Can Anyone Play Anything? Daniel Dae Kim Has Thoughts

Daniel Dae Kim may be known for playing stoic, serious characters. But he actually has a deep funny bone. To wit: he’s seen every single episode of Saturday Night Live. “I have not missed an episode of Saturday Night Live since the ’80s,” he says with pride. One of his favorite comedians, who came from SNL, is Steve Martin. And it is Martin who has inspired Kim’s latest performance, as the hapless DHH in the farcical Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang, currently running until November 24 at the Todd Haimes Theatre.

“Steve Martin is such a gifted physical comedian that it was nice for me to think about the ways that I would inhabit these moments of high stress and high stakes,” says Kim, who’s currently reacting nightly to the absurdity in Yellow Face with animated facial expressions and frantic limbs.

Yellow Face is a farcical retelling of some real-life events. Kim plays David Henry Hwang who, in 1991, protested the musical Miss Saigon for casting Jonathan Pryce as a half-Vietnamese character (that part is true). But then, David mistakenly casts a white actor to play an Asian character in his own Broadway show, Face Value (that part is not true). And then, in an even cringier moment, David in the play lies about the white actor's ethnicity to cover his own mistakes. Hilarity ensues.

Yellow Face is a return of sorts to Kim’s roots. He used to do improv in college at New York University. “I loved comedy from then, but I just happen to get cast in very serious roles,” he explains. “In our industry, they tend to want you to repeat the things that they saw you as successful at, which is why dramas kept coming, one after the next. And comedies were never really things that I was considered for.”

Though he is proud to admit that, as a comedy newbie, he hasn't yet broken on stage—which is no small feat when he's acting opposite skilled comedians like Kevin Del Aguila and Francis Jue. "There's certain times on stage where I have to dig this nail into my finger to prevent myself from laughing," he digs his forefinger into his thumb, smiling widely. "Dramas, I enjoy them, but I don't consider them fun, because when you're digging deep into people's darkest emotions, it can be very difficult work at times. I don't consider it fun in the way comedy is fun—there's just a different vibe when I go into work every day knowing that I can laugh, I can make my fellow cast members laugh, and I can make an audience laugh." There is a moment in Yellow Face that shows what Kim is truly capable of. It’s when Ryan Eggold’s character, Marcus, gives a standout audition for Kim’s David. In response, Kim turns silently to the side, and his face—wide-eyed, brows arched—is a mix of shock and delight. Just with that facial expression, the audience laughs.

Ryan Eggold, Marinda Anderson, Daniel Dae Kim, and Kevin Del Aguila Joan Marcus

Yellow Face came about because Kim has been friends with Hwang for over 20 years, after he’d starred in the writer’s biographical Golden Child (where he played Hwang's great-grandfather). The two of them, alongside director Leigh Silverman, reached out to the head of Roundabout Theatre, Scott Ellis, to see if the company would be interested in producing Yellow Face on Broadway. Kim had seen Yellow Face back in 2007 when it premiered in Los Angeles; he loved the play so much that he produced and starred in an audio version for Audible (which you can listen to here).

Though Kim only made his Broadway debut in 2016 in The King and I, he actually got his start in theatre. In the ’90s, Kim was trying to make it as a stage actor in New York, doing Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway shows. By 1996, Kim was living in the East Village with his wife and infant son; it was not glamorous, but it was the quintessential artist lifestyle.

“I would be strolling my son, you know, around the block when he couldn’t fall asleep and he needed to be in motion. He’s, like, six months old, seven months old. And every night, I’d stroll him past the hookers that were on my block,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I’d do this so regularly that I got to know the working girls who were there every night. And they’d be like, ‘Oh, Alexander! He looks so cute.’”

Shortly after, realizing he needed to not be “a broke ass, starving actor” if he wanted to support his family, Kim moved to Los Angeles, was cast in a television series called Lost (you might have heard of it), and the rest is showbiz history.

Daniel Dae Kim photographed at W New York – Times Square Heather Gershonowitz

Though Yellow Face is a departure from what Kim is known for as an actor, it is of a piece with Kim’s other work in a very important way: It showcases Asian American voices in an arena that they are still underrepresented in. And it does so through a story that is, on the surface, about race, but it is also about perception—in today’s multiracial, multi-point-of-origin society, what is ethnic authenticity? And what is it to play a particular race, whether that’s on the stage or in real life?

It's a common assumption that in America, anyone can become anything. After all, that’s how Kim—who came to America from Busan, Korea, when he was only one—became an entertainment juggernaut. But as Yellow Face, and Kim makes clear, not everyone can play anything, at least not yet. Kim admits it’s not as hard and fast as only people of a certain ethnicity can only play that ethnicity (after all, he’s a Korean American man playing a Chinese American man in Yellow Face). It’s about intention.

“There are certain situations where I think that nationality specific casting is important. For instance, when there’s a heavy language requirement, or it’s based on a real character that has real cultural significance to that specific nationality. But other times, I don’t think it’s necessary,” explains Kim, leaning forward, excited to talk this through. “For instance, if there's a friend in a group that's Asian American, and their whole experience is American and not, say, Korean—then there's no reason why that role can't be played by someone who's not specifically Korean. Those are the kind of nuances that we have yet to explore fully when it comes to casting, and I think it’s necessary. There’s no reason why, for instance, someone who’s Korean American couldn’t play DHH in this circumstance, because the whole emphasis is about American politics as it pertains to Asian Americans. And that’s part of the point of the play, that [Asian Americans are] constantly mistaken for each other. Like, how many times during the pandemic were all Asians singled out as being Chinese and being the source of the coronavirus?”

Indeed, that kind of racial profiling often times leads to violence. That was why in 2021, Kim testified before Congress in favor of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and the No Hate Act—which President Joe Biden signed into law, investing funding into preventing hate crimes and making those crimes easier to report. Kim is just as passionate about creating change on a micro level as he is on a macro, and he speaks just as fervently about casting practices in theatre as he did to Congress.

To him, it's not about creating rules around who can play what. The bigger goal is to ensure equal opportunity. As Kim explains it: "I would encourage [creatives] to think through the situation on a case-by-case basis, because there's such a small pool of roles to begin with, that when you subdivide Asians into their nationalities, you're fractionalizing their opportunities to work even further." He then adds, "We can't get better at what we do unless we get the opportunity to practice."

And when casting mistakes inevitably happen, like what happens in Yellow Face, it’s nothing to cry about or to be canceled over—in fact, sometimes all you can do is laugh at human foibles. And learn from those mistakes. “By owning your mistakes, you can come to a place of understanding, and that’s the journey of DHH through this whole play,” says Kim. “That’s why he’s saying, ‘I’m not pointing a finger at anyone more than I’m pointing it at myself.’” Here, Kim places his hand on his own chest. “We’re all human. We all make mistakes. If we can just admit that we are [human], we can move forward.”

It's almost time to wrap up the interview, and for Kim to head to the theatre. After he finishes Yellow Face, Kim will film the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender while preparing for the release of his newest television show, Butterfly on Amazon Prime Video—which he produced with his company 3AD. But before he departs, he reflects on how far he's come and admits, it is surreal that he came to New York as a broke actor and now, his face is on all of the Playbills and posters for Yellow Face. At the Todd Haimes Theatre, every day, he walks past the New Victory, where he played Paris in a production of Romeo & Juliet in 1991—the year he moved to New York.

“It's nice," he says, serenely, "when I think about when I started in this business at 21 years old, and doing Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway—that I've managed to stay in this business long enough to live to see this day.”