The 2018 rom-com Crazy Rich Asians defied all expectations, wowing critics and earning
tons of cash.
As a result, many predicted that it would alter the Hollywood landscape.
But did it?
The answer is emphatically yes, and here’s how it happened.
British-Asian actress Gemma Chan plays the Singaporean socialite Astrid in Crazy Rich
Asians.
While growing up in the United Kingdom, Chan had limited chances to prove herself.
She told Vogue in 2018,
"When I left drama school, I was told by the voice teacher, 'Be prepared that you are going
to really struggle, most of the output from the UK is period drama and you won't get a
look-in.'
And for the first few years that really was the case.
I didn't even get a chance to audition."
Chan eventually landed a role on the critically acclaimed British sci-fi series Humans, which
proved to be her launching pad to Hollywood.
In 2019, she appeared alongside Brie Larson in the MCU movie Captain Marvel, but Crazy
Rich Asians was a far more pivotal moment for her, and for Asian actors in general.
She told Deadline,
"I'm really happy that things seem to be shifting, and it feels like it's not just a trend; it
feels like we're here to stay … I think all that anyone wants is equal opportunity
and a seat at the table, and I feel that we're finally getting to that point.
There's still work to be done.
But yeah, I just feel really, very proud, very grateful to be part of this change."
For years and years, the parts typically offered to Asian actors have been largely stereotypical.
As Fresh Off the Boat star Randall Park has noted,
"The roles weren't super offensive.
But when you look back and realize how many doctors you play, you think, okay, that's
how they see us."
But thanks to Crazy Rich Asians, that may very well be changing, especially the way
Asian men are depicted on-screen.
After all, the leading man in Crazy Rich Asians, played by Henry Golding, is a history professor,
but he's not your typical Asian intellectual.
Golding's leading lady, Constance Wu, is certainly happy about this development, as she told
Variety that she's glad that we have, quote, "sexy Asian lea ding man."
Asian actors who are also fans of Crazy Rich Asians have also been singing the movie's
sexy praises.
Maya Erskine, star of the Hulu sitcom Pen15, told InStyle,
"It was really exciting for me to see Asian men on-screen in the most beautiful way … In
America, I don't think I can name a movie where you're seeing Asian men sexually, honestly,
and in a way that's like, 'Wow, that guy is so hot, and he's leading this movie.'
In that way, it was a really emotional experience to watch."
Awkwafina was one of the breakout stars of Crazy Rich Asians.
She previously gained online notoriety with her music before transitioning to mainstream
movies with a supporting role in 2016's Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.
She later appeared in 2018's Ocean's 8, but it was Crazy Rich Asians that really took
her to another level.
In an interview with Margaret Cho for Harper's Bazaar, Awkwafina said,
"After Crazy Rich Asians, people would come up to me crying — it was almost a bittersweet
joy for them seeing a movie like that and realizing how important representation is.
Asian-American actors have told me that before Crazy Rich Asians they couldn't get one audition.
Now they're getting tons.
It helped open the door for movies like The Farewell."
The Farewell stars Awkwafina in her first dramatic role as Billi, a woman at odds with
her family when they hide a cancer diagnosis from Billi's grandmother.
It was the film everyone was talking about at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and now
Awkwafina's performance is garnering Oscar buzz.
But it was Crazy Rich Asians that really caught Hollywood's attention and helped movies like
The Farewell break through.
"Did you just copy and paste 'jungle' …and just kinda threw it in there?
"Okay!
All right!
The last Hollywood movie before Crazy Rich Asians with an all-Asian cast was 1993's The
Joy Luck Club, a drama about the relationships between four Chinese-American women and their
immigrant mothers.
The fact that it took 25 years for another all-Asian movie to be made might make you
think that The Joy Luck Club was a failure.
But that couldn't be further from the truth.
The film earned strong critical notices, and grossed 32.9 million dollars at the domestic
box office.
So if The Joy Luck Club was so well received, then how come it took nearly three decades
for something like Crazy Rich Asians to be made?
Asian-American screenwriter Diana Son believes that Hollywood failed to act because of a,
quote, "inherent bias" in the industry.
She told InStyle in 2019,
"It's not that The Joy Luck Club failed to inspire Asian-American writers and directors
to try to sell their stories, what it failed to produce was more financing opportunity.
That just comes down to, were the people who were making decisions about what TV shows
and movies get made, were they interested in our stories?
And I think the answer was no."
That certainly isn't the case now, as a sequel to Crazy Rich Asians is already on the way.
The success of Crazy Rich Asians has been far-reaching enough that it's been able to
help other Asian filmmakers get their projects off the ground.
Writer-producer Soo Hugh didn't have high hopes when she decided to shop an adaptation
of Min Jin Lee's best-selling novel Pachinko around Hollywood, but to her surprise, it
sparked a bidding war.
There's a chance that she would've gotten offers regardless, but the fact that Crazy
Rich Asians had major buzz at the time seemed to help her cause.
As she told InStyle,
"I would be naive to say that it wasn't a factor.
It very much helped grease the way, if that makes sense.
It made it a little easier."
Pachinko is set to air as part of Apple's TV offerings.
Hugh will serve as showrunner on the show, which tells the intergenerational story of
a Korean immigrant family.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, it will be allocated a budget similar to that of Netflix's
The Crown.
