As a fan who has grown up marveling at the magic of Hollywood, I can’t help but feel a profound sense of admiration for the incredible journey of James Hong. His 70-year career spanning across countless films and television shows is nothing short of astonishing, yet it’s his humble anecdotes that truly captivate me.
It’s quite likely that, with James Hong having amassed numerous acting roles over a 70-year career and currently being 95 years old, you’ve enjoyed his acting talent at some point. However, it seems to me that we don’t discuss the accomplished career of this esteemed character actor as much as we should. This became strikingly evident to me after conversing with Hong about his voiceover work, which includes reprising his role in the animated Gremlins series.
In this article, we caught up with James Hong and Ming-Na Wen regarding their potential return for the second season of the ‘Gremlins’ series, now streaming exclusively on Max. During the conversation, they reminisced about their careers as voice actors, and Ming-Na Wen opened up about her evolving viewpoint on voiceovers since her debut on ‘Mulan’. Here’s what James Hong had to say about his journey in the recording studio:
For me, it’s a long, long journey. If I can go back a few years, if you can imagine the original black and white Godzilla, the Japanese version. I did the voices, the director/producer just called. He bought the film I think for two or $3,000 for United States rights, think of how much money he has made since. But we just sat down at a card table and he didn’t even have a script. He threw the Hollywood in front of me and Sammee Tong, and he said, ‘Read this,’ and I read it in different voices. And, I thought, ‘Well, this is stupid. The guy doesn’t have a script. He doesn’t have anything’. He says, ‘You got the job, you come back.’
Discuss the sensational debut in voiceover work by James Hong! In the initial English-language Godzilla film, he provided the voice, and it seems as though the experience happened only yesterday for him. The actor embarked on a remarkable Hollywood journey following his service with the Minnesota Army National Guard during his youth. Instead of being sent to Korea, he was given the task of overseeing the camp’s live performances.
Following the end of the conflict, Hong relocated to Los Angeles, dividing his days between working as a road engineer and pursuing acting during his leisure time. It wasn’t much time before he found himself cast in the 1956 production of “Godzilla, King of the Monsters!“.
As James Hong recalled, voiceover acting was a lot more casual at the time. In his words:
As a devoted admirer, let me share my journey into voice acting: I hadn’t watched the movie initially. Instead, the script was presented on card tables, with him saying, “Just read this.” He’d guide me, asking for speed adjustments, and that marked the start of my voiceover career. In the original Godzilla, I lent my voice to about six characters. Later, I moved on to Mulan and all the Kung Fu Panda installments – 1, 2, 3, 4, and perhaps even a potential fifth. Interestingly, I wasn’t initially cast as Mr. Ping, but I ended up landing the role when another opportunity fell through.
There’s a lot to celebrate about James Hong’s career, between his role as Mr. Ping in all the Kung Fu Panda movies to being in Big Trouble In Little China (he was one of those actors that really was everywhere in the ’80s and ’90s in particular) to Best Picture winner, Everything Everywhere All At Once. It’s so interesting to hear about how his first voiceover role shook out, and how he’s seen the industry change in recent years. As he continued:
It’s been a journey, obviously, you know, from 70 some odd years of being in Hollywood, when Hollywood didn’t have any Asian Americans playing major roles. And, now look at [Gremlins costar Ming-Na Wen]. She’s beautiful, she plays major roles. She can do anything, but we were kept down, pressed down because the producers didn’t want us Asians to play big roles. That’s the way it was.
The landscape of Hollywood has undergone significant transformation since James Hong began his career in the 1950s, and now, Asian narratives are garnering more attention than ever before. This year alone, we saw the first Asian lead on “The Bachelorette” and the box-office success of a film like “Crazy Rich Asians,” which represents substantial progress from his early days in the industry. In an interview, Hong also expressed his intention to share more about his life experiences through a memoir.
In addition, the series “Gremlins” features a predominantly Asian cast, including George Takei as the primary antagonist and the acting prowess of Simu Liu, Jimmy O. Yang, BD Wong, and Izaac Wang. You can currently watch the first five episodes of Season 2 on Max, with more episodes scheduled for release in the future, tentatively set for the 2024 TV calendar.
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2024-10-17 03:37