A Quote by Jimmy O. Yang
You'd see Asian faces on TV, but it was so rare, especially in the comedy space - that for me was Ken Jeong doing stand-up... it's amazing that I can call him a friend now and a colleague.
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My first time on TV doing stand-up, I actually did this show in Holland called 'The Comedy Factory' hosted by Jorgen Raymann. It was in 2006 in Holland. It was amazing. I had only been doing stand-up for four years, and I booked that gig through the Just For Laughs Montreal festival, and they flew me out and put me up.
When you have Ken Jeong naked next to you when you're doing a scene, it's pretty easy to stay loose.
The coolest thing for me now is when I'm in the States and I meet other Asian-Americans who are like, 'Dude, thank you so much for doing what you do. I love your music, I love whatever. But whatever you do, we're gonna support you because there aren't many Asian faces doing music.'
But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.
I enjoy it all: performIng, doing TV, movies, comedy, drama, stand-up, animation voicework, singing, but you get that instant gratification from stand-up because it's your own commentary and you get to see the reaction from the audience that's right there in front of you. I also love coming up with characters and watching people embrace them and enjoy them.
I wish people wouldn't just see me as the Asian girl who beats everyone up, or the Asian girl with no emotion. People see Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy, but not me. You add raceto it, and it became, 'Well, she's too Asian', or, ‘She's too American’. I kind of got pushed out of both categories. It's a very strange place to be. You're not Asian enough and then you're not American enough, so it gets really frustrating.
Ken Jeong might be my biggest fan.
If anybody is a master at improvisation, it would be Ken Jeong. He is hilarious.
Stand up comedy is this thing you get to do, so you have to treat it with respect. You can't just be like, 'Alright, I got my hour down, people are coming to see me now. Now, I'm going to lean on the mike stand.' No, you gotta work even harder now. You got to top what you already did. Because they'll find someone else.
One of the great joys of my life post-'Friends' has been being approached by Asian women who have told me how much it meant to see an Asian face on their TV screen when they were growing up.
The Divine has loved me as mother, as father, and as friend, behind all friends. I searched for that one Friend behind all friends, that one lover whom I now see glimmering in all your faces. And that friend never fails me.
I started doing stand-up when I was 15 and doing Letterman when I was 20. So I've been doing stand-up comedy and clubs for over 30 years. That's a long time.
Growing up, I never saw any Asian faces on TV, so it didn't feel like a viable option.
When they first start doing comedy, new comics or even people that have only been doing it three or four years, they're doing an impersonation of a stand-up. This is what I think a stand-up should sound like.
I knew I wanted to be in comedy but the path of least resistance was doing stand-up in folk music clubs where I could get on stage. I guess you could get up no matter how bad you were and you didn't have to audition. You just got up. Everything else required an audition and if you auditioned for a TV show, you would stand in line with a hundred other people. But at the clubs, it was okay just to get up, so that's why I started in stand-up.
I do think it's getting better, but I have noticed that Asians are not well represented in awards shows, and not a ton of Asian faces on the big screen either. Perhaps some of the young Asian actors who are on TV series now will be seen in upcoming movies in the near future - Jamie Chung, Constance Wu, Suzy Nakamura, to name a few. Fingers crossed.
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