'Grey's Anatomy' gets real; Harry Shum Jr, Midori Francis added to cast.Ha

Harry Shum, Jr, left, and Midori Francis join cast of long-running 'Grey's Anatomy.'

The newest class of interns at Grey Soan Medical Center will add two Asian Americans to the cast of Grey's Anatomy in the show's 19th season.

Finally, with the addition of Harry Shum Jr and Midori Francis, the staff at the fictional Seattle hospital is starting to reflect real life. In the past, the show has been criticized for not casting enough Asian Americans in more prominent roles despite the hard-to-ignore presence of AANHPI medical personnel in most real-life US urban hospitals.

Shum and Francis will play first-year surgical residents at Grey Sloan, which was ordered to disband and rebuild its teaching program in the Season 18 finale.

Shum will play Daniel “Blue” Kwan, who is described as sharp-witted, impatient and brilliant. He is generous by nature but competitive to a fault, naturally gifted, and used to winning at everything. The character's back story hints at a family crisis that interrupted with his career plans and now he’s got a lot to prove.

Francis’ character, Mika Yasuda, is described as a middle child with eight siblings. She is used to being overlooked and underestimated (for many AANHPI, that sounds very familiar) and uses it to her advantage. Mika is dealing with overwhelming  med school debt (that sounds familiar, too), but she’s scrappy and confident she can make it in the hospital's residency program and rise to the top.

Most recently, Francis played Alicia, the leader of the Essex College Women’s Center, on HBO Max’s The Sex Lives of College Girls. She will continue with that role in the series' second season. Francis began garnering notice for her lead role in Netflix's Dash & Lily, for which she earned an Emmy nomination.

Shum launched his career as a series regular on the cult-favorite Glee. He cemented himself as a romantic figure in the groundbreaking film, Crazy Rich Asians, where he played Charlie Wu, a potential love interest of Astrid Leong, played by Gemma Chan. The CRA sequel will center on the budding romantic relationship between the two.

Despite being cast regulars, the backstories of the characters played by Lynn Chen, left,
and Alex Landistill still needs to be told.

The two Grey's newcomers will join regulars Lynn Chen, whose role as Dr. Michelle Lin, head of plastic surgery, wasn't fully fleshed out in Season 18; and Alex Landi, who plays the oversexed 3rd year resident, Dr. Nico Kim.

As we discuss Asian American cast members, we should remember that Grey's Anatomy brought Sandra Oh some Hollywood cred for her portrayal of BFF Dr. Cristina Yang. The Emmy-nominated Oh left the security of the series in 2014 to expand her acting resume.

We also cannot forget the Asian American actor who has been with the series for all of its 18 seasons and presumably into the 19th. Kathy C. Han, a nurse in real life,  appears in almost every important surgery scene as the reticent scrub nurse Bokhee. In those 18 seasons, she probably has spoken a only a dozen words.

Despite numerous cast turnovers with actors coming and going, Grey's Anatomy, created by executive producer Shonda Rhimes, remains ABC's top drama for the coveted 18-49 demographic favored by advertisers. 

With the addition of the new characters, there is an opportunity for Rhimes to help develop the Asian American characters. Since Oh's departure, the Asian American characters have not really been explored and turned into 3-dimensional characters like Dr. Cristina Yang.

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