Helen Wan is an author and lawyer. Her novel “The Partner Track” was published a decade ago and recently turned into a Netflix original series by show creator Georgia Lee. The first 10-episode season premiered on Netflix on August 26, with Arden Cho as its leading female actress.
The story is about Ingrid Yung who is a first-generation Chinese American and the first lawyer in her family. Ingrid is the first minority woman to make partner at Parsons Valentine & Hunt, an old law firm with a boys’ club corporate culture.
A racially-insensitive and offensive incident happens at the law firm and Ingrid is tasked with doing damage control, despite being treated like an outsider.
Helen lives in New York state. She has written for The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and CNN. She is currently working on another book while also serving as a diversity and inclusion consultant, among other big projects.
I can’t believe my subway scribblings from 20 yrs ago will soon be a new @Netflix TV show, premiering a week from today. That’s me, blinking back tears, gazing up at a giant Times Square billboard showing @arden_cho & the rest of this amazing #PartnerTrack cast! I ❤️ NY. pic.twitter.com/NJnrWQUawH
— Helen Wan (@helenwan1) August 19, 2022
Here is the 10-minute interview with The Proud Asian:
Watch it here.
Key moments during the interview:
Crystal Bui:
The nuances. They’re really important and I know that you brought in some of those nuances in the show. Like, it’s no secret [Ingrid Yung, played by Arden Cho] is Asian and she’s in a very male-dominated world. [The men] have advantages. There’s a boys club. Clearly, there are backdoor dealings. It’s almost like some of it isn’t merited, but because they’re white men, there is nepotism, almost because of race.
How did you navigate that sort of nuance and that script in your writing or if Netflix consulted you at all on how to play that out in a sensitive but empowering manner at the same time?
Helen Wan:
I’ve been very fortunate in that when I, myself, binge-watched the show up over one weekend, I was really impressed by how sensitively and thoughtfully Netflix treated the issues of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in the corporate workplace.
I was impressed with the way that they updated it.
Because as I mentioned, the book was originally published in 2011, that it makes sense to have some updates to the story. They added some characters and they added some backstory to my existing characters. I was just really honestly pretty pleased with the end result. I thought it was it was both a sensitive treatment of those kinds of issues and themes that I was trying to tackle.
But also, frankly, I thought it was an entertaining show. It wasn’t just about being Asian and for being a color or being a woman lawyer or what have you.
Crystal:
Growing up, I did not see many people on TV who were Asian.
It was a part of the reason why I first went in and was a TV news reporter. I wanted young girls to see something different or to see themselves, quite frankly.
Did you get emotional seeing it on the screen? Or what was it like seeing the pages that you wrote come to life to know that people would have to physically see the characters that you created?
Helen:
It was amazing.
On the premiere night, in Los Angeles, it was like Cinderella at the ball moment for me, because there’s artists, there’s Georgia Lee, there’s Julie Anne Robinson [director of Netflix’s Bridgerton] was sitting next to me. I was just like, “Wow, this is my character from when I was a first-year law associate are up on the screen.”
If you had told me that anything like that would have happened to me and to those characters, that began as my subway scribblings… I just wouldn’t have believed it.
Crystal:
Since I was so obsessed with the show and binge-watched it, this is a selfish question, but I would love to know: what is next for you?
Are you working on something? What can you share?
Helen:
I’m trying very hard to put the finishing touches on the ending of a new book. It’s been fun diving into a new project.
It’s not a sequel to The Partner Track, although it touches on similar themes that I’m interested in about how family backgrounds, race, gender, socio-economic, class, privilege, whether or not you’re a first generation in your family, or to go to college… I certainly was the first to go to law school in my family… and how all of these factors just impact our decisions about personal and professional decisions, and also ambition.
Crystal:
Growing up, I was really ashamed to be Asian because I was picked on.
I imagine with the nuances of your show and your book, it was probably not easy for people to realize, “I’m not part of this white boys’ club.”
Did you feel the same way growing up? And then what inspired you to kind of reclaim that and own that and put that in your book?
Helen:
While I was born in California, my family moved to the East Coast when I was quite young. I mostly grew up in the DC suburbs, which was a fairly white area. I was one of perhaps, two, or maybe, three Asian American students in my public elementary school. And I certainly felt it and the playground teasing, and the eyes [teasing], and things like that.
I certainly felt it.
It does take a certain thick skin, which I don’t naturally have, to write about such experiences. And it took me a long time to do so.
But I started doing so in those journal entries. Those things did make their way into the novel. And I’m really glad I did, because a lot of people will point to some of those scenes, and readers will say, “That happened to me. That playground taunting did happen to me too.”
It’s very important to see some of those perspectives and stories represented.
I hope that people enjoy the book, enjoy the show, and can take away something meaningful from them. And I really, really appreciate everything that has happened and all the people who take the time to reach out to me or to any of the creators of the show, or other writers who are out there telling their similar, authentic stories that they don’t see out there, so they write the book themselves.
It means a lot when people say they have taken something away from your work, so thank you.
