The opening night drew a sellout crowd of hundreds of people. “We were so cocky, because we were so popular,” Park said. “I remember, during that, hoping that this was gonna be like a Steppenwolf type of thing. One day we’ll look back and see all these people who came from that theatre company.”
Park stayed at U.C.L.A., where he started a master’s degree in Asian American studies, researching depictions of Korean merchants in African American film. Then he got a job as a graphic designer at a Los Angeles alternative weekly. He directed shows in the back yard of his parents’ house, where he was living; he taught himself stage makeup and amassed a collection of wigs and costumes. He did standup comedy and rapped in a band modelled after the Roots.
Around 2002, Park quit his full-time job and began to audition, mostly for commercials but occasionally for sitcoms. He booked just enough roles to feel O.K. about his long-term prospects, but not enough that he could leave home permanently. Even when he got his first steady gig, in 2006, as a cast member on the MTV improv-and-skit show “Wild ’N Out,” he didn’t give up his shifts at Starbucks. At U.C.L.A., his mother worked alongside young people who wanted to break into Hollywood. “They would show up to work with their head shots and reels and they’d show my mom,” Park said. “I know in her head it was, like, If they can’t make it, how on earth are you gonna make it?”
Park was in his late twenties when he started auditioning, and as he entered his thirties he regarded the small, competitive cohort of Asian American actors and wondered whether he fit in. He watched from afar as the director Justin Lin’s “Better Luck Tomorrow” premièred at Sundance, in 2002, becoming the first Asian American film ever to be acquired at the festival. By 2004, such actors as Daniel Dae Kim, a regular on the ABC series “Lost,” and John Cho, a star in the “Harold and Kumar” films, had broken…
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