Vietnamese Americans have been present in the movies for a long time, even if most of them tend to work behind the cameras. The rule of thumb is to look at the accountants, assistants, seamstresses, and VFX artists in the end credits.
That said, those who do show up on camera have historically been difficult to spot for a myriad of reasons, both valid and not so much, but their work has been no less vital to the industry. To celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we decided to highlight 15 notable Vietnamese Americans and their contributions to Hollywood, because it’s never too late to take an interest in them, and who knows? It might just be a Jeopardy! category one day.
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While they are best known in the game world as the archer Lev in The Last of Us: Part II, Ian Alexander is also a regular figure in many high-profile series — The OA, Star Trek: Discovery, and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur among them. This year, viewers can see them alongside another name on this list, Elyse Dinh, in the film Daughter, directed and written by Corey Deshon.
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HBO and recent Oscar nominee Hong Chau go together like cheese and wine; she’s been in three of the platform’s series so far, with every subsequent role bigger than the last (that’s her as Watchmen’s shrewd trillionaire Lady Trieu). On the big screen, she is best known either as the dissident-slash-cleaner in Alexander Payne’s Downsizing or the maître d’ who serves “tortillas deliciosas” in The Menu, though her most acclaimed work came last year in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. Chau currently appears in the hit Netflix series The Night Agent, and she can be seen next in Yorgos Lanthimos’ And and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City.
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With 60 years of experience and numerous accolades, “screen legend” is likely the best descriptor for this Los Angeles-based actress, producer, and humanitarian. She also wrote a memoir that was released in 2021. Some of Kieu Chinh’s next projects are of the noteworthy kind, namely Park Chan-wook’s HBO series The Sympathizer, based on the Pulitzer-winning novel, and the Apple TV+ series Sinking Spring, produced by Ridley Scott and featuring Dustin Nguyen in the cast.
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The Seattle-based actress is best known for being the lead of the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy and the horror-comedy series Boo, Bitch. Condor’s next performance will be voicing the protagonist of Dreamworks’ Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, a John Hughes-inspired animated film about a kraken girl searching for a sense of belonging in her high school.
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A staple on the renowned variety show Paris by Night, particularly its sketch comedy department, Hong Dao also divides her time acting in shorts, features, and series. Although Dao recently guest-starred in the much-discussed BEEF as the mother of Ali Wong’s character in episode 8 and caused Vietnamese media to go wild, a better example of her capabilities would be the 2019 domestic drama Goodbye Mother.
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Los Angeles-based actress Elyse Dinh has been in various media you know and love, sometimes only as a voice — like the Passenger List podcast series with Kelly Marie Tran — or as a fleeting yet memorable figure — like the violinist in Spider-Man 2. This year, Dinh can be seen playing a key role in the familial thriller Daughter with fellow Vietnamese Americans Vivien Ngo and Ian Alexander. That’s also her voice singing the lullaby in the film’s opening.
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Don Duong was a veteran actor in Vietnamese cinema, memorable for a filmic handsomeness yet everyman demeanor, long before he made his debut in an American-made film. That film was 1999’s Three Seasons, which was directed by his nephew Tony Bui. Duong would also star in 2001’s Green Dragon — directed by Tony Bui’s brother Timothy Linh Bui — and 2002’s We Were Soldiers, opposite Mel Gibson, both of which famously put him at odds with the Vietnamese government. Duong was eventually allowed to emigrate to the US with his family in 2003, continuing to take roles until he passed away in 2011 at age 55.
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An angel lost its wings when the Ohio-born comedian was suspended from Twitter, sending the cool-sounding handle “Party_Harderson” to the cyber-ether. Thankfully, she is still very much active on screens big and small with roles in Together Together (where she’s the lead), The Lost City, and the HBO Max series Made for Love. And yes, that was Harrison in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law as Lulu, the bride who just wants She-Hulk at her wedding.
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The MMA fighter-turned-actor had quite a 2009, appearing in multiple American releases like Fighting with (and losing to!) Channing Tatum, Pandorum with Ben Foster, and Tekken with Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. In the second film, Le is a spear-wielding farmer who speaks Vietnamese, though most viewers might not realize that since none of his lines are subtitled (likely a deliberate creative choice).
