Interview with Actors Bowen Yang, Kelly Marie Tran and Han Gi-chan, and Lily Gladstone

 

Q : Loved the film. It was both hilarious and reflective. I think the film touches on important issues in terms of the definition of coming out or not coming out for Asian cultures and communities. My question to all of you, how do you personally interpret. This idea what does coming out or not coming out mean in terms of the film and how does this film cut through this supposed taboo of being gay in Asian culture. 

Bowen Yang: Wow. I think what the movie portrays in different sorts of iterations is this. Idea that coming out is this separation process that excites you from your family? Min feels he can’t come out because it would cut him off from something he feels rooted to. Angela had a tumultuous coming out that ended up.

Boomeranging back into Overcorrected acceptance, and therefore she still feels alienated, even though it feels like it’s this thing that’s being embraced about her now. And I feel like the movie does a really amazing job of mending those wounds as the story progresses. As it relates to Asian culture, I feel like we’re still collectively figuring out how to move into those. Spaces of acceptance that feel uncomplicated and don’t have an asterisk that feels relatable and there’s power in that.

Kelly Mari Tran: I agree. Min’s coming out and Chris takes care of them in this process is a beautiful, depiction of coming out if you have a family that doesn’t accept you, becoming their guardian, is such a beautiful moment

Han Gi-Chan: I can’t say a lot, but I have an echo from Bowen. I still think that not only Korea, but also Asia have a little kind of in closet moment for all of those people. And I really want this movie to change their point of view for them.

Lily Gladstone: Can’t speak. It’s fun outside of the film and just my perception, I think the counterbalance in our film is the humor, like the de-queering of the house is tucking yourself back in the closet. So straightening up. What I love about it and the way that this film embraces, and I, from my perception also dismantles some of the stereotypes about Asian representation in Asian families, particularly like the the tiger mom sort of a thing or, we have it completely set up, but then it’s clarified that this is coming from the grandfather.

This is coming from something that represents a patriarchy that. Manifests itself in different ways worldwide, but we all live in post capitalist society. So anyways, no thesis, no queer theory. I’m having a blast. But I love the other counterbalance that you just see, even though we have this scene that’s very humorous and fun of tucking all of ourselves back in the closet as soon as grandma shows up, she just sees right through it because she knows her grandson. And I love that it’s a matriarch who cuts through that so sharply and just calls it out, deals with it, goes on her own journey with it, and lands in loving her grandson. That’s yeah I just love the way the film approaches all of it.

Q : The founding family is a core theme in this film. Can you talk about what that means to you and how the film explores that? 

Han Gi-Chan: For men, especially men still in the closet in this films and because of this family reputation and like Koreans, likes traditional culture. It gives a hard pressure on a man, and that’s why he feels so free when he’s with Chris and his friends.

This is because he really wants to be a family with all of these friends, but actually when grandma shows up it’s like total mess. But I feel that this is a thing you always have, take an adventure when you, something you love and choose your own family, like finding your own family, is brave.

Every person could have their own moments later on, which will be a very lovely and meaningful moment in their lives also. So that’s a, yeah, it’s a core theme of this film and also a lot of the audience will experience it already or later on. So this is it’s a wonderful moment for everyone,

Lily Gladstone: I was really happy having the opportunity to indigenize my character who was not written with any ethnic specificity or cultural background in mind. So I got to suggest, because we were shooting in Seattle that our home would be in a neighborhood called Ballards, I chose to make my character Duwamish.

Metropolitan areas. There’s natives from all different tribes, but I felt there was something important here to ground it exactly in place. And part of just my own, being a Blackfeet and NE purse like a Plains Basin native person living in an urban area in Duwamish territory, Tila, Squamish territory I have my own. Perspective shared through Indian country. We’re not a homogenized society, but there are some things that are common. And one of those is this kind of concept of chosen family. Like we keep really tight records orally and, last couple hundred years for government purposes on paper of our family lineage where.

