Except for 'Parasite,' SAG nominations snub Asian shows, actors

A24

American actress Awkwafina drew praise for her performance in 'The Farewell.'

The Screen Actors Guild overlooked the work of Asians and Asian Americans this year in its nominations for SAG Awards. The nominations for the awards were announced Thursday (Dec. 11) with the noticeable omission of some some strong performances by AAPI actors.

The Farewell's Awkwafina, who just a few days ago nabbed a nomination as an actress for the Golden Globes and was named one of the Entertainers of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, didn't even merit a mention by her acting peers.

It's hard to fathom what changed on Killing Eve from 2018 to 2019? Sandra Oh, who won last year as Best Actress for her role in Killing Eve, was omitted this year. However, her costar Jodie Comer, like in the Golden Globes, earned a nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Series.Was it the blonde's turn, or what?

BBC

Same role, same actor, same outstanding performance, but Sandra Oh was skipped over by the Screen Actors Guild.

I love The Walking Dead, but it's nomination in the Stunts or Action in a Television Series is puzzling. How can  clobbering zombies in the head compare to the outstanding Hong Kong-style martial arts, with its choreography of leaps and bounds that was the mainstay of Into the Badlands?

My personal favorite, Joel Dela Fuente's unstereotypical, nuanced portrayal of Kempeitai Chief Inspector Takeshi Kido in The Man in the High Castle was overlooked. Apparently, not enough voters caught the show on Hulu to appreciate the most complete, most-rounded Asian character on TV.

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE

Joel dela Fuente didn't resort to stereotypes for his role in 'The Man in the High Castle.'

To be fair, the lack of any Asian or Asian American nominations speaks to the shortage of productions showcasing Asian and Asian American actors. In comparison to the hundreds of productions for white actors and the dozens of productions featuring black performers, productions featuring dramatic or comedic opportunities for Asian and Asian American actors can still be counted in one, maybe two, hands.

This year, there was no production to equal The Assassination of Gianni Versace -- in terms of exposure to the American public -- which earned Filipino American actor Darren Chris a bevy of awards last year for portraying the gay, delusional, flamboyant killer Filipino American Andrew Cunanan, a once-in-a-lifetime role.

Unlike the Oscars, which are influenced by PR contests between studios and sometimes dubbed a popularity contest, the SAG Awards are supposed to be given to acting performances as voted by other actors. Or, maybe, Hollywood voters, which make up most of SAG's membership, have an aversion films where you have to read subtitles.

Director Bong Joon-Ho, left, and the cast of 'Parasite' at the Cannes Film Festival.

Thank goodness for Bong Joon-Ho's movie, Parasite, or otherwise, Asian and Asian American actors would be completely shut out this year. Parasite's Korean cast was nominated for Best Ensemble Cast in A Dramatic Movie. 

Its hard to explain some of the nominations and why some worthy performances overlooked. Perhaps it tells more about the viewing habits of actors that lean in favor of English accents, histrionics over subtlety, familiar faces and the uncomplicated, tried and tested themes over something new and different, ie. the Asian or Asian American experience.

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Sunday Read: The best Asian characters are found in 'The Man in the High Castle'

AMAZON

'The Man in the High Castle' is in its fourth and last season on Amaz.on.

If you haven't been following The Man in the High Castle, you should go over to Amazon and binge its first three seasons to fully enjoy the Emmy-worthy performances of Joel de la Fuente and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. 

In the previous three seasons, it has been wonderful to watch the growth and depth of characters of Inspector Chief Inspector Takeshi Kido of the Kempetai played by de la Fuente and Tagawa's portrayal of Nobusuke Tagomi. Like peeling an onion, the characters have grown in complexity through the first three seasons: Initially villains, the audience can come to know their humanity and sympathize with the contradictions and difficulties the characters must face.

With the luxury of several seasons to develop their characters, both acting veterans  Tagawa and de la Fuente give us a tour de force performance giving us perhaps the best rounded depictions of Asians and Asian Americans on US television. 

Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle is based on Philip K. Dick’s Hugo Award-winning 1962 alternative history novel. The series explores the world that would have resulted if the Allied Powers had lost World War II. America and much of the world have now been split between global dominating powers Japan and Germany. As tension mounts between the two, resistance builds against the oppressive regimes amid questions over what is real and what is not.

AMAZON

Filipino American actor Joel de la Fuente plays Chief Inspector Takeshi Kido.

Because of the heavy Japanese presence in the story, there are lots of opportunities for Asian American actors. It would have been easy to slide into stereotypes. Thank goodness, de la Fuente and Tagawa are so good at their craft that were allowed to depict parts of their characters that unveil glimpses of their suppressed humanity.

Kido is the Chief Inspector of the Japanese secret police in San Francisco.  It is his job to keep the Pacific States safe by whatever means necessary.

