” he says. “[But] like all pop-culture productions, the sales pitch always needs to appeal to a ‘broad market.’ And whenever that market and that breadth are talked about in the abstract, it’s almost always assumed to be white and middle-class.”
“I remember around Season Two or Three, they had done some testing and found that viewers loved ‘Dorothy doing Chinese things,’” Wang recalls. “So there was a big focus on trying to capture me doing ‘Chinese things.’ I remember anytime I would speak Mandarin on the phone to my mom or dad, all the cameras would suddenly zoom in on me. We would have meetings about what other ‘Chinese things’ we could include in my storylines.
Wang sums up her reality-TV experience similarly. “I think any added Asian visibility and representation in Hollywood is great,” she says. “As I always said about myself, even if I’m not your favorite aesthetic or what you think is the ‘best representation,’ at least there’s an Asian face out there.”
From this perspective, even having outspoken Asian voices like Chiu’s onscreen is a shift in the stereotypical depiction of Asian women as quiet and demure, a perception Chiu is quick to push back on. “As you know, open discussion is not a common thing in Asian cultures,” she says, dismissing criticisms that her unfiltered personality on the show is a bad thing.
creator. “They hold their cards close to the chest and don’t share a lot of emotions, and I think they honor and respect privacy. People always say, ‘Why is Kim Kardashian so famous?’ or ‘Why are the Kardashians so popular?’ It’s because they jumped in and shared, and that’s not always an easy thing to do.”though, is starting to shift the conversation, both figuratively and literally, with cast members who refuse to be muted.
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