As “Fresh off the Boat” premieres its fifth season on ABC, Randall Park says he never expected the comedy to get picked up to series.
“When we did the pilot I hoped we’d have a good pilot. I didn’t even expect the pilot to get picked up to series,” said the actor. “Especially at that time there was no show like it. There hadn’t been a show like it in over 20 years, you know? So after we got picked up to series I was like, ‘Oh,amazing.’ I had hoped we’d last at least a couple episodes and then we lasted I think that season was 13 episodes and I was like,’ That was a great season and that’s in the history books. I think that’s probably as far as we’re gonna go.’ And we just kept getting picked up. Got picked up again and now we’re on season five. It’s wild.”
“Fresh off the Boat” follows a Taiwanese family living in Orlando in the 1990’s. Park plays Louis, the dad, who embraces all things U.S.A. Co-star Constance Wu plays his wife, Jessica, who is more no-nonsense and wants her family to keep its connection to their Taiwanese roots.
Park says as the writers have gotten to him, they’ve begun to write more of his own personality into his character.
“I think there’s a lot of myself that they end up writing for Louis, especially as I get to know the writers more. We’ve retained a lot of our writing staff through the seasons. A lot of them have been there since season one so we’ve all gotten to know each other and I find things in the scripts where I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s me. That’s so strange that they’d write that in there.’ And then it will happen again. ‘Oh my gosh. That’s me.’ And then I’d be like, ‘Oh, OK. They must be putting this in because they’re getting to know me better.”
“Fresh off the Boat” is premiering after Wu’s very successful summer. Her rom-com “Crazy Rich Asians” was No. 1 at the box office for three weeks in a row and a sequel is in development.
“It’s been amazing, you know, and surreal just to see her kind of just flourishing and doing so well but also to see all of the change that is happening in the industry and you could really feel this momentum in terms of representation and in terms of kind of stories from unique perspectives or different perspectives than what we’re used to. I think the industry is a lot more conscious of that and they understand the value of that more than ever. So, yeah, to see her success and to see the success of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ it’s great. It’s great.”
from Entertainment | The Epoch Times https://ift.tt/2y2H7TY
