From playing Eddie Huang to studying at Harvard, Hudson Yang is charting his own course on the high seas of life. Best known for his role as the main character of ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat,” the 20-year-old transitioned from child actor to college student and aspiring entrepreneur.
Starring in a new McDonald’s commercial where he reunites with his on-screen dad, Randall Park, Yang talks with Mochi Magazine about where he started, how far he has come, and the future.
Yang’s journey into acting began unexpectedly, leading to his breakout role in “Fresh Off the Boat,” where Park and Constance Wu played Eddie’s parents.
“My dad likes to tell this story. He says that I had a crush on a girl and I wanted to impress her. She was also an actress, and so I was like, I want to be an actor,” Yang recalls. “He gave me the whole spiel of ‘It’s a tough industry. You’re gonna have a thousand doors slamming in your face before you get one open.’”
Nonetheless, in his first audition, he made it to the final casting call and within three more auditions, got a role in the film “The Sisterhood of Night.” Just a couple more auditions later, he found himself cast as Eddie Huang in the first network show with an Asian American cast since Margaret Cho’s “All-American Girl” premiered in 1994.
“There was never any point where I didn’t want to be on the show. It was more so that sometimes I think about how much childhood I sacrificed to work on that show,” Yang admits about starring in six seasons of the prime-time sitcom.
He goes on to share that one of the most difficult parts of growing up in front of an American television audience was being called fat and having people around him telling him to lose weight.
Although Yang looks back and reflects on whether he could have had a more normal childhood, all in all he is proud of what he was able to accomplish as a child actor. “My sacrifice did not go unrecognized and unrewarded,…
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