You Can Thank Jenny Jue for Getting Asian American Faces on TV

Teresa Tran: Congratulations on the success of The Brothers Sun. What was the experience casting the likes of Michelle Yeoh, a comedian like Jenny Yang, and a relative newcomer like Justin Chien?
Jenny Jue: We all had Michelle in the back of our minds. We thought, “Wouldn't that be amazing?” But we didn't have the budget for Michelle. We pitched it to Netflix and they found the money and we made a deal. She loved it first of all. I don't think Everything Everywhere All At Once had come out yet, but there was a lot of strong buzz around it. Once Netflix said go for it, the pressure was on to court her...

I was a fan of [Jenny Yang]’s comedy stuff. We read a lot of really talented people for that role of Xing and at the last second, I realized none of them were getting her humor. As an afterthought, I was scrolling through my Instagram and I saw one of Jenny’s videos and I was like, let's go for it. By the time she got the material, she only had 24 hours to turn around a tape for us, and she just hit it out of the park.

With Justin [Chien], I was blown away with his initial self-tape. To the point where I even told my assistant associate, “Hey, stop what you're doing and watch this right now. I think this could be our Charles.” He just has an incredible actor IQ. He's really smart and intelligent in how he approaches the scenes. He also had the fight skills. He can also perform in Mandarin, which it’s not enough to be fluent. To be able to perform in a second language takes a lot of special skills, but also a deep arsenal of acting tools to be able to emote in a second language.

Members of the cast of "The Brothers Sun."

Courtesy of Jenny Jue

TT: How do you know when an actor is good for a role? What are the ingredients that make up the recipe for an ideal casting for a project?
JJ: I look for faces that really pop on screen. When it comes to the Asian community, I want to build up stars. We can only do that when the general public recognizes that actor. So to me, recognizability and distinctiveness are really important to me. Obviously, acting skills. When you're dealing with the AA+PI community, you have to give a lot of grace and a lot of chances in the audition process. A lot of these actors are very green and it's not because they're not good and don't have the skills. It's because they haven't had the opportunities. It's not enough to just cut somebody based on their self-tape or first audition. I would say for any initial self-tape, the instincts are wrong 90 percent of the time. So you have to bring them back and see if they can take direction and if you can mold them to where this character needs to be.

TT: I’ve read that actors have working relationships with casting directors, where, say, an actor may not fit one project, but the casting director will remember and keep that actor in mind for another one that the actor may fit more. How would you describe your relationship with your Rolodex of actors?
JJ: There's been a question within the acting community of do casting directors watch all the tapes? Yes! You spent the time to record. I spent the time to request it. My team spent the time to track it and upload it. I need to see all the tapes because if they are not right for this role, I've got 200 other roles in this series I need to cast. They might be right for something else, so I keep really detailed notes on all of them. I do have a pretty strenuous process. I really need to make sure those people understand that I was really rooting for them, and I hope that they aren't demoralized by not getting this role, because I'm going to need them for something else down the line. If they got that far that means they're great enough.

TT: How do you navigate your job as a casting director when you have the showrunners/filmmakers to listen to and your own instincts as a casting director? How do you advocate for what you believe in in the workplace?
JJ: A lot of it comes from being in casting for over 20 years at this point. I'm very confident in my eye for talent. When I advocate for somebody, there are times when I'll even say, “This is a hill I'm gonna die on.” I will forever be advocating for this particular person, and I think it's hard for the rest of the creative team to go against that. I think 10 years ago, it was a very delicate kind of a conversation where a producer's knee-jerk reaction or a director's knee-jerk reaction is, “I'm not racist.” I'm not saying you are. I'm saying we need more diversity here and you need to trust me that we're going to do it in a way where it doesn't feel token. Write it to that actor and not just shoehorn an actor into that role. It got a little bit better as audiences were starting to give a little backlash, of like, “Why is your whole fall slate all white leads?” Then, you know, George Floyd and the protests in Black Lives Matter and all of that allowed space for people to ask questions, which was really helpful.

Jenny Jue (center) with members of the cast and crew of "The Brothers Sun."

Courtesy of Jenny Jue

TT: What are your thoughts on casting AA+PI actors for roles that aren’t their specific AA+PI ethnicity? What’s the current status on this issue?
JJ: Five years ago, there was very much a [mentality] that we need to cast authentically to whatever background this character is. I've always kind of pushed back on that to an extent. There is a time and a place. Every role is different. Every role deserves a nuanced conversation about what authentic casting means. The backlash from Memoirs of a Geisha where you have a very specific culture that is very Japanese and all the roles were cast with Chinese actors. Something like Mulan where she's a national hero in China, she has to be Chinese. Not just Chinese but she has to be full Chinese from China with accented English, the whole deal. I think they knocked it out of the park with that casting.

I think too often the restrictions on a role having to be one thing are imposed by people who don't understand the limitations of only looking within that community. If the character doesn't have to speak a language and the history and motivations of that character aren't dependent on being that ethnicity, why can't we cast another Asian actor who can portray that ethnicity? So I'm an advocate of play what you can portray, which I think most of the AA+PI acting community is also behind.

TT: What are your thoughts on the Academy adding Best Casting for the Oscars starting 2025?
JJ: I figured it would happen in my lifetime. A couple years ago we heard rumblings. I think the BAFTAs started giving an award for best casting, I want to say three years ago, and that kind of got us all saying, “Okay Academy, when are you gonna figure this out?” I get emotional thinking about it, because I think about my mentor Joanna Ray, who's now retired, but any of David Lynch's films that she had casted would have been worthy of that Oscar nomination or win, potentially. I mean, she cast Kill Bill. I think it's also not a coincidence that we're one of the few crafts that's predominantly female, and if they are men a lot of them are queer. In that sense, we haven't been taken as seriously historically, especially if you think about us working with a lot of directors who are predominantly male. So it's been a long time coming. It's finally the rest of the community saying, “You belong and we respect your contribution.”