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You're never going to please everyone, and if you do, there's something wrong.
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My first Asian role model was Michelle Kwan. Her beauty comes from within. She's also really beautiful on the outside. But when I first saw her ice-skate, her performance was so moving and beautiful that she just glowed.
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Being an actor, in and of itself, is just hard. You have to just do it for its own sake.
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A lot of times, people think of Asian culture as some mythical world instead of modern people with modern occupations with modern problems, modern tools. Like, we're not all just talking Taoism and kung fu - some people are just trying to get over their breakup with their boyfriend, and they're Facebook-stalking.
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I am definitely trying not to take films that are mostly about dude problems, not because I don't think they're worthy problems, but there are a lot of people who will take those.
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My parents did not pay a cent for my education; they didn't give me a car or furniture - I did that 100% on my own. I had to pay back a lot.
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Authentic programming that shows the outside world garners authentic interest.
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If you watch any show that stars white people, white people aren't coming up to them like, 'Thank you for showing my face on the big screen.' Because they see their faces in popular culture all the time.
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I'm always hungry for the next thing. I'm never resting on my laurels.
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Working on 'Fresh Off the Boat' has been really enlightening to me because it's made me actually think about the roles that Asians and Asian-American women have played in media. Not because I didn't think it was important before, but because before, I was really focused on just paying my rent.
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I'd rather lose all my stuff than lose myself, because I've done that before, and that feels way worse.
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I'm constantly paranoid that I'll be unemployed for the rest of my life... and have to go back folding shirts at the Gap, which you know... you gotta do what you gotta do.
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My family is Chinese-Taiwanese. I'm from Richmond, Virginia. The community in which I grew up was pretty white. The storybooks you got at school featured white children and an animal, or animals, and as you got older, the novels you were assigned were about, like, the problems of white boys and their dogs.
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I wish reporters were more in tune to the difference between the Asian experience and the Asian-American experience. I think often they lump the two together and think that when I talk about Asian-American narratives that they can cite 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' or 'Mulan' as proof of concept when it's a different experience.
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I was emotional. I wanted to be taken seriously. I was pretty emo. I was reciting Shakespeare monologues when I was 10. I still know the whole 'To be, or not to be...' monologue, because I knew it when I was 10.
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People's passion and desire for authenticity is strong.
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If the expression of and advocating for your values makes you lose a job or a person, then that person/job sorta just... wasn't your heart's tribe.
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Make sure your work is never results-oriented. The result is a byproduct of the work, in a way.
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Everyone's going to fail at some point. Even if you choose the steadiest career, you're going to go through that.
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Specificity is what makes good storytelling, and good storytelling is what makes money, and making money is then what encourages new producers to invest in different stories about Asians.