Comedy has long been a space where Asian women are sidelined, cast as punchlines rather than the ones telling the jokes. For actors Ramona Young (“Never Have I Ever,” “The Paper”) and Kahyun Kim (“St. Denis Medical,” “Cocaine Bear”), carving out space in the genre has meant drawing from lived experiences, reshaping familiar tropes, and daring to bring their full selves on screen.
Mochi spoke with both actors at the 2025 Asian American Journalists Association convention, in Seattle, Washington, where Young and Kim also joined NBCUniversal’s “Asian Women Rewriting Comedy” panel. Off stage, they reflected on the projects they’re most excited to share this year and why comedy remains their favorite way to tell the truth.
Ramona Young: Finding Herself in NBC’s “The Paper”
Young, who starred in the hit Netflix teen drama series “Never Have I Ever,” stars in the inaugural season of Peacock’s “The Paper,” a mockumentary style follow-up to the sitcom “The Office.” Alongside stars Domhnall Gleeson and Sabrina Impacciatore, the actor portrays Nicole Lee, a bright-eyed volunteer journalist at the Toledo Truth-Teller.
While “The Paper” builds on the legacy of “The Office,” the new show offers a fresh insider perspective from the newsroom, detailing the ups and downs of a declining Midwestern newspaper run by a group of passionate yet questionably experienced journalists. From urgent deadlines to an overly enthusiastic editor-in-chief, Young said “The Paper” confronts real newsroom challenges while centering the cast’s humor.
“It’s a completely different show [from “The Office”],” Young said. “There’s a lot more at stake.”
To prepare, Young shadowed staff at the Palisadian-Post in Pacific Palisades, California, to study the inner workings of a newsroom and learned to channel her own personality as Nicole — something she hadn’t yet experienced on previous projects.
“I played a lot of bigger-than-life…
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