Michelle Krusiec interview transcript, 02/28/02

June 4, 2007 in Michelle Krusiec, Saving Face, interview and article

This is a pretty interesting interview. I’ve cut and pasted only to include Michelle’s portion. If you’d like to read the entire transcript, check out First Amendment Center.

Michelle Krusiec and Alonzo Bodden ‘Speaking Freely’ transcript

Recorded Feb. 28, 2002, in Aspen, Colo.

Welcome to “Speaking Freely,” a weekly conversation about free expression and the arts. I’m Kyle Paulson. Our guests today are two young performers featured at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. Joining odden. Welcome.

Michelle Krusiec: Thank you.

Alonzo Bodden: Thanks.

Paulson: You come from different aspects of the performing arts. Michelle, in your case, you’ve had a lot of success — early success — in television. Alonzo, you’re a stand-up. What brings you to this festival?

Krusiec: Well, I was invited to do my one-woman show, which is called “Made in Taiwan,” and it’s a project I’ve been working on for several years now, so somebody got wind of it and just got into the process, and so they asked me to come here, and it’s been really exciting.

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Paulson: Short-term gain, long-term loss. We want to talk to you today a bit about the popular culture we all live in, entertainment — film, television — especially as regarding diversity. The Freedom Forum, an organization with which I work, actually funds a program where they encourage minorities to go into work in America’s newsrooms because they feel like America’s newspapers in particular don’t reflect the communities at large. They don’t fully understand the cultures that they serve. And in the work you do, do you see a lot of stereotyping, or do you see an accurate reflection of the cultures of our country?

Krusiec: Well, definitely, just being an Asian-American actress, I mean, I get stereotyped all the time, in terms of what I’m asked to audition for, the types of roles I’m auditioning for. And so when I look at these roles, a lot of times, I’m seeing what current writers are seeing me as and who I represent within their story line, and oftentimes, it’s — you know, it’s the smart Asian girl or it’s the newscaster, or you have the prostitute, and I run across those all the time. And then, of course, you have the martial artist. And it’s very difficult to go beyond that right now, but I find that there is a process you have to go through, which is kind of like a — you’ve got to prove yourself. You’ve got to prove that you can do those. And then once they see that, then they start going, “Oh, well, you know what? You could also be the blonde best friend.” And that’s, I think, the place I’m at now in my career.

Paulson: And you’ve had good success. You have appeared on “One World,” and then you’ve moved on to be a recurring character in “Titus,” and expanding, as I understand it, into some films: “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Pumpkin.” What are those roles?

Krusiec: Actually, in “Pumpkin,” I am the — the film’s very clever. It takes a lot of stereotyping and parodies it and also satires it — satirizes it — at the same time. It’s — I play a sorority girl who was taken into the sorority because I was the token Asian, and I am the Asian girl trying to fit in, knowing that I was taken in as the token Asian. And so it’s kind of a — you know, it’s a double-edged sword that my character has, that even though I know I was in — I was accepted — because of my race, I’m also ignoring that fact, but it’s also played against me as well in the film. It’s kind of difficult to explain. But there’s a lot of references of, like, “Oh, even her, even she — she can do it as well,” just because I’m Asian-American.

Paulson: As an Asian-American, and aside from your acting career, when you watch America’s popular media, do you see anything that truly reflects the culture you perhaps grew up in?

Krusiec: Um … no.

Paulson: I know you’ve — if you’d talk a little bit about your background, because it plays a major role in “Made in Taiwan.” If you could just give us some sense of what that show is about.

Krusiec: Well, my show starts out talking about how I grew up with the insecurity of being Asian and wanting very much to deny that as a child and how I struggled with that acceptance. And I look at it through more of a comedic eye, because as an adult, you look at it, and you think, these are the things you did, you know, because you were trying to cover up who you were ethnically. And that’s the background in which I introduce the show, but I don’t really stay there for very long. I introduce that as a part of myself, and then I go into the world of my family life — my parents, specifically my mother — and how their psyches affected my psyche and how my mother’s standards were imposed upon me and how my mother, even though she was very old-school Asian, became Americanized, and she changed her values in accordance with her own Americanization, which then affected me, because here I was, struggling to be American totally and deny my Asian self, so it’s a very complex journey.

Paulson: And what kind of reaction are you getting from audiences?