For years, Hollywood operated under the belief that Asian leads simply couldn't put bums
in seats.
But in a post-Crazy Rich Asians landscape, that might be a thing of the past.
As Japanese-American writer Lisa Takeuchi Cullen told NBC News in 2018,
"For us, one hurdle — maybe even the tallest hurdle — is getting networks to believe
that audiences will show up for these stories, and I think that's where Crazy Rich Asians
has moved the bar.
In Hollywood, numbers speak.
And when a movie with all-Asian leads brings up $35 million in the first week, executives
sit up and take notice."
Cullen revealed that she'd received a phone call about a potential new project just days
after Crazy Rich Asians opened, and she noticed the shift in attitude almost immediately.
As she explained,
"Usually after they explain the premise is when I jump in and say, 'How would you feel
if the leads were people of color?'
This time, this producer said, 'The only thing that's non-negotiable is that the lead is
Asian-American.'"
Another person that Crazy Rich Asians has helped out is Lillian Yu, who managed to sell
a spec-script to New Line Cinema on the back of the rom-com's roaring box office success.
Yu is a China-born Harvard graduate who was previously a staff writer on the NBC sitcom
Powerless.
Her script is called Singles Day, and it's based on a huge celebration in China that's
essentially the anti-Valentine's day.
Yu told NBC News,
"I think people were unsure before Crazy Rich Asians came out whether this kind of movie
could work, and everyone was really surprised that it did.
It opened a lot of doors for a lot of people, including me."
According to Yu's agent Max Michael, Singles Day sold in a matter of days after the release
of Crazy Rich Asians.
He told NBC News,
"If six months, a year ago, we had taken out the same project, I don't that we would've
had the success that we had with it.
I think we got a lot of people on their heels in terms of, 'Maybe this is something that
is worth trying.
We know how to make this movie now.'"
"Yes!
Yes!
You will marry, you!"
Crazy Rich Asians supporting player Ken Jeong has been asked to give his characters a stereotypical
Asian accent in the past, despite there being no actual reason for it.
"That is not Doug."
"What you talking about, Willis?
That him!"
He flat-out refuses to go down that route nowadays, though, and because of Crazy Rich
Asians, more Asian-American actors are in a position to do the same.
During an interview with BuzzFeed, Jeong recalled,
"I was very polite and very calm and I just said, 'As we've said before, you know, I will
not do that.'
… It's not just me doing that.
Every Asian-American actor you know with some visibility has had to say that, and I think
that's just getting le ss with the success of projects like Crazy Rich Asians."
According to Michelle Yeoh, who played Eleanor in Crazy Rich Asians, when she first arrived
in Hollywood, the presence of Asian characters always had to be explained.
"'Oh, she comes from Chinatown; oh, she's the waitress; oh, she's from the laundromat
or the takeout,' or something like this.
Why do we have to be explained?"
Yeoh has been in Hollywood for decades, and she's amazed that she's only now seeing studios
recognize the potential in Asian stories.
She told IndieWire in 2019,
"At least it's happening so that I can see what we've been fighting for all this time."
There's seemingly no limit to the list of Crazy Rich Asians stars who are causing a
buzz with their follow-up work, and Henry Golding surely must be glad about that.
When he was cast as Nick Young, Singapore's most eligible bachelor, he previously had
no film credits to his name besides a small Malaysian movie.
He was no stranger to the camera, as he'd previously worked as a Malaysia-based presenter
on the BBC's Travel Show, but he was a million miles away from starring in a Hollywood movie.
Fortunately, he sent over an audition tape anyway, and the rest is history.
Things have been moving fast for Golding since Crazy Rich Asians.
He played Blake Lively's husband in the critically acclaimed black comedy mystery thriller A
Simple Favor.
After that came Monsoon, a romantic drama that was also a hit with critics.
Looking ahead, Golding has two upcoming projects in the can — Last Christmas, a rom-com co-starring
Emilia Clarke, and The Gentlemen, an action flick directed by Guy Ritchie — and has
signed on as the lead in G.I.
Joe: Snake Eyes.
The likes of The Farewell, Pachinko, and Singles Day bode well for the future of Asians in
Hollywood, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Currently, there are numerous Asian-centric projects in various stages of development,
a sure sign that Crazy Rich Asians has made a lasting impact on a previously reluctant
industry.
Producer Albert Kim told NBC News,
"For a large part of my career, I've sought out projects that could feature Asian and
Asian-American characters.
And for the first time, producers are calling me with projects like that.
And what's incredible to me is that I actually don't have the time to take on everything,
which is great because that means there's more than enough to go around."
Awkwafina is getting a Comedy Central series, and Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu
is developing a project based on the 2018 cave rescue of a Thai soccer team for Netflix.
Elsewhere, HBO is working with Diana Son on a pilot called Slanted, Nina Yang Bongiovi
is putting together a biopic based on a Japanese-American activist, and fashion designer Phillip Lim
is producing a new take on Romeo and Juliet featuring immigrant teens from China.
And Disney is even getting in the game as well, as its upcoming live-action version
of Mulan, due out in March 2020, is already producing plenty of buzz.
Finally, being an Asian star in Hollywood isn't so Crazy anymore.
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