It wasn’t too long ago that Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan blew our minds as the stars of Everything Everywhere All At Once, before each of them became first-time Oscar winners for their roles in the multiverse epic. In their latest roles, the actors share the same project once more for new Disney+ release, called American Born Chinese, but funny enough, it wasn’t the Best Picture winner that brought them together this time around.
When CinemaBlend spoke to producer Melvin Mar about putting together the cast and crew for American Born Chinese, which is now streaming in its entirety with a Disney+ subscription, he shared that it was Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton who served as the connection to bring Michelle Yeoh on board of the book-to-screen adaptation. In his words:
Well, when Destin Daniel Cretton signed on and we started talking about the Guanyin character and who could have the gravitas to sort of pull that off. And he said, ‘I'm gonna call Michelle Yeoh.’ And it was like, that’s simple, right? I was like, ‘Okay, call Michelle. You just worked with her, right?’ And, then two days later I got an email from Michelle Yeoh. Now, I didn't know Michelle Yeoh, I just know who she is: the global icon. And it took me two days to just really fathom that Michelle Yeoh just emailed me.
Cretton of course worked with Yeoh on the 2021 Marvel film before they both came on board for American Born Chinese. Yeoh plays Guanyin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy, who enters the human world during the series’ mythical quest. The new series revolves around a teen American-born Chinese 10th grader named Jin Wang, whose life changes when he befriends an exchange student who is secretly the son of the Monkey King, and they're both thrust into a battle between Chinese mythical gods. Mar also spoke to how Ke Huy Quan joined the project as well, saying this:
Then Ke, I had met a few years before, just on a general meeting, but had been a lifelong fan of his. Like, I tell him all the time, seeing him in ‘Temple Of Doom’ like changed my life, and then later ‘Goonies.’
Key Huy Quan has always been an Asian-American icon for his childhood roles in the ‘80s working with Steven Spielberg, but Everything Everywhere All At Once was the role that allowed him to make a comeback in his adulthood after not getting roles for 20 years prior, and contemplating giving up acting for good. In American Born Chinese, Quan plays Jamie Yao, a former actor and star of an old sitcom in the series called Beyond Repair, where his character was always the butt of the joke.
Jamie is key to the show’s discussions around Asian-American stereotypes and finds connections to the series’ protagonist when he is compared to his Beyond Repair at school. Additionally, Everything Everywhere’s Stephanie Hsu and James Hong make appearances in the film along with Ronny Chieng, Rosalie Chiang, and Poppy Liu as part of the massive guest cast. Mar continued to share how he got together the series incredible cast.
And then Daniel Wu, who I knew socially, I just like took a shot and called him and said, ‘Do you wanna do this?’ And then he called Michelle. And then it ended up being just sort of like this community of people going like, ‘We love this thing, we should just do it.’ And after we locked in sort of the main cast, the guest cast, I just sort of thought like, I don't know if we're ever going to be able to keep doing this. Like this is our shot. we should just put together the Asian American All-Star game and just have a good time.
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Daniel Wu, who has worked in Hong Kong films and Hollywood (notably including Into The Badlands), has been friends with Michelle Yeoh for the past 20 years, but never had the chance to work with her until American Born Chinese came around. During our interview with the actor, who plays the Monkey King in the series, he shared that he even tried to get the actress on Into The Badlands but because she was working on Star Trek: Discovery, she could not be part of it at the time.
American Born Chinese is a rare series that showcases Chinese mythology, floats between English and Mandarin Chinese languages, and speaks to the Asian-American immigrant experience. We’re so happy it exists and it truly has an “Asian-American All-Star Game” of a cast.
