SNEAKS: John Cho and Kal Penn
Interview with Abraham Ferrer
Click here to watch the interview (Quicktime: 9.5M)New Line Cinema’s new comedy, HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE, is about two guys who take a crazy road trip in search of the perfect food. We caught up with the stars, John Cho (AMERICAN PIE, BETTER LUCK TOMORROW) and Kal Penn
(VAN WILDER, WHERE’S THE PARTY, YAAR?), to talk with them about the film.
Why don’t you two talk a little bit about the characters you guys play, Harold Lee and Kumar Patel.
Kal Penn: I play a guy named Harold Lee…
John Cho: No, you don’t.
Kal: Oh, I don’t?
John: I play Harold Lee. My character is an investment banker, and he’s so downtrodden, he doesn’t feel appreciated at work, he’s taken advantage of at work, and he’s got a crush on a young lady in his building, and he can’t muster up the courage to talk to her. And he’s best friends with Kumar.
Kal: I play a guy named Kumar. He’s a med school candidate—he’s really only applying because his dad pays for rent as long as he does what his dad wants. He’s pretty laid back, he’s pretty much the antithesis of Harold in terms of…personality. I dunno, he’s a laid back guy.
Your characters are not too far removed from college, not unlike yourselves. Do you two find some identification in those characters in terms of the closeness of your characters being in your late twenties?
Kal: Yeah.
John: Yeah, I think so. I actually have a lot of friends who are in that, kind of, in between stage of life. It seems like kind of a generational malaise, after college and before things really being for you, your life begins. You know, before you get married and have a family, that sort of thing. That period actually seems to be longer and longer…[whispers] as the years go on…You know what I mean? It seems like it’s a phase in American life that’s getting longer.
Kal, you were born and raised in New Jersey, the epicenter of South Asian community in the United States. How does Kumar stack up against other Desi [American-born South Asians–ed.] portrayals in South East Asian American films such as AMERICAN CHAI, WHERE’S THE PARTY, YAAR?, ABCD, and AMERICAN DESI?
Kal: The biggest difference between those characters and Kumar and Harold is that HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE is not an identity film. It doesn’t focus on ethnicity, ethnicity is not even a driving force for the plot. Whereas a lot of those other films deal with identity issues of the community a lot. They’re geared towards the South Asian, Asian American community in terms of marketing and everything, whereas this film is a story about two American guys who happen to be of Asian American descent. So I guess that’s the biggest difference.
John, you were a former Berkeley Bear, you went to UC Berkeley. When you guys went back to Princeton, how real or surreal was that scene when you had to go back to Princeton and wind up sitting with all those college students at an Asian American get-together?
John: Well, I think that scene’s interesting because when you’re an Asian American in college, there are all these Asian American groups. I think that this scene was played broadly, and if given the choice how surreal or unreal was it, I think it’s played surreally, that particular moment. I think it’s to illustrate that Harold feels different from the other Asian Americans, and so they’re kind of an exaggerated version of what Harold sees. But yeah, it was funny—you’re an Asian American and you get on campus, and there’s all those groups, you know , Japanese American Students Associations, Korean American Students Associations…all those things, so it’s kind of lampooning those groups.
What was it like playing Asian American characters that may be a different sort of representation on screen, but may in fact be closer to a real type of portrayal?
Kal: I think, at least the way I approached it, I was finally able to play a guy. Just a guy, a guy who happens to be South Asian American, but it’s not the focal point at all, it’s not something that I had to actively deal with in constructing the arc of the character. The story went someplace, and Kumar was driving part of that story. Being South Asian American was secondary in some ways, but really had nothing to do with the plot. So it was really refreshing.
John: Well, normally you get one of two roles, and it’s either very Asian, that can be a result of a screenplay written by an Asian American, or Caucasian, that they will write you really Asian—you can have lots of Asian characteristics—or you can be blank. It seems to be one of the two things that happen most, at least for me. This is interesting because like you know, I did a movie called BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, and I think the thing that holds this movie and that movie together is that the characters are Asian, but it’s not the focus of their identity. The fractions seem correct to me—you feel Asian in some times and you don’t at other times, and it’s part of who they are, but not everything. It felt true.CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR DANNY LEINER
