Brenda Song is known for playing London Tipton in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody to Disney
Channel fans in the 2000s, and has since starred in projects like Secret Obsession and Dollface.
But while fans may think they know her, there's a lot most don't realize about the actress.
Brenda Song's acting ambitions date back to when she was just 3 years old living in Sacramento,
California, when she learned of an acting school for kids during a visit to a local mall.
Attending the school became a dream, and then an obsession,
despite the family's financial situation, and she begged and pleaded with her parents
to enroll her. She even turned to negotiating, telling W magazine -
"I got really, really sick and I wouldn't take my Robitussin. My mom was like,
OK, fine if you take your Robitussin, we'll take you to this acting school.'
I took it, and my grandma was like, 'We have to take her,' but my mom was like,
'No, we don't. She's a child, she's not going to remember this.'"
But Song apparently wouldn't drop the subject and so her grandmother took all of her own
money out of savings - and brought her to the school, which Song unfortunately described as -
"Not legit at all."
Fortunately, by enrolling in the school,
Song was able to snag an agent and start going on auditions.
Once she got an agent, young Brenda Song began vying for roles. She eventually booked her
first television commercial on her sixth birthday when her parents agreed to drive
her to an audition in Los Angeles despite not totally understanding the industry.
In 1999, Song starred as a series regular in Nickelodeon's 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd, a wacky
sitcom about a school bully who's transformed into a dog and won't be changed back until he does
100 good deeds. That role led her to the Disney Channel, and she was cast in 2000's The Ultimate
Christmas Present, a movie about a pair of girls who steal Santa's snow-making machine to create a
blizzard so they can enjoy a snow day. Eventually contracted to Disney, Song went on to star in more
than a dozen Disney Channel projects. Brenda Song was just 15 when she was
cast as spoiled London Tipton in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
"So if I gave you the money you'd go shopping with me?”
"I can't let you give me that kind of money."
"Why not? I got it right here."
But the new role came at a complicated time,
as her mother had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and Brenda was accepted
into her dream college. She told told W magazine the advice her father gave her -
"You have an amazing opportunity,
if acting is what you want to do. [...] You go to college to figure out what you want to do,
but if this is what you want to do, you have an opportunity to do it."
Looking back, Song knows she was right to follow her passion, telling Refinery29 -
"I never looked at the big picture as a kid. I just loved acting so much.
I loved the day to day. I loved getting a script. I loved auditioning.
It was never about winning an Oscar or being a movie star."
As an actor of Asian heritage, Brenda Song quickly realized that Disney offered the kind of
opportunities she hadn't been receiving anywhere else, saying in an interview with Teen Vogue -
"I don't think people realize how ahead of the curve Disney Channel was.
They were colorblind casting way before anybody else."
In fact, Song admitted that it wasn't until she came to Disney
Channel that doors really began to open for her, telling W magazine -
"I didn't get a lot of auditions.
It wasn't until I got into the Disney family that they were so very open."
While some former child stars try to distance themselves from their Disney roots,
Brenda Song still treasures the experiences the network gave her,
while noting the downsides as well, telling Refinery29 -
"I'm grateful to Disney because without them I wouldn't be here, but it's a double-edged sword.
When you're on a successful show when you're that age for so long, you build your own stereotype."
She spoke about her mindset after acting on Suite Life between the ages of 15 and 23,
when she finally started getting more adult roles.
"I was young, naive and not ready. I feel fortunate to have been slowly pushed in the
right direction. I've progressed as a human, but I didn't feel a rush to grow up. It was organic."
Fortunately, Song can now reflect on her Disney Channel years with pride.
As Brenda Song's work caught the attention of Hollywood,
she landed a part in an Oscar-winning film — but she almost wasn't allowed to take it.
Chatting with W magazine, she recalled being offered a role in the 2010 David
Fincher-directed film The Social Network, which chronicled the origins of Facebook.
Disney initially wouldn't allow her to take the role because of a brief scene
in which her character hooks up with Andrew Garfield's character in a restroom stall.
While the PG-13 movie was hardly scandalous, Disney Channel execs feared that the racy
scene could tarnish the wholesome image she'd cultivated on The Suite Life.
But the tenacious actress ultimately wore the execs down until they relented.
"It was one of those things where I just said,
'This is an opportunity that I don't think will ever come around again. [...] The
Social Network was not only career-changing, but life-changing. I learned so much on that project."
Brenda Song and boyfriend Macaulay Culkin keep their relationship so
private and low-key that many people don't even realize they've been an item since 2017.
In fact, the star of Home Alone joked about his ambitions to have
babies with Song during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Song told Refinery29 that while they like to keep their personal life private, she
and Culkin definitely share a bond due to their respective experiences as former child stars.
"When you find other actors who've been in the
industry for a long time and still love it, you have a bond forever."
Numerous actors have admitted that they dread going to auditions,
but not Brenda Song, as she told W magazine -
"People thought I was crazy because I said I loved to audition,
but I said I loved to audition because every audition was like a job to me."
