.C. cinematic universes.
His career has been defined by a kind of chummy adaptability, whether he plays a dictator (he made Kim Jong Un seem like a fun hang in “The Interview,” from 2014) or raps, as he did as a slacker in the 2019 romantic comedy “Always Be My Maybe,” or adopts an immigrant’s accent, as in his breakthrough role, on the ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” adapted from the chef Eddie Huang’s memoir. The series débuted in 2015 and was the first network show in nearly two decades to feature a predominantly Asian cast. For six seasons, Park played Louis Huang, the series’ wholesome, occasionally overwhelmed father. His onscreen presence makes him seem approachable, if people notice him at all. “One of the great advantages of being Asian, and borderline well known, is that people tend to think you look like just another Asian,” he told me. I made this mistake myself one time. We met near Manhattan’s Chinatown and, as he approached, I noticed his colorful cycling hat before I noticed him.
Park is the kind of actor who succeeds by reacting to other people’s drama rather than being at the center of his own. Onscreen, as well as in person, he is deferential and gracious, quick to fill in conversation with agreement and encouragement, happy to shift the focus away from himself. “I don’t consider myself a social person,” Park told me. “But acting forces me to be social. And, while I’m social, I’m, like, This is so fun. I’m so glad something’s forcing me to be social and to meet these people and talk to these people. Because if I was on my own I would never do that.”
In 2019, Park started Imminent Collision, a production company, with Michael Golamco and Hieu Ho, two friends he met through a theatre troupe he started in college. “He’s always been a really ambitious guy,” the comedian Ali Wong, his longtime friend and “Always Be My Maybe” co-star, told me. “But it’s never been gross.”
Park was in New York, with Ho, to film his directorial début, “Shortcomings,” an adaptation of Adrian Tomine’s 2007 graphic novel about a group of young, somewhat unlikable Asian Americans negotiating relationships, late-twenties ambition, and their baser instincts. The film is set in the present, giving its central questions about race, self-loathing, and voyeurism a fresh backdrop: cancel culture, Instagram stalking, the question of whether “Crazy Rich Asians”-style blockbusters are actually good for the Asian American community—if you believe that such a thing exists.
Read the rest of the profile here!
Park, a forty-eight-year-old Korean American actor, has been on television and in film for nearly two decades, becoming one of those faces you recognize instantly—but from what? For years, he had cameos and guest spots, playing a doctor, a friend of a friend, another doctor. He’s been on “The Office,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and “Veep,” and he is one of the few actors currently working in both the Marvel and the D.C. cinematic universes.
His career has been defined by a kind of chummy adaptability, whether he plays a dictator (he made Kim Jong Un seem like a fun hang in “The Interview,” from 2014) or raps, as he did as a slacker in the 2019 romantic comedy “Always Be My Maybe,” or adopts an immigrant’s accent, as in his breakthrough role, on the ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” adapted from the chef Eddie Huang’s memoir. The series débuted in 2015 and was the first network show in nearly two decades to feature a predominantly Asian cast. For six seasons, Park played Louis Huang, the series’ wholesome, occasionally overwhelmed father. His onscreen presence makes him seem approachable, if people notice him at all. “One of the great advantages of being Asian, and borderline well known, is that people tend to think you look like just another Asian,” he told me. I made this mistake myself one time. We met near Manhattan’s Chinatown and, as he approached, I noticed his colorful cycling hat before I noticed him.
Park is the kind of actor who succeeds by reacting to other people’s drama rather than being at the center of his own. Onscreen, as well as in person, he is deferential and gracious, quick to fill in conversation with agreement and encouragement, happy to shift the focus away from himself. “I don’t consider myself a social person,” Park told me. “But acting forces me to be social. And, while I’m social, I’m, like, This is so fun. I’m so glad something’s forcing me to be social and to meet these people and talk to these people. Because if I was on my own I would never do that.”
In 2019, Park started Imminent Collision, a production company, with Michael Golamco and Hieu Ho, two friends he met through a theatre troupe he started in college. “He’s always been a really ambitious guy,” the comedian Ali Wong, his longtime friend and “Always Be My Maybe” co-star, told me. “But it’s never been gross.”
Park was in New York, with Ho, to film his directorial début, “Shortcomings,” an adaptation of Adrian Tomine’s 2007 graphic novel about a group of young, somewhat unlikable Asian Americans negotiating relationships, late-twenties ambition, and their baser instincts. The film is set in the present, giving its central questions about race, self-loathing, and voyeurism a fresh backdrop: cancel culture, Instagram stalking, the question of whether “Crazy Rich Asians”-style blockbusters are actually good for the Asian American community—if you believe that such a thing exists.
Read the rest of the profile here!