Ken Cheng is a writer/producer who has previously written for Wilfred, Betas, and Sin City Saints. Ken’s feature comedy Easter Sunday, which he co-wrote, and executive produced for Amblin Partners, Rideback, and Universal, is inspired by the life and comedy of standup comedian Jo Koy. Forthcoming projects include writing and executive producing the half-hour comedy series, House of Chow, for HBO, co-writing – along with his creative partners at Crab Club, Inc. - a feature film adaptation of the GQ Magazine article, “The Great Chinese Art Heist”, for Warner Bros., Conde Nast, and director Jon M. Chu, and writing/producing a feature adaptation of the New York Magazine article “Chateau Sucker” for Bound Entertainment. 

KEN CHENG

It was a confluence of very fortunate events that this movie was produced, and it is a bit of an anomaly. It's quite unprecedented that, first of all, a major Hollywood film studio has produced a comedy in the year 2022. They don't get made very often anymore at this size or scale. And secondly, that movie centers a minority family of any sort, but specifically of a Filipino-American family with a Filipino-American leading man. All of these things add to the sort of historical nature of the movie, for lack of a better description. And that's not lost upon me, but also adds to the fact that it's such a crazy experience. Now having put the movie out into the world to see reactions and now that it's out of our hands, it's up to the world to receive it."

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I think there's this belief that creativity requires our ability to think outward and extrapolate beyond our own experiences and think of the world in imaginative new ways - which is true in a lot of cases - but I also believe in creativity as the ability to access inward and look introspectively at our own personal experiences and mine those experiences in ways that aren't necessarily one to one copies of our lives, but that we can extrapolate themes and lessons, comedy, drama, humor...into new works.

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Writers' rooms are very difficult environments to work in, specifically comedy writers' rooms. However, they are also some of the most rewarding work environments that you can find yourself in. And I'll go into a little bit of detail as to what makes them both difficult and rewarding. My first day in a TV writers' room was my first day in Hollywood working in any capacity.

I never went through the assistant route or PA route that a lot of fledgling writers undertake, fortunately. And so my first day in the room, a very small room on a very small TV production – six writers. Not only was I the only Asian-American writer in the room, I was the only writer of color, period.

And that's been the case in almost every room I've worked in. I think that has become less prevalent of an experience for younger writers today, but in the days that I was coming up, in the early 2010s and into the mid-2010s even, finding writers' rooms that were heavily diversified in terms of their ethnic and demographic makeup was a rare experience.

Most writers of color that I know are used to being the only fill-in-the-blank in the room. Another reason why Crab Club, Inc. formed was to commiserate over the shared experiences. And so it is tough. We're often writing for showrunners who don't have similar life experiences to us and often working with other writers who have extremely different life experiences from us. And the writers' room in general is a tough environment because it is one in which you are forced to put yourself out there on a daily basis, whether you're pitching stories, story turns, whatever it may be, you are in a room with people who are generally the smartest people, if not the funniest people in their own lives. So you're now getting the top 1% of funniest and smartest people in a room together, and there are only however many episodes - 10 episodes of television - that you're trying to make. And not every idea is going to be a hit. 

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There are still plenty of obstacles towards getting stories featuring people of color specifically made in Hollywood, even though there are all those various new outlets and paths for that material to find audiences. Easter Sunday is an anomaly because it is a major studio-produced feature that centers on a Filipino-American family. There is still what I call Asian America 101 that has to happen, which is like this very basic education that we have to impart upon the gatekeepers and decision-makers in Hollywood.

When you look at it in that respect, it is a bit of additional labor that we as creatives of color have to undertake, fairly or unfairly - probably unfairly if I'm being frank - but it is required. And is there a day where we don't have to do that additional emotional labor and creative labor to validate our own experiences and validate our own stories for the sake of financing? I hope so. We're not quite there yet.

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Remembering the stories of our parents and our grandparents, our aunts and uncles, and the struggles that they have gone through. Struggles and the joy - I don't always want to frame the stories of our forbearers in the context of struggle, although a lot of Asian-Americans have had to deal with that. There's a lot of joy to be found in those stories as well. And I hope that those are stories that are passed on and remembered because, as is the case in our movie, it's about the moments that we are able to share with our family, in which we experience happiness and laughter and joy, that are most important, at least to me.

And so I hope that's something that we can reflect in our storytelling moving forward as well. You know, I think we've seen a lot of stories framed around the noble struggle, which is what I call it. And I hope we can start diversifying our storytelling a little bit so that we can share a little bit more of the happy pleasures and joys that we experience as families and immigrants as well.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Yongling Hao with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this podcast were Yongling Hao and Andy Lopez. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).