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Before shifting gears to become a restaurateur, this Da Nang native with radiant eyes and a glowing smile graced the screens in Green Dragon (starring alongside Don Duong) and — even more noteworthy — Heaven & Earth. The 1993 Oliver Stone film was her acting debut, which impressed filmgoers despite apparent marks of inexperience. Unfortunately, stomach cancer stole Le away in 2017 at the age of 46.
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He’s probably best known as Harry Truman Ioki of the classic 21 Jump Street series and the villain of the 2007 actioner The Rebel, but Dustin Nguyen is also a director and producer. His 2015 comedy Jackpot, in which he co-starred with the late Chi Tai, was Vietnam’s official submission to the 88th Oscars, though it did not score a nomination. He will be seen next in the crime drama The Accidental Getaway Driver, which premiered at Sundance to strong reviews.
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At one point, talks of action cinema would reference this stuntman and actor. While best known for his leading turns in The Rebel and Clash, or for Vovinam-powered face-offs with the likes of Jet Li in Cradle 2 The Grave or Mickey Hardt in Max Havoc, or even for comedic efforts in some Vietnamese hits, Nguyen has also stunt-doubled in high-profile titles such as Collateral and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.
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Nha Trang native Long Nguyen has been acting for a while, and some of his credits include Heaven & Earth (with Hiep Thi Le) and Green Dragon (starring Don Duong). Nguyen is also the Vietnamese priest in an unforgettable sequence in Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths. He seems to have an affinity for suspense-horror material as well; after playing a janitor with an unnerving request in 2018’s Actress Wanted, he will be in a haunted house film called My Vietnam.
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Distance from the Star Wars series has proven to be ideal for San Diego native Kelly Marie Tran, seeing how she continues to thrive after weathering the fandom menace and, somehow, refusing the call of adventure in Episode IX. Some of the Raya and the Last Dragon star’s upcoming projects include the Kickstarter-backed mystery-comedy Me, Myself & The Void and an upcoming biopic on activist Amanda Nguyen.
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For many people, their first time seeing San Jose native Kathy Uyen on screen would undoubtedly be her appearance in Victor Vu’s triptych horror film Spirits (together with the late actress Kathleen Luong, also in Green Dragon). In Vietnam, where she is now based, Uyen wears multiple hats as a comedic actress, a producer, a director and an acting coach, and she even made local news last year after becoming a mom at 41.
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Early in the second issue of Image Comic’s Deadly Class – a comic book series about a young man surviving a high school for assassins, drug lords, strong men, and other criminals – protagonist Marcus Lopez makes an observation that feels like a mission statement for the entire series: “Just doesn’t matter where they from, kids are all the same – vicious. Only difference is, in this place … the dagger they put in your back is real.”
Plucked off the streets of San Francisco and admitted to Kings Dominion School of the Deadly Arts, Marcus is forced to face his own social anxieties, trauma from seeing his parents killed, and a lethal form of otherwise mundane high school experiences. So, as it happens, the dagger is very real.
(Photo by Neilson Barnard/Syfy)
In fact, the dagger metaphor was a refrain Rotten Tomatoes heard a number of times at Comic-Con International: San Diego as the cast and crew of Syfy’s television version of Deadly Class descended on the convention to preview the upcoming series. And chief among those driving the premise home was the series co-showrunner Rick Remender, who also happens to be the co-creator (alongside artist Wes Craig) and writer of the comic book.
But by taking on showrunner duties, Remender exerts more control over the adaptation of his comic book series than most creators ever enjoy. And alongside fellow showrunner Miles Orion Feldsott and executive producers Joe and Anthony Russo of Avengers: Infinity War fame, he was involved in hiring top-level creative personnel behind the scenes and stars like Benjamin Wadsworth, Lana Condor, and Benedict Wong. A process Remender admitted was “surreal.”
“During the pilot, I had moments of the surreal [as well],” he added. “Sitting there and seeing hundreds of extras walking around Kings Dominion and a crew working so hard to bring to life flights of fancy [Wes and I created.]”
Craig, whose visual sensibility is honored in the portion of the pilot shown at Comic-Con, described walking onto set and seeing the Kings Dominion crest rendered in on the set within a real metal door: “That is the craziest thing, seeing the army to create this little comic into a real thing.”