In fact, Song recalled that when she got into trouble as a child,
her parents would punish her by refusing to let her go to an audition.
"If I was bad, I didn't get to go to auditions. It wasn't the opposite, getting gifts to
go to auditions. I was by the door with my portfolio ready to go, like a crazy person."
Overall Song claims to have had a great experience being a child actor. As for her own kids acting?
"If my kids ever wanted to be a part of it, I would want them to be at an age where they
can make their own decisions. It's hard for me to tell someone at 10 they don't know what they want,
because I did. It's all I wanted." October 2019 saw the release of Secret Obsession,
a psychological thriller that showed a very different side of Brenda Song
than what viewers had become accustomed to in all her Disney Channel projects.
In the Netflix movie, Song plays a woman named Jennifer who is the
victim of a traumatic attack that leaves her unconscious.
When she comes to, she has amnesia, with no memory of her past or her attacker.
"Jennifer… Do you know who I am?.....You
don't remember me do you?"
Thankfully, her attentive husband is there to take care of her every need while she
recovers. When a police detective notices some similarities between her attack and the
evidence he's been compiling while searching for his daughter's kidnapper, Jennifer is led
to a terrifying discovery. Song hinted at the plot in an interview with BriefTake -
"The way that I've described the movie, without giving anything away,
is that it's kind of like a new twist to Misery, a version of Misery, which I think is really fun."
According to Netflix, Secret Obsession quickly became one of its most-watched movies ever,
with 40 million households streaming the flick within its first four weeks of release.
After Brenda Song successfully made the transition from regularly starring in Disney Channel projects
to appearing in more adult fare, she felt comfortable enough to revisit her Disney
past by starring in a new project for the channel. In the animated series Amphibia,
she provides the voice of a character named Anne Boonchuy, who, like Song, is half Thai.
"Wow, where'd you learn to cut like that?"
"You know my parents actually owned a Thai restaurant back home."
"Da-whoops. Hold on."
On her return to Disney, Song told Teen Vogue -
"It's taken me almost 10 years from Disney to really feel like I found a niche for myself.
At 31 I finally feel like I know what my strengths are, and I'm trying to steer into that.
The character has also been a way for her to connect to her Thai heritage, telling NBC News -
"Something I really love about what we're doing with the show is that we're introducing our
audience to a very specific culture, but she's not defined by it. It's just who she is."
Brenda Song returned to her comedy roots in Dollface, which debuted on Hulu in November 2019.
Kat Dennings stars as Jules, who has just been dumped by her longtime boyfriend and
realizes she's let all her female friendships fall by the wayside.
As a result, she reconnects with her best friends from college, played by Song and
Pretty Little Liars' Shay Mitchell. Song spoke to Refinery29 about how she related to the show -
"I've definitely been in Jules' position before, and done the faux
pas of leaving my girlfriends behind, living my boyfriend's life, and forgetting my own."
Not only can she identify with the characters in the show,
she went even further to gush that Dollface was her dream job,saying,
"With this cast, shooting in L.A., and with this character,
I've never had a character that felt more me."
Not only did Brenda Song and her Dollface co-stars play best friends on the show,
but they came to be BFFs in real life as well, describing the filming to Teen Vogue.
"It flew by so quickly because we literally just hung out for four months.
We became so close because we all got along and we were so surprised
that none of us had ever met each other before. It was meant to be."
Song added that she and co-star Kat Dennings had become particularly close.
"Kat and I look at each other and say, 'Where have you been my entire life?'
She's my knitting buddy. We go yarn shopping together."
The take away from Dollface
While Brenda Song has portrayed numerous characters over the years,
she feels Dollface was the ideal showcase for her well-honed comedic skills.
"I'm actually scary nice to the people I hate."
"Here's your crutches."
"Thank you SO very much!"
Song told W magazine -
"I hope that my comedy continues to evolve and stays modern and relevant. With every job,
you learn a little bit more about yourself, you push yourself a little bit more."
Speaking with PopSugar, she shared her hopes for what viewers take away from the show.
"Hopefully you can watch it, giggle, laugh at our misadventures,
look at our mistakes and learn from them, please, and hopefully just have a good time."
As a high-profile Asian-Amercian actress, it would have seemed likely
that Brenda Song would have been a part of the groundbreaking comedy Crazy Rich Asians.
But when speaking with Teen Vogue, Song offered some surprising information.
"A lot of people don't know this, but I never got to read for Crazy Rich Asians
ever. Their reasoning behind that, what they said
was that my image was basically not Asian enough, in not so many words."
She found that baffling but after taking some time away,
Song realized changing others' perceptions isn't something that will happen overnight.
"I got myself together and said, 'Brenda, there is only one you, and you can't change who you are.
You can't change your past.' I am so grateful for every job that I've done. All I can do is
continue to put good auditions out there, do the best that I can — that's all I can ask for."
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