Asian actor Stephen Park guest-starred on two episodes of Friends nearly thirty years ago and says it was a clubby and racist environment.
“It was at the time, I felt it was kind of a toxic environment,” Park told the Pod Meets World podcast. “James Hong was the actor who was also on the episode with me, and the AD [assistant director] was calling him to the set and you know, essentially saying, ‘Where the fuck is the Oriental guy? Get the Oriental guy.’”
“This isn’t the first time that this happened,” Park added. “But this is the environment where this is business as usual in Hollywood in 1997, I guess it was. And nobody felt the need to correct this or say anything about it. So this is normal behavior.”
Park says he took his complaint to the Screen Actors Guild, who told him to take it to the Los Angeles Times. The Times. He says the Times sent out a couple of reporters, but the story never ran. Unwilling to let it go, on October 7, 1997, and “in the spirit of Jerry Maguire” he published a “mission statement to the Hollywood community” titled “Struggling for Dignity,” which is still available online:
I am a Korean-American actor. You can see my work in one of the most highly acclaimed movies of 1996 and in one of the most talked about scenes of that year. I play the distraught Japanese-American ex-schoolmate of Marge Gunderson– Mike Yanagita– in the Academy Award-winning movie Fargo. Working with the Coen brothers and Frances McDormand was one of the high points of my career. Not so much because they are brilliant artists, but because they are decent, down-to-earth people who treated me and the rest of the cast and crew with respect and admiration.
Being an Asian-American actor, I continue to struggle to find roles for myself that are not insulting and stereotypical. My career started with Do The Right Thing, I was a series regular on In Living Color, and I just finished working as a guest star on one of the highest rated shows on television [“Friends”], which brings me to my next point. Working with the people involved with this show was an extremely painful experience for me. A disturbing lack in generosity of spirit and basic human courtesy, in addition to a racial incident on the set, has forced me to speak out.
These people, by virtue of their status, money and power, are among the most privileged people walking the face of the earth, yet they behaved as if they were bankrupt in spirit and incapable of expressing simple human kindness. Not only did various key people on the set not have the courtesy to introduce themselves as we began to work together, they created an environment of fear and insecurity. One PA (production assistant) spoke of having worked on the show for almost a full year without one cast member ever having said hello to him in that entire time. And on top of this, the 1st AD (assistant director), in a short tirade, called an Asian-American actor to the set over a walkie-talkie with the words, “I don’t have time for this! Where’s Hoshi, Toshi or whatever the f–k his name is. Get the oriental guy!” He did not even have the respect to learn the name of the actor, a veteran of 40 years.
The fact this was documented in detail at the time and with the actor’s real name validates it — at least to me — 100 percent, and of course, he has a point. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect in a work environment. And on a film set, especially with a guest actor, this is especially important so you don’t undermine the actor’s confidence. You want to be as welcoming and as reassuring as possible. No one should be made to feel like an outsider.
Stephen Park deserves a lot of credit and respect for speaking out as publicly as he did against what was at the time the most popular sitcom on the planet. Hollywood could use a lot more Stephen Parks.
This might be a bit of a tangent, but how great was he in Fargo?
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