the finer dandy

I am working on a story for work that explores the “new wave of Asian Americans in entertainment.” Yeah, I know it doesn’t sound that groundbreaking because it’s been covered like a million times, but once I get all my interviews in line I am going to flesh out a better angle.

Anyways, I’ve already interviewed John Cho, Jimmy Tsai, James Kyson Lee and Chi Hui Yang (festival director of the SF International Asian American Film Festival) - but I was missing the AA female voice. I’ve tried to get Lucy Liu, but she’s a hard gal to get a hold of because she’s big-time. I’ve also contacted the reps for Mindy Kaling, Maggie Q and Lindsay Price - still no word from them. I already have an interview with Lost’s Yunjin Kim next week, but I struck gold today when I got a phone interview with Battlestar Galactica hottie Grace Park…

Can I just say that she has was my funnest interview ever -and that includes the in-person interviews. She was in Vancouver shooting the final season of Battlestar and she told me she was in her car while talking to me - but not driving.

And by the way, I didn’t realize that the phone number I called was a Vancouver area code. Now I have to pay those international phone charges. Damn. Can I expense that?

Anyways, she was so friendly and personable. It was like talking to an old friend.

Of course, we chatted about Asian Americans in the entertainment industry, but we also talked about other fun stuff - and I made her laugh with all my obnoxious jokes! She was LOL’ing all over the place! I was so happy that she was entertained by my banter - unless she was faking it. I hope she wasn’t.

And you may be thinking she was being nice because I was a fellow Asian American, but she didn’t even know I was her brethren until I told her I was Filipino - so she is an equal opportunity nice person!

I am not an avid Battlestar watcher, so I really couldn’t get into that. Plus, the topic was Asian Americans in entertainment. But I did tell her that my brother-in-law was a fan of BSG and how he dorks out all over that show and she started laughing when I said DORK OUT.

That made me so happy.

I was also praising her for her work in West 32nd, which was a fierce movie.

We so bonded and now we are BFF. Okay, not really. But she was unbelievably grounded and a joy to talk to.

Ah…the perks of my job. I love acting like I have friendships with celebrities.