Harry Shum Jr why we need more people like him in the entainment industry.
'Shadowhunters' Star Harry Shum Jr Reveals Details of the Final Season - YouTube
, Harry has done a lot for breaking down stereotypes and pushing back in writers rooms and he has said that it is challenging to have those conversations and take that risk but it is happening. We are also seeing this happen with who get's roles and how post Covid people are auditioning for the roles, so things like a zoom interview's, that eliminates stress, or recruiting people who do "shipping" and post them on YouTube for post production.
I remember seeing a clip where he was talking about Mike in Glee, and pushing back about the jokes as if they are on TV it is going to be seen as ok to make the same jokes in reality.
In Shadowhunter's, he has talked about how it was such a fun role yet challenging for him as they said they don't own the charcters as they are based on the charcters created by Cassandra Care in the book series. Yet it shows a level of respect and understanding of experiences that him and his co star Matthew Daddario haven't had but the level of research they have put into the Character and how they understand the charcters is rare, they went and talked to people about there experience's and looked at the content that people have created and still champion the fans creating the content as it has lead to people landing jobs from creating the fan art and fan fiction.
In Crazy rich Asians he is a side character but in the sequel's has a bigger role . He has mentioned in many interview's how it is great to see content being produced from lived experience's, and again this is a book to screen adaption. By championing the Asian American community he has given many people the bravery to start pushing back in there own community, weather that be other immigrant groups or in my own case the disabled community. To speak up as the disabled community until very recently had very negative repsenetation on screens and now with disabled actors playing the roles it seems to be a changing environment, as producers are looking for more diverse content to compete with the streaming services.
In going forward this bravery means that others can have a good role model to look up to and understand, how challenging it has been to get to where he is as he didn't have parents in the industry but they taught him basics of life - value of hard work, to do his homework before making a decision to quit college.
He has talked about the need to move beyond type casting and not traditional actors auditioning for non traditional roles, - what conversations we need to have in writers rooms, and production companies about taking risks in producing content that doesn't fit into traditional mediums. So in playing a lead role it is showing people that they can do it, it just takes time and effort for people to see the leads as - human not a character Harry Shum Jr. on what it means for Asian actors to play romantic leads - YouTube
Comments
Post a Comment