By Sona Charaipotra
Prepping for his role as FBI agent Demitri Noh on ABC’s new apocalyptic hit Flash Forward, John Cho – yes, you know him best as straight-laced stoner Harold – got to thinking. “On the show, the world stops for a moment and everyone gets a vision of their future – only my character has no future,” says Cho, 37 and all grown up. “But he’s engaged. And that presents a major challenge on how to deal with the information he thinks he’s received. What do you do when you think you’re going to die?”
The premise hit close to home for Cho, a new dad with a happy, growing family. “The premise of the show is rather large, but what drew me to the show and the character were the details that are brought to it,” says Cho. “I’ve got a family and a future, so it really touched a nerve for me. But I’ve been burned by TV a few times, so I was reluctant to play that game again. Still, this was something I couldn’t pass up. So I decided to let other people worry about the business part of it and just go with my gut.”
And while he’s busy shooting the show in his native L.A., Cho’s career is still moving in fast-forward. He recently followed in idol George Takei’s footsteps as Sulu in the Star Trek remake and is set to star in A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas when buddy Kal Penn wraps his presidential advisory gig next summer.
In the meantime, he hopes to settle in to life on the small screen and continue to make a mark in terms of diversity. While Cho admits he’s seeing many Asian Americans on TV – from Lost to Grey’s Anatomy to Melrose Place to The Office – he still sees room for improvement.
“Don’t get me wrong, the FBI agent is great – and I’m very happy to see the numbers. But I mean, they got hospital shows wrong for so many years – so to this day, I’m just happy to see Asians as doctors on TV.” says Cho. “But my character on Flash Forward was not written as Asian, and I think that’s still pretty common. When I was cast, David [David Goyer, creator of Flash Forward] asked me if I wanted to change the character’s last name to a Korean name, and I said yes, so we did.”
While this attests to the level of success Cho has reached after nearly 15 years in the business, he still sees the trend as problematic. “The landscape has changed – with the exception of Harold I haven’t played a character written as Asian for many years.
But that’s not something to brag about either,” he says. “It’s sort of double-edged. Ideally you’d want brilliant, fleshed out characters that were already written Asian. But there still is that shortage. My point of view is that things are getting better, yes, but things aren’t nearly where they should be. But I am feeling a bit more optimistic than I was before.”
He credits the surprise success of Harold & Kumar, in part, as a propeller of change. “In the beginning, I felt very concerned about representing – I felt a lot of pressure to play the right role,” he says, noting the model minority stereotype. “I sweated that, but eventually it got to the point where I wanted to go against the grain and play more vulgar characters. Harold is the straight man, but he’s also sort of an everyman.”
Another case in point? His cougar-craving character in the American Pie franchise who coined the term MILF. “It was more attractive to me compared to what was out there for Asian actors because of the edge,” says Cho. “These are memorable roles, and they led to other things. But I have to admit, there’s a part of me, even as we made H&K – which I thought was a genuinely funny movie – that believed that ‘They,’ with a capital T, would never let it happen. C’mon, two Asian guys as the leads in a stoner comedy? It really defied all expectations in the way it performed. But the take-away is that audiences are really way more ready to embrace diversity than we give them credit for.”
To this day, Cho is surprised by fan reaction to the film. “It taught me a lesson in identity, and I realized that maybe there was a generational shift that I had been unaware of,” says Cho. “The moment of clarity for me was this young Asian American woman that came up to me and said, ‘Oh, thank you for Harold & Kumar, thanks for representing us. Us stoners.’ That threw me a curveball, you know. It made me see that just because we’re the same color doesn’t mean we’re the same – everyone processes identity in a different way, and that’s a very healthy thing.”
These days, though he’s still basking in the afterglow of his turn as Sulu in JJ Abrams Star Trek remake (and hoping to secure a role in the sequel), Cho takes his icon status with a grain of salt – and his typical humility. “I’m usually a bit disconnected from what people think of me,” says Cho, who tries to skip reading reviews. “But after Star Trek, even on my street there are some young boys, like 10 years old, who just look at me different. You can tell they’re just visualizing me doing that sword fight from the film. And I’ve never seen anyone look at me like I’ve stepped out of the screen before. It was just amazing.”
