People: Warp speed, Mister Harold!
“I’ve always felt like I’ve had to please the 12-year-old me,” says John Cho, the Korean-American “Harold” half of the “Harold & Kumar” stoner comedies.
“I was a kid who was affected by negative portrayals of Asians in the media,” the 35-year-old actor says.
“So whenever a script comes across my desk, I ask, ‘Would 12-year-old me be upset?’ “
And the 12-year-old Cho liked the idea of playing a stereotype-smashing slacker – the somewhat blitzed straight man to Kal Penn‘s Kumar – first in “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” and now in “Harold & Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay.”
“Twelve-year-old me doesn’t necessarily have to be proud of something I’m doing,” Cho laughs, adding: “But I don’t want to (tick) him off, though.
“It’s more a matter of me looking for personal happiness, being able to live with myself,” he says. “I’m not setting out to please the Asian-American community at large. Just me. At 12.”
Cho, a native of Seoul who grew up in Los Angeles, is keenly aware of the way Asians are typically depicted in pop culture: studious, industrious, a bit dangerous behind the wheel.
So he leaps at any chance he has to puncture that image. He was in the edgy indie drama “Better Luck Tomorrow,” about overachieving Asian-American kids who spend their spare time engaging in crime. He’s had a recurring role on “Ugly Betty.”
“Generally, Asians aren’t viewed as rule breakers,” he says. “And that’s all Harold and Kumar are about. They break just about every rule that there is.”
But to land in Guantanamo Bay – the U.S. military prison for terrorists – the pair didn’t have to do much of anything at all.
“We went for a big, extreme comic example of what can happen when you’re not white,” Cho says of him and Indian-American Penn.
On the press tour for the first film, he says, “We went to a lot of airports and I saw Kal searched quite a bit. Once we were traveling with a white friend of Kal’s who had just come from a camping trip. So while Kal was searched, his friend had forgotten to take his hunting knife out of his backpack.
“They were so distracted searching Kal they let a guy with a hunting knife get on board the plane. Went right through!
“One of the things that we learned in the years since that first movie is how much our fans enjoyed the racial jokes, the social commentary jokes,” Cho adds.
“Americans are a little uptight about talking about race. One way to have a discussion is to laugh about it, first.”
But the laughing stops when he thinks back to his 12-year-old self, and the next movie role on his resume: Hikara Sulu in the prequel to the “Star Trek” TV series, previously brought to the screen by George Takei.
“Oh, the 12-year-old me was soooo thrilled to have the chance to play that part,” Cho says. “The 12-year-old me took heart from George’s presence on my television, growing up. He was a great role model back in the ‘60s.”
The birthday bunch
Actress-singer Ann-Margret is 67. “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno is 58. Actress Elisabeth Rohm (“Law and Order”) is 35. Actor Jorge Garcia (“Lost”) is 35. Actress Penelope Cruz is 34. Actress Jessica Alba is 27.