![]() ![]() He proudly showed off one of his rare indulgences: a new receiver he had installed so that he could play music from his phone. A faded photo of his daughter was tucked into his visor. Last fall, Park and I were driving through West Los Angeles in a weathered Toyota RAV4. I think that there will be people who are uncomfortable with it.” I anticipate when it comes into the real world it’ll be-I don’t know if ‘divisive’ is the word. It’s like they kind of know you for one thing, so that’s all the offers you’re getting,” he told me. It’s an unlikely passion project for someone known for playing amiable roles. “Shortcomings” is a movie full of, in Park’s word, “shitty” characters, and he has dreamed of making it for more than fifteen years. The film is set in the present, giving its central questions about race, self-loathing, and voyeurism a fresh backdrop: cancel culture, Instagram stalking, the question of whether “Crazy Rich Asians”-style blockbusters are actually good for the Asian American community-if you believe that such a thing exists. Park was in New York, with Ho, to film his directorial début, “Shortcomings,” an adaptation of Adrian Tomine’s 2007 graphic novel about a group of young, somewhat unlikable Asian Americans negotiating relationships, late-twenties ambition, and their baser instincts. “He’s always been a really ambitious guy,” the comedian Ali Wong, his longtime friend and “Always Be My Maybe” co-star, told me. ![]() ![]() In 2019, Park started Imminent Collision, a production company, with Michael Golamco and Hieu Ho, two friends he met through a theatre troupe he started in college. Because if I was on my own I would never do that.” I’m so glad something’s forcing me to be social and to meet these people and talk to these people. And, while I’m social, I’m, like, This is so fun. “I don’t consider myself a social person,” Park told me. Onscreen, as well as in person, he is deferential and gracious, quick to fill in conversation with agreement and encouragement, happy to shift the focus away from himself. Park is the kind of actor who succeeds by reacting to other people’s drama rather than being at the center of his own. We met near Manhattan’s Chinatown and, as he approached, I noticed his colorful cycling hat before I noticed him. “One of the great advantages of being Asian, and borderline well known, is that people tend to think you look like just another Asian,” he told me. His onscreen presence makes him seem approachable, if people notice him at all. For six seasons, Park played Louis Huang, the series’ wholesome, occasionally overwhelmed father. The series débuted in 2015 and was the first network show in nearly two decades to feature a predominantly Asian cast. His career has been defined by a kind of chummy adaptability, whether he plays a dictator (he made Kim Jong Un seem like a fun hang in “The Interview,” from 2014) or raps, as he did as a slacker in the 2019 romantic comedy “Always Be My Maybe,” or adopts an immigrant’s accent, as in his breakthrough role, on the ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” adapted from the chef Eddie Huang’s memoir. ![]()
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