Ellen Wong Knows Exactly Where Her ‘GLOW’ Fighter Comes From
Entering the ring with the moniker Fortune Cookie while wielding a katana and wearing a rice hat, Canadian actress Ellen Wong knows perfectly well that her GLOW character Jenny Chey is an offensive stereotype—or a series of offensive stereotypes. But that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Following the production of a women’s wrestling show in the 80s, we see not only the three-dimensional people behind the stage personas, but also the harmful effects such representation has on them. The artifice at the center of GLOW allows these moments of caricature, stereotype, and racism to feel impactful as well as historically rooted (though by no means have they been overcome in the present day).
This dichotomy is even more pronounced in season two, in which Arthie “Beirut” Premkumar struggles to make her character evolve, and Tammé “Welfare Queen” Dawson faces the effects of her work on her son (“I’m not the only offensive character,” she tells him, “Everyone’s offensive.”).
Not to mention how the series unpacks sexual harassment in the pre-MeToo age, the thin line between fandom and stalking, and the disposability of women in industries ruled by men.
Wong was recently in Toronto to promote season two of GLOW, which drops on Netflix June 29. VICE caught up with her on the phone to discuss the show and its complex relationship to representation.
VICE: How do you prepare for a show like GLOW , that’s based on a real historical show but at the same time is obviously heavily fictionalized—and make it feel current?
Ellen Wong: Playing these real characters is something that we talk a lot about with Liz [Flahive] and Carly [Mensch], our creators. There’s a lot of backstory that we talk about: who this person is and how they got there. Before I walked into that audition that we see in the first season, who was I? Where did I come from? So the research and the backstory and all that is talked about a lot.
And then there’s a lot of preparation going into the wrestling, because we literally train for weeks before we start shooting every time. We all learn the same moves, so that we’re all ready whenever the scripts come up. And then there’s a whole other character we’re creating that’s in the ring that is the opposite of who we are outside of the ring, so the research in that is a lot of—I guess cultural appropriation. Jenny is Fortune Cookie, and so she’s supposed to represent all these different Asian mash-ups. Whatever that even means. They don’t even all go together, and they shouldn’t go together, but that is how, at that time, America saw what it meant to be Asian, and I’m going to push the stereotype and be as ridiculous and crazy as I can in the ring. We’re using humour and wrestling to poke at these issues that are real and deep, but at the same time we’re having fun doing it.
Season two especially goes into the stereotypes and the racism, really gets into explicitly talking about that, outside the ring. How important do you think that is to the broader conversation that the show is having about women in entertainment?
I think that with the Time’s Up and the MeToo movements, we are in a time when women are being encouraged to have a voice, to speak up. Women are also pushing to be at the forefront, and to have our stories be told, and I think that it’s really important to be on a show that is addressing this, and it’s crazy to think that we’re set in the 80s and these issues are still so relevant today.
For someone like me, I did not grow up with really anybody that looked like me onscreen, so I didn’t feel represented, and we’re at a time when that is changing, and so it feels important to be able to be part of a diverse cast, where everyone feels together in telling a story, whether it’s about my own character or someone else’s, we all come together within the context of this discrimination or racism or these stereotypes, and we go, “These are human feelings, but there are consequences,” and the consequences are very human. If you can relate to what this character is feeling, then you get that there shouldn’t be this judgement that’s placed on us in society. That’s something that was created, and it doesn’t mean we have to live up to that.
I also think things are still changing, and we’re not at a place where it’s perfect. As humans, I think we’re still trying to figure out how to coexist, fundamentally. I read a study that was done by USC. They looked at films made over a span of 10 years, and the number of women as leads or co-leads in film were at about 30 percent. And now we’re really demanding more. The last year they had the survey done, they saw that out of 100 films, in 2016, 34 of those films had women as leads or co-leads and then out of those 34 films, only three of them were women of minority race or ethnic group, and eight of those films had women over the age of 45. That’s not a lot. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of representation. To be able to be on a show that has so many women representing so many different backgrounds, it’s like I go to work and I feel equal. And I’ve not always felt that way.
You mentioned the comedy that’s used in service to that. One of the things that I love about GLOW , one of the things that strikes me as I’m watching it, is that the show feels like it’s making me work to divide what’s funny and what’s disturbing. As a white viewer and as a man, there’s something uncomfortable about a lot of the humour that I think makes it resonate a lot. And I wonder if you could talk a bit about that tension.
You bringing that up made me think of the first season, when we’re all auditioning our wrestling characters in front of Sam [Marc Maron] and Bash [Chris Lowell], that episode where we’re all wearing the costumes of our stereotypes for the first time, and just how ridiculous it looked. I think as an audience, as a viewer, that’s the comedy that we’re talking about. There are moments when you’re laughing, because everyone is just hilarious, but at the same time, they have these horrible names, these horrible judgements and walls placed around them, and yet they’re just playing them.
So there is that discomfort, where you’re like, “Oh my God, I’m in there jumping through the air wielding a sword, saying ‘I’m Fortune Cookie,’” and yeah, physically that’s funny, because it all looks ridiculous, but at the same time it really is ridiculous and also not funny. I think you’re right, that we balance this fine line of comedy and addressing serious issues, and I feel like that’s what makes this show so digestible.
I read that Jenny wasn’t Cambodian until you were cast, and I know the characters aren’t directly based on the original GLOW performers. How does that character development happen?
Liz and Carly, our creators, they did that with every single one of the girls, sat down and had a character meeting before we started the show. We all had a really good direction or understanding at first of who we were and where we were coming from, and that was so key for us all to go into the show, going, “OK, I know my backstory, and I’m meeting all these people for the first time”—The show is so meta!
Yeah, I was going to ask.
Yeah! We’re going into this new experience together. We’ve never met one another, and we’re going to make this wrestling show. We’ve never wrestled, except for Kia Stevens [Tammé “Welfare Queen” Dawson], who actually was a professional wrestler before our show. And so it was very meta, and for me to be able to say to Liz and Carly, “Can Jenny be Cambodian?” and for them to go, “Yeah, of course! We want you to bring that experience to your character,” that was important, because a lot of the time, when we think, “What does it mean to be Asian?” I think there is still that stereotype of Fortune Cookie. She’s playing every Asian stereotype, and that’s ridiculous. I’ve always felt and I believe that there is diversity within the Asian identity itself, and we haven’t really seen that explored onscreen.
To be able to bring in my background, but also to bring in a background that we don’t hear about or see a lot of in a TV show or in a movie, it’s like, “Oh, that’s different, what is that?” Let’s ask these questions. I think for every one of the characters, not just mine, it’s so easy to make an assumption and to judge somebody or believe we know who they are, but what I love about our show is that we realize that we don’t really know these characters, and sometimes they don’t either, and they’re just trying to figure it out. And they just want to try to fit in.
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