The speaking roles of Asians in Hollywood leaped from just 3.4% in 2007 to 15.9% in 2022, a new study from the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found.
The higher representation of Asian actors appeared at least in part due to the success of films that featured at least some foreign language including Parasite from South Korea in 2019, Minari in 2020 and Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2022.
Bing Chen who founded Gold House has dedicated his non-profit to uplifting opportunities for Asian actors and creators
“My initial reaction is I’m very happy but very guilty,” says Bing Chen, the Co-Founder of Gold House, an organization that champions and invests in Asian Pacific creators and companies. “We need to support all multicultural communities.”
Chen is reacting to the study’s findings that saw little or no change for other actors of color over the same 15 years.
Black characters went from 13.0% to 13.4% while Latino characters grew from 3.3% to 5.2%.
“It’s all talk and little action,” said Stacy L. Smith who led the study.
NBC reports the study looked at 1,600 top box office films and 69,858 characters.
“While it is encouraging to see changes for leading characters and for the Asian community, our data on invisibility suggests that there is still much more to be done to ensure that the diversity that exists in reality is portrayed on screen.”
A previous study cited by NBC looked at roles from top-grossing films from 2010 to 2019.
It says almost half of all Asian roles ended up being the punchline for a joke. 17% of women were objectified and 13% were in revealing clothing. Most Asian actors were in supporting roles.
Smith believes the spike in Asian representation has more to do with the audiences’ appetite for foreign films and not a conscious effort by Hollywood to diversify.
“It’s a function of the box office changing,” she argues, “not the decisions of legacy studios.”
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