Jimmy O. Yang has always wanted to be a leading man. In fact, when he first got word of the Crazy Rich Asians movie, he wanted to audition for the Nick Young role. “I called my agents, and I was like, ‘Hey, man, let me audition for the lead role and see what happens,’” he tells us. Alas, Henry Golding got the job, and Yang ended up playing over-the-top party boy Bernard Tai. But now, three years later, Yang’s time has finally come.
In Love Hard, Yang plays Josh, a sweet but unassuming guy living in Lake Placid, New York, who comes face to face with the consequences of his actions when Natalie (Nina Dobrev), the girl he’s been catfishing, shows up unexpectedly to spend Christmas with him. At first, Natalie is furious, but she and Josh strike a deal after she learns that Josh knows Tag (Darren Barnet), the man whose photos he was using to catfish her. If Josh helps Natalie get with Tag, then she’ll pretend to be his girlfriend and spend Christmas with his family. (Think To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before meets The Half of It.)
It’s a pretty impressive jump for Yang to go from the immigrant nerd Jian Yang in Silicon Valley to a romantic lead, especially considering the dearth of Asian male romantic leads in Hollywood. There may have been a slight uptick in the number of Asian romantic leads in Hollywood films in the past decade, but before that, you’d have been hard pressed to find Asian leads, period, let alone ones in romance movies. “Growing up, any romantic lead in a rom-com — or most movies in general — [was] always a white person, and you just accepted it,” Yang says. “The landscape has definitely changed. Being Asian, you don’t always have to be the sidekick. You can be a very good looking Asian guy, like Darren, the funny yet unexpected romantic lead like me, or Harry [Shum Jr.], who is like a classic leading-man looking guy. And there’s a place for us in roles that weren’t necessarily written for us back in the day.”
Until recently, Asian roles in Hollywood were rare and riddled with stereotypes — the perpetual foreigner, the martial arts expert, the dragon lady. “I thought it was so cool to be part Asian because of this culture and these heroes,” says Barnet, noting his childhood love of Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan movies. “When I would introduce myself as being part Japanese as a kid, it was like ‘Oh, do you know karate?’ And I thought that was so cool. I was like, ‘Yeah, you know what? I do!’ Looking back, it’s a bit jarring to think about how many stereotypes come with what you see in Hollywood.”
But in 2021, Asian representation in Hollywood is at a crossroads. Asian and Asian American stories are on the rise thanks to several high-profile movies — Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Crazy Rich Asians, for instance — and in TV shows like Never Have I Ever and Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens. And the historic Oscar nominations for Steven Yeun (for Minari) and Riz Ahmed (for Sound of Metal) finally spotlighted Asian actors. At the same time, it’s a double-edged sword: Just because Asians are slowly becoming more visible doesn’t mean that the number of Asians in Hollywood, particularly on-screen, is growing.
An increase in visibility also comes with the risk of creating new stereotypes. For example, the growing trend in Hollywood of casting half-Asian men in heartthrob roles — sometimes even having them play fully Asian characters (see: Henry Golding’s casting in Crazy Rich Asians) — has been criticized as a way for Hollywood to diversify without straying too far from the Western European beauty standards it has always upheld. Some might even accuse Love Hard of playing into this trend with Barnet’s casting, though Yang says he doesn’t see it that way. “I consider Darren a brother and an Asian brother,” he explains. “Whether he wants to rep that or not, that’s on him, but to me, he’s Asian.” Regardless of how you view this casting in particular, it also shows why having Yang himself as the romantic lead feels so exciting.
“It’s really important right now and really refreshing to see someone like Jimmy O. Yang, who I look at to be very handsome, [be the romantic lead],” Barnet says. “And portraying that as a full Asian man, who in most Hollywood films is not the guy that ends up with the girl, I think it’s really powerful.”
Shum, another Crazy Rich Asians alum equally excited by Yang’s casting, remarks, “We don’t get to see a leading man like him on our screens. That was the biggest draw for me.”
Love Hard wasn’t originally written for an Asian lead at all, which is part of what made it so exciting for Yang. “It was very meaningful that the whole family was Asian,” Yang says, adding that he knew that by taking the role “four other Asians would get a job.” (In the film, Harry Shum Jr. plays Josh’s obnoxious brother, Owen, James Saito plays his father and Althea Kaye appears as his grandmother.) Yang also said he felt a responsibility to make sure the story would be authentic to an Asian experience, which included acknowledging the realities of being an Asian man on a dating app. “Asian men, I think historically, haven’t been the lead or the sexy one, and it does reflect in dating apps,” Yang says. In fact, dating sites like OKCupid and others have reported that Asian men and Black women have the lowest response rates. (Yang himself tried dating apps in the past, but other than some material for his stand-up, he didn’t get much out of it, and met his current girlfriend at a stand-up show.)
He also pitched an exchange between Natalie and Josh that ends with her declaring that she has dated a Chinese guy who “was amazing in bed” to ensure that the movie wouldn’t imply that Josh was undesirable because of his ethnicity. “I wanted to make sure that Natalie’s not saying no to him because he’s Asian,” Yang says, adding that he especially wanted to be careful to steer clear of the “asexual or nonsexual” Asian stereotype. And he was “very adamant” that Tag be played by an Asian actor. “If the guy wasn’t Asian, then what are you trying to say? The white girl goes to [Lake Placid], finds the guy that’s Asian and she’s not down anymore?”
It’s a tough line to walk: How do you tailor a film to acknowledge an East Asian lead without making that his whole identity? Part of the solution in Love Hard is to showcase a variety of East Asian men. “Without even having ‘Asian’ in the title, or without it being an ‘Asian movie,’ I think this movie could hit a lot of different notes on Asian representation and what you find attractive,” Yang says. “Hopefully, it will show a spectrum of [Asian masculinity] and you can walk away either saying, ‘Oh, man, I wish I could date a really sweet, nice guy like Jimmy’s character,’ or you see Darren and he’s so hot, and you’re like, ‘I still like the hot guy.’ Or you see Harry Shum, who is a beautiful Asian man, and you want to date him. Or even, James Saito, if you’re into a nice Asian dad.”
For Shum, showcasing all these different characters will allow them “just to be known as a romantic lead, as opposed to an Asian romantic lead.” The Shadowhunters alum added that he sees movies like CRA and Love Hard as “building blocks” that are setting the foundation for a more representative on-screen world — a world where one movie or actor, for example, doesn’t have to represent an entire race of people. “A lot of people are starting to understand the importance of individuality beyond looking at every community as a monolith,” he says, clarifying that it’s important for artists to “express yourself individually, while still being proud of where you came from, who you are, and what you look like.”
After Love Hard, Yang hopes for a similar future. “It’s cool to see that the leading man doesn’t have to be the chiseled, very standard looking guy from, say, the ’90s,” he muses. “[The leading man] could be any ethnicity, any height, wearing glasses…. I hope there’s more of that for me out there.”
