By Brittney Le
AsAmNews Correspondent
Asian American women in the acting industry are continuing to fight for the spotlight that has long been turned away from them in mainstream media. One name that’s becoming bigger and bigger as she keeps snagging original, empowering roles is Ally Maki.
Maki’s latest big role is in the TBS original comedy series Wrecked. Wrecked, now airing its second season, stars a diverse cast playing characters from unique backgrounds who have survived a plane crash on a deserted island. The show follows the struggles that ensue as they try to stay alive. Ally Maki plays Jess Kato, a Japanese American woman whose character isn’t forced to fit into the stereotypical box where most Asian American roles fall.
“Jess is really going through all the things a modern girl goes through. Dating, finding her voice and her sexual identity,” Maki told AsAmNews.
Watch the trailer for the second season of Wrecked:
That can’t be said about plenty other roles that many Asians still end up being pushed towards. “I had spent my whole teenage life trying to please everyone, ‘Can you do an accent, can you be the smart Asian, can you do martial arts, can you speak Chinese, can you speak Japanese, can you look more Asian, can you look less Asian,’ and the list would go on,” wrote Maki.
Growing up in a predominately White neighborhood in Seattle, Maki watched TGIF and looked up to characters like Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston, in Friends. She wasn’t really given the opportunity to see Asian American faces on screen, an issue with representation that has shown progress but that Hollywood still struggles with today. “Because of my Asian roots, I so wanted to do well and be what everyone asked of me. This caused a huge identity crisis once I left my teen years,” Maki stated. “I was also in this tiny pocket of people who were Asian American. I didn’t know what that meant either…I imagine if I had grown up in a society where I saw Asian American girls regularly in magazines or on TV, I may have had such different views on my own self worth. Even seeing one could’ve made all the difference.”
As Maki grew up in the acting industry, she started realizing the part she was playing was not the right one for her. “A lot of what I had been doing and was being asked of me, was actually setting me back. Setting people that looked like me back,” stated Maki. “That was a huge and heavy realization for me. To realize that everything you thought you were doing right, amounted to you sort of being the butt of the joke. Your whole career amounted to a punch line about a stereotype.”
However, Maki was able to fight back against these constraints that were placed on her by landing empowering, new roles that fit her own goals and the goals of a larger, underrepresented community. “It wasn’t until I booked the role of Min in ‘Geography Club’ that I started to find my voice,” wrote Maki. “I thought, if I could play a LGBTQ high school girl searching for her sexual identity without any regards to race, what else could I play? How much farther can I take this? People found meaning in her, which helped me find meaning in my own life and helped me to start using my voice.”
Asian Americans getting roles like that of Jess in Wrecked and Min in Geography Club have been possible due to the pressure that people are placing on Hollywood to be more diverse. “Speaking up for yourself, is a relatively new notion, mainly because of the power of social media,” Maki noted. “We’re calling them out every time now when things like whitewashing or stereotyping occurs, and I swear to you they are listening.”
Ally Maki continues to inspire Asian American women to keep challenging the preconceived notions that mainstream media has created. Maki recognized that she herself had previously been conditioned to believe that Asian American women could not play leads. “When do we, as Asian American women start believing that we are more than what we are portrayed as? That we are more than the sexualized dragon woman or completely undersexualized nerd sidekick,” she wrote. “At every step of the way I was against the odds. When I moved here, I was chasing a dream that didn’t even exist at the time. That taught me to fight. I would encourage every girl out there with ‘impossible dreams’ to speak her mind, get in the game and fight.”
We cannot take actresses like Maki for granted. We must continue to support more powerful, intelligent Asian American women like her to keep pursuing their goals and to not be discouraged by the overall tendency of mainstream media to neglect both women and people of color. “All I want is for the new generation of Asian American girls in particular to feel like they are beautiful, internally and externally, to feel strong, to feel like they can be anything they want regardless of what the media portrays,” stated Maki. “I didn’t feel beautiful growing up. I had this sort of ugly duckling complex that I still work at everyday to correct and fight against. If I can do anything in my life, it is to be a speaker box for those girls with big dreams. To say, hey the cards are going to be stacked against you, but it is possible. That possibility is everything.”
“I think the moment where we can come together collectively as a community, will be the moment that changes everything for us. Since the need/want for Asian Americans has been historically small, there’s this false sense of competition between us,” Maki wrote. ”Every project that incorporates a well defined Asian American character is a win for all of us. It’s the time when we need to discover what it truly means to be Asian American and define our own legacy. Women in comedy especially, we have to stand together and really push to be unified.”
Maki’s role in Wrecked is definitely a win for the Asian American community that ought to be celebrated. “Playing Jess has been the best time of my life and an absolute dream role for me,” stated Maki. “For over a decade now, I have dreamed of playing that girl.” By continuing to support actresses like her, progress can be made so that in the future, Asian American girls will never have to wonder why they don’t see faces like their own on screen.
Watch Wrecked on TBS every Tuesday night at 10:30/9:30c!
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RE: Ally Maki gets Wrecked:Go Ally, you rock it!