Lea Salonga says, 'I was refused a theatre role for being Asian'

In her own quiet way, Lea Salonga, has been an inspiration to a younger generation but has never received the credit  for the groundbreaking role she has had in show business.


Not enough credit has been given the Filipina singer for breaking barriers in showbiz: the pressures of "representing" when she was given the lead role in as an Asian depicting an Asian in Miss Saigon; or when she was cast to play a European in Les Miserable musical.

We look at her now at age 48 she is no longer offered ingenue roles. Today's young audience forget that 30 years ago, at 17-years old, she opened the doors for several other Asian artists in the much-maligned Miss Saigon musical. The political correctness surrounding the dated musical aside, her Tony-award winning performance opened the eyes of Broadway that Asians and Asian Americans are as talented as any other ethnic group and there is no excuse for yellow-facing, when white actors play Asian characters.

In the interview Salonga talks about the rude awakening she experienced when she was told that she was denied a role because she was Asian.

Even with a Tony for Miss Saigon, jobs were hard to come by. Besides Miss Saigon, there were too few roles for Asians on Broadway outside of Flower Drum Song, Pacific Overtures and The King and I. 

Salonga's performance as the singing voice of Jasmine in the animated version of Aladdin in 1992 made her familiar with a younger generation. "A Whole New World," is the song most associated with her and has become a staple in her repertoire.

Her pitch-perfect voice was so light and airy, Disney chose her to sing to role of another one their "Princesses," that of Mulan, the animated story based on a Chinese legend of a girl who disguised herself as a boy to became a famous warrior. The highlight song, "Reflection," is closer to Salonga, she says. It's about identity and finding one's self.

“Because these films are easy to access there are many generations of children that have seen both movies and I got to play two princesses that were people of color. Being a person of color and giving voice to these two characters of color, it was really quite something," she said earlier this year in an interview with a British publication. "I didn’t realize the impact at the time, for me this was the job, sitting here in my kitchen, now, and looking back on it, what those characters represented and what they mean in the world today, they are princesses, people of color, and they have a lot of young women look to them, heroes, strong and somewhat influential in their own way."

Then Cameron MacIntosh, the Miss Saigon producer, asked her to sing the role of Eponine, the waif in Les Miserable musical. It was a daring decision to cast an Asian ro play the French waif. "They were waiting for me to mess up," she said. "That's why I made sure to nail that song every night."

"When I'm the first Asian person to do a particular role, as with Eponine, that feels really important. The stakes were higher in 'Les Misérables' than 'Miss Saigon,' because I was a young Asian person playing an Asian role," she told the Arizona Republic last year on her world tour celebrating her 40th year in show biz. "You look at me, and I'm exactly what I'm supposed to be for 'Miss Saigon.' For 'Les Misérables,' this is not a traditionally Asian part. This is not a role you would normally give to someone who looks like me."
I still get goosebumps  and my eyes start to water with the emotion she conjures up in the listener as  she sing's  "On My Own" as Eponine in Les Misarable.

That experiment in cross-racial casting (specifically for Asians) in 2000 led to more roles for Salonga, in Allegiance and Once on This Island but despite her popularity on Broadway, movie roles or TV roles failed to knocking on her door. As her long career reaches a point where she can look back with pride, perhaps just as important to her is that other performers, young women who grew up idolizing Salonga, were able find more roles open to them. Ruthie Ann Miles,  Phillipa Soo (Hamilton), Vanessa Hudgens and Eva Noblezada (Yellow Rose, Hadestown) all are indebted in some way to Salonga's groundbreaking work.

Salonga had a role in the independent film, Yellow Rose, which starred Noblezada as an undocumented Filipino American immigrant who wants to become a country singer.

"It seems to be our time. It's like our Black Panther moment," she mused in an ET interview. "When film studios are recognizing that stories from people of color actually do well at the box office because they are going to be people of color who are going to want to see themselves represented onscreen and are going to want to hear stories from people just like them. It's something that makes a lot of sense. That our voices are not being silenced and that we're actually getting heard and getting seen."

Although she appeared in several Philippine-made movies, Yellow Rose was her first American film. 

"It's great for another generation of young Asian Americans to see faces that look like theirs on screen and hopefully give them this inspirational push to tell more stories later on. It's exciting and it's nice to be able to witness this as it's happening and to be in the thick of it as it's happening," she continued.