When I grew up, there were two things that were just imparted to me. Either direct teachings, direct, like pointed teachings, or just things that you realize are part of your culture, especially when you leave it. Adoption is as good as blood. Like when we’re, when you’re coming of age and you’re starting to like dates around your family lets you know who you’re related to and who you’re not.

So you don’t cross those lines ’cause they’re strict with us. Even if it’s removed by generations. our sense of time and family is tighter than Eurocentric ways adoption is part of it.

So There’s a whole family tree where I come from that we are related to three or four generations back through an adoption, not a biological relationship, but that whole branch is off limits for marriage because adoption is as good as blood. I was hitting middle school age when you’re developing a sense of sexuality or noticing it in other people and like conversation. I remember like it was around, it was a few years after Ellen DeGeneres came out so conversations about queerness were cropping up.

One of my mom’s good friends, a language keeper, talked about queerness in the eighties during I believe the AIDS epidemic, and just asked what Blackfeet’s worldview was about it. I don’t know if there’s a worldview, really, it.

But I just know that in society, one of the revered roles of like queer people was taking care of children who were orphaned. So like this significant period of time where there’s like starvation winner, where you know, colonization happening and a kid is orphaned, then the two-spirit, non-binary, like queer community members would be the ones that wouldn’t adopt and raise the kids.

All of that felt foundational to a worldview when I was building Lee, modern urban Indians were working in these progressive organizations. One of the big things we talk about is decolonization, and it felt like this home and the structure of it was just active decolonial love, so old, it’s new.

Bowen Yang: Hearing Lily talk about chosen family, reminds me of how the film converges those concepts too. This chosen family that lives together ends up becoming bound by these children.

Angela and Min, choose their biological family to bring them into the fold after years of being alienated by them. I feel like you bring Chen and you bring Ian. That is that they become a chosen family by the end too. So it feels like there’s convergence.

Lily Gladstone: It’s a double meaning. There’s the family you choose and Choosing your family over societal pressure is another big theme.

©Courtesy of Bleecker Street 

Q: This question is mainly for Kelly, but it’s also for everyone else. If you would like to chip in. I guess I am really intrigued by the way in which you guys responded so strongly to different interviews about how you worked with the film, Kelly, especially saying that now that you’re coming out because of a different interview with the wedding banquet and Ton also.

Working with American cinema I’m interested to hear your opinions and reflections on thinking about how do your personal identities come to fore with the wedding banquet, and how has this film affected you and it’s filmmaking?

Great question. Thank you

Kelly Mari Tran: for,

Q : Thank you.

Kelly Mari Tran: Okay. as an actor. whenever you’re given the privilege of playing a part where you can use your own personal experience and meld yourself and your character, by the end of it, it’s almost oh, I don’t even know the difference. I like the lines that are watery. For me, that’s when you did the job. And like you said, I didn’t mean to come out during that Vanity Fair interview.

Q : Congratulations.

Kelly Mari Tran: We were filming the Korean wedding scene that day, and it was such a busy day, and then there was a lot of overwhelm and excitement and all these different emotions. And David Canfield who came to set to just ask us about the film and how it was going, his first question was, what are you most excited about?

I said. I’m excited to tell a queer story as a queer person. But David, as well as Joe Pirro, who’s one of our producers, were both kind to me. I know this is not normal, so I feel like I want to acknowledge that they both gave me the space and the times to consider if I wanted that information out in the world.

That was. So loving and that was not something that they were required to do. But I think that says a lot more about the community making this film. It was so like that, like we were so supportive of each other and able to recognize each other’s emotional experiences and what it meant to be making a movie, honoring this part of our identities historically and currently it’s complicated to share that part of you when you’re recognizing that.

Society as a whole in America is persecuting that community. What does that mean? So yeah, it was a complicated experience, but I am so grateful that I had the community around me that I did, and that this film celebrates that community that I’m so happy to be a part of it, Yeah.