(Photo by Syfy)
Set in the 1980s, the early issues of the comic book series sees Marcus (played by Wadsworth on the series), the son of political dissidents who fled to the U.S., adjusting to life at Kings Dominion while hoping its unusual curriculum will get him closer to his goal: revenge on then-president Ronald Reagan. He also gets to know a handful of the students including the sword-wielding Saya (Condor), young Cartel assassin Maria (Maria Gabriela de Faria), and Willie Lewis, a character actor Luke Tennie said, “makes it known he’s not the one to mess with.” In that initial story, the group flees Kings Dominion for a wild weekend of drug abuse and assassinations.
In an afterword to the first collected edition of Deadly Class, Remender wrote he was inspired by memories of his tendency to be the new kid at school as his family moved around a lot in the 1980s and the days he spent growing up in and near Phoenix, Arizona during a particularly violent part of its history. Recalling friends who died of gunshots and overdoses, he declared, “I wanted to explore that time in my life and the impressions high school, coupled with that violence, left on me.” While both the comic book and television series contain stylized action, the personal connection for Remender was very real when we spoke with him.
“As someone who saw friends shot and was nearly beaten to death twice, the effects the violence had on me and how I proceed in life [are still there]. If I walk into a crowded place, I’m still checking my periphery and I’m still nervous about my surroundings,” he explained. “I don’t know if that will ever go away.”
(Photo by Syfy)
And though the television series will contain plenty of action, he said, “it’s more about the effects of the violence and the aftermath and what it does to young people more than the violence itself.” Equating Deadly Class to “what if Richard Linklater had done Kill Bill,” he added his interest is in getting to “the true heart of the characters and [their] humanity.” The tone also allows the series to indulge in “heightened reality ninja backflip stuff.” But Remender also stressed he feels a responsibility to explore the aftermath of the violence “rather that just bathing in it.” It is definitely a recurring theme in the early issues of the comic book, which serve as the “spine” for the first season of the television show.
Nevertheless, events from the early story line will be remixed for television – the opening 10 minutes shown at Comic-Con resemble the first issue with notable changes of San Francisco landmarks in a few key moments and a few tweaks to Marcus’s initial situation – but Remender said he wanted to retain “this Generation X snapshot I remembered growing up.” With that in mind, he wanted it to remain set in the 1980s with as much of the period music Syfy could afford.
“There’s been all these people involved [in developing the show], and they didn’t want to change the voice,” he later said during the sneak preview of the show for fans. Maintaining that voice was important as Remender felt Generation X has been marginalized in popular culture over the last decade or so.
“These scenes are gone,” he added. “Media needs to see what we were snorting back then.”
Prior to the presentation, Craig keyed in on why he and Remender felt it was important for both the comic book and the show to reflect their experiences in the 1980s: “What happen to you in [in high school] really shapes who you are, whether you want that to be the truth or not. You think about it with heightened emotions.”
“Because that was the first time we’re doing so many things,” added Remender. “That’s the part I really love, when they experience things similar to what we experienced.”
(Photo by Syfy)
The characters of Deadly Class experience traditional rites of adolescence like break-ups, unrequited affection, and trying to satisfy hard-to-please parents while also attending classes about historic assassins, destabilizing governments, and making poisons. A class Remender joked he actually took — “It went terribly,” he quipped. But the wild course work continues to reflect the overall theme of the series.
“The idea is that the mundane is what we all experienced in high school,” said Remender. “But the tumultuous experiences are then magnified into the metaphor.”
“We’re not playing super powered people; we’re playing real people, so the threats are real,” added Tennie. “Some people might have abilities that might skew the stakes, but we’re flesh-and-bone people.”
Tennie also said he cannot wait to explore those flesh-and-blood people when production on the series resumes.
Though the most of the cast only has the pilot to go on, they anticipate receiving the scripts for the next four episodes soon. But Wadsworth admitted reading further ahead in the comic book to get a better handle on Marcus: “He’s a rabid puppy. He might look cute, but he might bite you.”
Wadsworth believes Marcus has a sense of ethics to him despite being surrounded by unethical people and a rage that he said will be “exciting to show on film.”
For Remender, bringing the comic book to life is as much a humbling experience as it is fulfilling: “[Wes and I] work very hard and we put a lot of ourselves in the book. The amount of energy Wes puts into the pages is staggering. We love it and to see other people love it and get involved in helping to make it is hugely gratifying.”
Deadly Class airs on Syfy in 2019.
