HEROES ON A MISSION

Cape, an NGO that champions Asian American and Pacific Islander artists and leaders, has been shaking up Hollywood's storytelling for three decades. But the team feels there's still work to be done on making representation more nuanced and global 

- Zabrina Lo

Half-Chinese, half-Japanese American producer and writer Julie Wong recalls the day her “Chinese American, risk-averse engineer dad suggested that I try my hand at TV writing” after she had been working in politics in the US for 15 years. “I was shocked,” she says. “But he pointed out that I loved TV and I loved to write, so why not?” A few weeks later, she signed up for her first TV writing class at an NGO called Cape—the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment. It was a decision that changed her life—in 2018, her talent would lead to her being hired as a staff writer and later on co-executive producer of the hugely popular television series Grey’s Anatomy—season 20 was released in March this year.

Wong wasn’t wrong to have doubts; conversations about racial diversity and representation in the film industry weren’t as common as they are today. “I can’t recall seeing any AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] female TV characters when I was growing up. Think about the kinds of messages that sends—you’re not important, you’re not ‘normal’, you don’t need to exist,” she says.

Says Michelle K Sugihara, Cape’s executive director, “Shows like [1960s series] Star Trek were very popular, and there used to be a saying that there were more space aliens than Asians on [American] TV.” When the AAPI community did appear onscreen, they usually portrayed biased or denigrating stereotypes: the model minority, perpetual foreigner, dusky maiden or noble savage. “It’s not just a silly thing that you see onscreen. It actually shapes how people view, think, feel about our communities and act. It has a direct consequence to how we’re treated in the real world.”