When Audrey's business trip to Asia goes sideways, she enlists the aid of Lolo, her irreverent, childhood best friend wh | dG1fN29OS1R0dDlHenM
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00:00 production designers, you know, you'll go into an Asian set, they'll be like, "Oh, all
00:03 these Asian things look cool." You're like, "You can't have these candles and
00:06 these light lanterns there. Those are for funerals." Like, because just
00:09 because something looks good doesn't mean, you know, and feels like they're of
00:12 the culture doesn't mean that they are.
00:16 In television, it's a writer's medium. Like, you have a total hold on story and
00:29 you can control the whole process. And being in a writer's room, it's, again, I
00:34 just knew jack shit for my first few years. You'd go in a room and people
00:38 would break things down on a board. I was just like, "How do you know what's supposed to
00:41 happen at the end of three?" And they would just, "Your character set up is here,
00:44 your turn is here." And then beyond just, like, story structure, what makes a good
00:48 story, you have to be able to make a good story and also understand the
00:53 intricacies of production. And if you're in it long enough, you start to
00:56 understand the rhythm of your show. Like, okay, with the budget we have, with the
01:01 line producer and the crew we have, I know we have like eight shooting days. We
01:05 probably have like four days on stage. We have like three days we can be out. We
01:09 can do like one big action sequence. We can do this, that, and the other thing. And
01:13 the only way you get good at it is by putting in your 10,000 hours. The only
01:16 reason, like, I'm a better writer now than I was then is because you just spend
01:20 less time making dumb decisions or, like, going down weird garden paths where
01:24 you're just like, "I wonder where this magical thing will lead me?" It's like,
01:27 it's gonna lead you to like four days of, like, no scene is where that's gonna lead
01:30 you. But you only know that after doing bad, terrible things often enough.
01:37 When I took it on, I remember thinking, like, "This is never gonna get made." But I,
01:42 but, um... - Why? - Well, because I'd been in the industry long enough where, and I'd been
01:48 through development often enough, because the series will tell you, like, "You know
01:51 what? We're excited by diverse storytelling, you know? Yay us! We're
01:56 going to just, like, develop, because we believe in you and these, like, characters
01:59 that look different. We're so ready for this." Like, no. At the end of the day, then
02:02 they'll pick up another procedural, you know, about, like, you know, like a white
02:07 guy in the Midwest, like, fighting crime. - They'll have one Asian person in it. - Yeah. - Oh, there you go. - He'll be, like, the best, best friend number three. So I, um, but I remember
02:13 thinking, because I grew up in Malaysia, like, Singapore was a, you guys don't care
02:17 about, like, the history of Southeast Asian, like, geography, but Singapore was a
02:21 Malaysian state, and this, the, my family's not rich, but they are crazy, and, like,
02:26 everybody in that book was, like, "I know these people. These are my aunties." Like,
02:30 you know, the Malay, all the different dialects, the food, the culture, the
02:35 aunties who are just, like, so far up your ass about everything. I was, like, "I know
02:38 this forwards and backwards. If I don't write this, somebody else is gonna write
02:41 it and do it badly, and I'm gonna be really pissed off about it." And it wasn't
02:45 for a lot of money. Like, I was doing fine as a TV, like, you know, room runner and
02:49 showrunner. I did this because I love John, and I was, like, "I, I have to write
02:53 this." Again, coming to this country, there's so many amazing, important stories
02:57 about the minority experience, but none of y'all, like, when you, like, click on
03:01 Netflix, you're, like, "I'm not, I'm," you don't pick a movie because of representation.
03:06 You don't pick it because it's, like, "Oh, this is doing something great for
03:09 gender representation." Like, you click on something because, or you pay money to
03:13 watch at a theater because you want to be transported. You want to be excited by
03:16 something.