"I really responded to the character," de la Fuente tells Parade magazine. "I just felt like I was very interested in approaching someone who is such an archetype from the beginning, down even to when he is first described in scripts, 'Man with the Round Glasses,' which is such an image so much to the point that it can be considered as a stereotypical image of Japanese during the war. So I was really intrigued with the idea of trying to take that character, and trying to imbue him in a way that made him more well-rounded as the series went on. I thought that was an interesting challenge."

Kido "can be quite striking in appearance once you see that hat and that coat and particularly the glasses. I think a little bit like when you hear Darth Vader breathing, or you see his cape or his mask; It should send a specific message initially."

In the final season, we get to see more facets of Kido, says de la Fuente, "You think you know who he is; and then he veers away from that."

“Some of where he goes is a huge surprise,” he shared. “Here’s a spoiler. You see Kido in his pajamas … Don’t tell!”

AMAZON

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa portrays key chracter Nobusuke Tagomi

Nobusuke Tagomi is an unusual Japanese character, in that Japanese are, in reality, very conservative and sublime outwardly, but inwardly there’s so much going on," says Tagawa.  "A volcano’s worth of emotion and depth of spirit. This depiction isn’t one we’ve really seen in Hollywood so far. It’s probably the most in-depth character I’ve played, which excites me to no end, but it also offered me the opportunity to draw on being Japanese" says the actor.

"I’ve had a slightly different experience than most Asian and Asian-American actors in Hollywood. I was born in Tokyo, left when I was 5, and was raised in the U.S. on a U.S. Army post during the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when it wasn’t real popular to be Japanese — because of the war, of course — and really had to sort of roll my own reality and make some decisions at a very young age about how I wanted to proceed in what was a … complicated experiment," Tagawa laughs.

"Tagomi represents very much of that kind of East-West energy, being Eastern in a Western environment, albeit an environment that is an occupied U.S. environment. He speaks English, he carries on with diplomats, he’s very much in the Western world and feels very much from an Eastern perspective," says Tagawa, who was born in Japan. 

"The East-West paradigm is nothing new to me—it’s something I’ve dealt with my whole life—so that really gives me an opportunity to represent it at a very deep level and provides a very wide perspective of being in America and being Japanese," he says.

The final season is troublesome to some regular viewers (No spoilers here). Suffice it to say, to jump into the story at Season 4 would be difficult for newbies. To understand the complicated plot and all the overlays and intertwining of character storylines, it would be best to binge the earlier the seasons, or at least the recaps of each season available on Youtube.Perhaps because it is housed in a streaming network, or perhaps audiences don't like to dwell in the dark world of Castle, it is a shame that not enough people have seen this show, simply for the performances by its entire cast, but also for the moral quandaries the characters have to resolve and we, the audience, need to ask ourselves, "what would we do" if faced with those difficult choices.

Although it is set in an alternate reality, some of the situations and themes seem to reflect what is happening in this country today. It is fantasy, but its frightening to think that that fictional fascist world it depicts is only an election or tweet away from reality. The world - or worlds -  in which the story takes place is not as black & white as it first might seem. That includes the characters portrayed by de la Fuente and Tagawa, who have taken their Asian characters to a level rarely seen on American television.

The Man in the High Castle's final season can be viewed on the Amazon network. It's worth binging this winter as you're holed up against winter.

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Too close to home? Philippines protest portrayal of Filipino president

SCREEN GRAB

In Madam Secretary, the Philippine president (Joel de la Fuente) with the U.S. Secretary of State (Tea Leoni).

AN EPISODE of the CBS show Madam Secretary might have hit too close for comfort for some Philippine government officials.

In Sunday's (March 12) episode of the political drama in which Tea Leoni plays U.S. Secretary of State Elizabeth McCoy, she visits the Philippines president Andrade portrayed by Joel de la Fuente, taking a break from his regular series, Man In The High Castle. During their meeting, Andrade grabs the U.S. Secretary's rear end and she turns around and wallops him giving him a black eye and a bloody nose.

The depiction of the Philippine president wasn't based on a real person but it was close enough that the Philippine embassy in Washington wrote to CBS saying that the fictional President's portrayal "denigrates that way our nation navigates foreign affairs" and "tarnishes the Philippines' long-standing advocacy for women's rights and gender equality."

Uh, are we talking about President Rodrigo Duterte, the current Philippine President?

This is the same President Duterte who in 1989 as mayor of Davao City was talking about Australian national Jacqueline Hamill who was raped and killed during a riot at the prison where she worked in the southern Philippines’ Davao City. Duterte.

“They raped all of the women ... There was this Australian lay minister ... when they took them out ... I saw her face and I thought: ‘Son of a bitch. what a pity ... they raped her, they all lined up. I was mad she was raped but she was so beautiful. I thought, the mayor should have been first,” Duterte told the crowd, according to Agence France-Presse.

Afterwards, instead of apologizing Duterte said, "That's the way men talk."

I thought the episode was more a commentary on egotistical strongmen in general. The writers were hoping that the U.S. audience would pick up that  it was more a reference to the current U.S.  president than the Philippines'. Remember how Mr. Trump bragged about grabbing women's genitals using "locker room" talk? Leoni admitted as much in her tweet.

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