Q: It’s really encouraging,  I really loved it. 

Han Gi-Chan: For my experience, it was fascinating working with all this English for the first time and being in a Hollywood film the first time, that’s like a total dream and an adventure I had gone through and I think I’m still dreaming I don’t wanna wake up, relating to this film I have a similar answer with. Kelly also because I think when I portray another character I used to think of. Different history background characters and me. I always use part of myself. As an actor for this film, I shared a lot of characteristics with Min because Andrew had a good script on Korean tradition, culture and family expectations we have in Korea.

And this also, I have an experience sharing with because of this. Family expectation from his grandmother and grandfather also. And for me as a family, as a mother and father they also had expectations of me. But I want to become an actor. It turned out pretty good.

And I also thank my parents for having an early education of English, which is also, I also thank my family, my parents too. And yeah I used a lot of myself in this film and this all came together with this incredible. Like God’s luck to make this adventure idea. So I felt extremely lucky.

©Courtesy of Bleecker Street 

Q : This is actually a film written by James Schamus who also wrote the original film as well. And he also used to lead Focus Features and understands the concept of what Director Ang Lee did from the original filmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWy_IzW04YM. So what do you mean to you guys about the his involvement of this project? 

Bowen Yang: The perfect sort of connecting thread to the original. They are very different textures of films. And I feel like having James there this close collaborator with Ang blessed and. Be so present with the film. It’s been so meaningful. I learned this week that he added this scene of Joan to get the Matrix, the only actual wedding banquet.

It was his idea to have the two of them have a little bit together. He has that guiding hand that I think Andrew obviously appreciated that we definitely appreciate such a wonderful mind. Because I can hear him talk about films all day.

Lily Gladstone: He preserved the original and everything that was so charming about the original, but kept it flexible enough that it was adaptable. I remember when the announcement came out, everybody close to me was like, so which character are you playing?

Proxies were proxies for all three characters. It’s just like a split between everybody and then it adds these new circumstances that kind of update it for a more modern conversation. It was really clever, preserving the heart of it, we’re thrilled because he’s continuing the life of the wedding banquet.

This iteration with four characters is being turned into a libretto, an opera for the Metropolitan Opera of New York. premiering in the next few years. James Seamus is exciting.

Q :  I hope everyone’s doing all right. And first of all, I love the film. And my question is for all of you. One of the most exciting aspects of the film is how it normalizes love and queerness. Not through grand declarations, but through beautifully intimate and domestic moments like Lee caring for her plants or men.

Creating art pieces for Chris Bird series, these acts of love and creativity reflect joy and connection in a very profound human base. So how important do you think it is for love stories or especially LGBTQ plus stories especially those centered around Asian characters to be told through these everyday authentic moments?

Bowen Yang: It’s important in any love story for moments to impact. For me and friends who’ve watched the movie, they always point out the scene of Union Jang seeing her Hum book for the first time, the Hum book that a min has sewed for her.

Just a wordless scene with no dialogue, just scoring and beautiful cinematography and acting. Multiple friends start bursting into tears. And that’s not even the midpoint of the film. We earned this emotional punch early on.

They point that out and they point to the scene between Kelly and Lily at the end, where, again, no dialogue, just small gestures and small. Just subtextual communication. And that’s as small of a gesture as you can be, right? There’s no grand there, there is literally no declaration beyond what is being communicated through body and pure emotion.

Hopefully this movie is a testament to those being just as if not more impactful than any trophy romcom thing, I love that we get an alternative kind of programming.

©Courtesy of Bleecker Street 

Q : Would you like to add something, Lily? 

Lily Gladstone: I seek that out in film. I love stories that feel textured. real. 90% of our communication is non-verbal. And film allows for that. I don’t know, for some reason when you were asking the question, I was imagining just like.