03:19 Cherry and Teresa, who are the co-writer/producers on this, we were just,
03:26 we were just writer/geek friends. We had been friends for a long time. We'd go out
03:31 to restaurants and just tell each other, like, disgusting stories. It was almost
03:36 like this competition of who had, like, the most, the nastiest story to tell. And
03:39 we're, like, we, you know, we spent our whole careers, like, writing for, like,
03:43 other people. Like, "Let's write this for us. We'll write this for us. If nobody
03:46 wants to make it," which nobody will because this is fucking insane, like, "Who
03:50 cares?" So we just, they would show up to my living room every Thursday. We got one
03:54 of those, like, cheap cardboard, like, fold-out things, like, you use in, like, a
03:59 middle school, like, school presentation. -We probably use it here. -Yeah, yeah. By the
04:03 way, best, best screenwriting tool. And, like, three by five cards. And we just
04:08 threw out a bunch of beats, you know. They're all comedy, so they're just, like,
04:11 "Dick joke, dick joke, dick joke." I'm just, like, "Character arc." So, you know, we wrote it,
04:16 wrote it to make ourselves happy. And, and then we took it out. And when we took it
04:19 out, we attached ourselves as producers because, again, like, that's, you know, for
04:22 you as you figure out, like, what you want to do. We were used to having all this
04:26 agency and control as television writers. But in features, we did not have that
04:30 kind of control. And we wanted it, especially with something as culturally
04:33 specific as this, or just as specific as this, you know, we just wanted to be
04:38 involved and continue to be involved in the process. So our agreement among
04:42 ourselves was, "I will sell it, but only on the condition that we are
04:46 attached as producers."
04:49 If you've had to, like, break any kind of a feature, like, your lead character,
04:55 especially if they're female, is very, very tricky because the most interesting
04:59 characters are, like, your bat-shit characters, your villain characters,
05:02 because they can be over-the-top and, you know. But your lead character has to
05:06 hold the heart of the movie. So she, you know, and you have, like, Sherry Cola and
05:11 Sabrina, you know, being, like, hilarious and fantastic around her. She has to be
05:14 able to hold her own with them, be as funny, but she can't be, like, so
05:18 completely, you know, on the fringes that we kind of lose track of her, like, you
05:22 know. Because, again, like, she's, she's your guide throughout the whole movie of
05:27 how you're supposed to feel. Like, you, she's the main story that you're
05:31 tracking. I didn't know how funny she was until she got to the, until she got to
05:36 set. You know, and she's fearless. So, you know, you know her sort of, like, from,
05:41 like, Emily in Paris, where she's, like, "Well, pretty girl," like, singing things. She is
05:44 completely fearless when it comes to doing, like, the weirdest, loudest, most
05:47 disgusting, nasty things. The, you know, even the, like, the sex montage scenes.
05:53 Like, you write it all down on a, you know, on a paper you think it's gonna be
05:57 funny, but the, the reality of shooting it is, like, you're in a small room with
06:03 actors who are not wearing a lot of clothes, and you're asking them to do, like,
06:05 weird-ass shit with each other. Like, it takes a, and, you know, it's not my face
06:10 that's gonna be on the billboard. It's not my face that's gonna be on a huge
06:13 screen, you know, with your mom and your aunts watching this. So, it takes a lot of
06:17 trust. It takes a lot of self-confidence in yourself as a performer to be able to
06:21 do that, and she, you know, she had no problem doing it.
06:27 I have a big, like, Asian matriarch way of, like, doing things. Like, I feed people a
06:34 lot. Like, I get in real close with all my heads of department. I'm, I'm very much
06:39 into, like, we are going out for food. We are, you are gonna be so sick of me. I'm
06:42 going to, like, talk about my movie, like, all the time, and I'm gonna feed you more
06:46 food, and you're gonna tell me your ideas, you know, and not all their ideas are
06:51 going to be, like, things that I use in the movie, but I just am excited that
06:54 they are excited for, for this, for this project. The best thing about being a
06:59 director, you have, like, this whole crew of people, and all they want to do is make
07:01 you happy. So, you want to make them feel invested in your, in your project. Share
07:05 your vision, you know. It's not going to be your vision. It's going to be our
07:09 vision, because all creative people have a fifth gear that they can go into if
07:13 they care about your project. If they love you, if they love your project, if
07:17 they feel like they can imprint on your project and make it as much theirs as it
07:22 is yours, you're going to get, you know, just so much more out of everybody, and
07:26 this is especially important, again, TV training, when you don't have a lot of
07:30 time, and you don't have a lot of money, you know, it's all you have is, like,
07:33 passion and people power.
07:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]