Krusiec: It’s been, fortunately, wonderful. It’s been really, really great. Almost everyone has remarked on — even though it’s a very specific journey, it’s been very universal. Because when it boils down to it, you know, human relationships, and the ones that I focus on, which are my mother and I — our mother-daughter relationship — it becomes universal. And even though it’s a little culturally specific in the beginning, it has nothing to do with just being Chinese in the end.

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Paulson: Michelle, I’m curious. Have you ever turned down a job because it was stereotypical?

Krusiec: You know, I have a role on an HBO series called “The Mind of the Married Man,” and when I first got the sides, which is the excerpt of the script in which you use to audition with, I literally read them, gawked, and dropped the papers and called my manager, and I just almost freaked out, ’cause it was so stereotypical. I was playing all the stereotypes. I was a massage-parlor girl. I had an accent. And on top of that, they wanted me to be topless. And it was like, you know, why don’t you just make me a bad driver on top of that, you know? But I met with the producer, and he was also the — Mike Binder, the creator of the show — and we really talked about his intentions for the character. And, you know, once we got an idea of what he wanted to do — and he actually came to see my one-woman show, which I believe led him to really deepening the character. You know, once we got to a basic understanding of what we both were looking for and what his intentions were, I was able to sort of step beyond that and say, “Well, listen, this is a stereotypical character, but I think I’m a complex enough actor to bring more to the stereotypicality of this character than maybe somebody else, and if there’s anybody who’s gonna do that, I would like to be the person in charge of doing that.” So it was very stereotyped, but, you know, I sort of thought, “Let me figure out how I can add a little more depth to this person,” because, really, there are Asian massage girls out there. It’s not like they don’t exist, and it’s not like, just because a character has an accent, they should be demeaned at any sort of level. And so, you know, for me, I have to figure out this person and create that person, and not look at it and say, “Well, I am playing a stereotypical character,” ’cause otherwise, you’re not gonna create any sort of real human being.

Paulson: So when you finally saw it onscreen, did you pull it off?

Krusiec: Yeah, because you know, I pulled it off; I pulled my top off. Um, but… Yeah, you know, my character was throughout the entire series, and I end up dropping my accent in the very end of this — the season finale, and you discover this massage-parlor girl is just this college kid who just does this accent to make her customers feel very comfortable. So we did get to a level where the character arced, so I was very happy.

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Bodden: I think there’s progress, but I also think it’s always going to be there. And, I mean, I can’t speak for — maybe “always” is the wrong word. Maybe I can’t speak in perpetuity, but it definitely goes on, and again, to me, it’s almost like I’d prefer people admit it. You know, why not just say it? Because it’s true. It’s almost more frustrating to dance around it, when you know it and the person at the other end of the table knows it, but you can’t say it for whatever reason. That’s almost an annoying part of the game, but, yeah, I don’t know that it — I know it hasn’t gone away. It’s not as — maybe not as prevalent or as blatant as it has been, but it still exists.

Paulson: Michelle?

Krusiec: Yeah, I mean, that’s really tough, because, you know, I’ve definitely — it’s pilot season right now, and I’ve been witnessing a lot of projects where a lot of the networks have openly said, “We want to be ethnic. We want to support,” you know, “casts that have diversity.” And it’s wonderful, in the sense that they’re taking a really active approach, but I find that, you know, the intention and the outcome are two very different things, and so I think the intention is there. I just don’t know if necessarily the execution always gets completed. So I think that we are definitely progressing, but, you know, I don’t think we’re at the place where I think we would all like to be, which is probably at the place where we’re not talking about stereotypes anymore, you know, where we’re not really acknowledging that. The fact that we’re talking about it suggests that, you know, I think it’s very much still a bigger part of, you know, the American psyche. So I guess that’s not really a very clear answer, but I don’t think it’s a very clear subject, either.

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Paulson: And you’ve done “Star Trek.”

Krusiec: [Laughs]

Paulson: As we close here, could we talk just — if each of you would just share a minute or two about what you hope for the future in your own career. Michelle?

Krusiec: I think I would like to see more Asian writers, more images of — I mean, really, and I don’t want to just say Asians, but just growing up, I never really had any Asian role models, and it would just be nice, I think, for, you know, kids these days to have a lot more images of Asians in the media, Asians in all kinds of fields, but mostly in the media, because it’s the most — you know, it’s the most visual, so that it inspires, I think, the Asian community to be more expressive. I think, as a community, we’re a little bit more — we have a kind of like face thing that we do, you know, where we don’t tend to be as maybe artistically vocal or expressive. And I think that if those images were present, it might encourage more people to be more vocal and express themselves in a more artistic way.