20 years ago, Michael Scott from the office’s interpretation of queerness. He makes this flippant comment after being really homophobic toward Oscar in the office about no, I’m the least that way. If I were gay, I’d be up at the front of the parade waving that rainbow flag. That made me think of Joan Chen’s character.

Bowen Yang: Oh, she’s the…

Lily Gladstone: If you’re loud and proud, it’s celebrated. We love that. But it feels like that was the only space. Queer representation and queer love are very sexualized, very in your face, commercialized, Yeah. And this one is.

I feel like any story that gives you the space to come into the house and recognize the smaller human moments that like you may be not even aware of in your own life, but you feel like, I think actors, get trained to really notice small gestures and I don’t know if you’re always checking in with that as a person in your own life, unless you’re seeing it represented. Tender. Sweet. Feels like a normal slice of life. Not sensationalized, but grounded.

Q :  I have a question for Kelly. While watching the film, I felt as if Angela’s character carried a lot of the stories, emotional weight. From the very beginning she was dealing with a strained relationship with her mother, a difficult IVF(IVF Fertility Treatment) journey with her partner. The press notes mentioned how you and Lily were able to build chemistry while filming. But I’d love to hear where chemistry of Joan Chen came from, because I felt as if Angela’s relationship with her mother was so vivid from beginning to end 

Kelly Mari Tran: Thank you for your question. Honestly, much like with Lily Joan and I didn’t have a lot of time before. Anytime actually, before we got to set, before we were in the scene. Joan is such an incredible actress. She’s generous, childlike in her ability to play on set.

She brought so much. To that character, all I had to do was just listen and respond. And she’s spoken about this in interviews as well. She absolutely took her experience being a mother to this character that she created. And I absolutely took my experience being a daughter and having a complicated relationship with my mother.

 It was very. Strangely therapeutic to have these like emotional healing moments. And I know Andrew has said this about this film for him being a witch film. And in many ways, I think for me it also feels the same way. My sisters came to see the movie yesterday and they were like, wow. You really dealt with some stuff.

It means a lot that you recognized a specific dynamic in that relationship because I think both of us were able to have the privilege of using our own experience in our own pain in that relationship.

Q : Why is now the right time for this reboot? 

Han Gi-Chan: First of all it’s not always late to say the right things. And for when we were filming, and now it’s not, it’s a different time for I learned just now that it is not like a safer time for LGBTQ communities to live peaceful lives.

We didn’t plan this timing to come out, but since it’s this timing, we could just. Want them to feel that when they, when the audience see this film, and also the this movie could have a more, make those people of L-G-B-T-Q community communities brave and be themselves

And not only for those communities, but also for every humanity on Earth could feel this, see this movie and feel that. What family means, what love means to them. It’s not a story about good timing. It is a story for all times. We live with family, we live with love, so please end this. For me success.

Lily Gladstone: We didn’t make a political film. We made a film with socio economic cultural comments. I guess without being, explicitly about. Queerness about culture, about gentrification.

Those are all just the world that this family finds themselves in. And I think that makes a film that represents people authentically where they’re at and. The rest of the ship was just built so well that it can weather a lot of different seas. So I do feel like it does have this timeless element because it embraces and acknowledges the culture and the time that we find ourselves in. Each character’s proximity to It makes space for widening the lens and the conversation about queerness globally and culturally. We knew what drew us to it in a major way. one thing of paramount importance to all of the creatives on set.

Our customers set design, everything. People wanted it to feel like this home was a welcoming, warm, vibrant, loving environment that you wanna live in, but you also really wanna see a child raised in. And I feel like we did create this. This big warm hug of a film we always intended we didn’t know we were making good medicine for the times for people who needed it.

Bowen Yang: And just like hyper specificity ends up being universal. This hyper specificity ends up being relevant And timeless. And it’s never not gonna be important too. Touch on these things, just like how the original movie was relevant at the time and still is. Thank you so much.

Q : Thank you.

©Courtesy of Bleecker Street 

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