LOS ANGELES – Academy Award-winning actress Michelle Yeoh has officially been cast in every single available Asian role in Hollywood over the coming year, a move industry insiders say reflects both Hollywood’s commitment to authentic representation and slobbery catering to ethno-gender fluidity notions that have so entranced the world’s gullible yet earnest moviegoing audiences and which only Yeoh alone could possibly cater to.
From ninja matriarchs to anime-schoolgirl cyber detectives to dim sum aunties with mystical backstories, Yeoh will star in an estimated 93 major motion pictures, including live-action remakes, Marvel reboots, indie think-pieces, and at least one A24 film that is just three hours of her looking silently into the rain while being consumed by fire and the smoldering looks of her closest Asian fans.
“We realized that Michelle Yeoh could embody the full spectrum of Asianness – from serene monk to Tiger Mom to quantum physicist who also bakes pineapple buns,” said casting director Harmony Lei-Finkelstein. “The fact that we really didn’t know any other ‘Asian’ actors, much less how to pronounce their names or get ahold of their agents, also played a role in just giving the whole Asian acting franchise away to Ms. Yeoh.”
In an unprecedented arrangement, Yeoh’s contract includes a clause allowing her to play multiple characters within the same film – and sometimes entire families of Asians, whether Malaysian, Chinese, Chinese-Malaysian, Mongolian, Vietnamese and especially Cambodian. In Disney’s upcoming animated/live-action hybrid Kung Pao Multiverse, Yeoh voices all 34 characters, including a wok.
“I don’t even know how I got all these scripts,” Yeoh said from a makeshift dressing room located inside a moving Uber between soundstages. “I think at some point, they just started sending me storyboards and said ‘Just improvise something Confucian with a sword.’”
Industry analysts note the deal has disrupted career plans for every other Asian actor in Hollywood, several of whom have been forced to move to Canada or pivot to TikTok mukbangs. Even veteran actors like Ken Watanabe and Sandra Oh were spotted loitering outside Paramount Studios hoping that they would at least be considered for cameo roles playing either of Yeoh’s characterful eyebrows.
“Michelle’s eyebrows have more gravitas than most of us combined,” Watanabe said. “It would be a career honor to even be considered for such an impactful role and would mark a high point for me, personally, since playing General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima, which was an Academy Awards ‘Best Picture’ nominee and hailed as “close to perfect” by the New York Times critic A.O. Scott and whose box office take more than justified the entire cost of the film.”
Comments are closed.