Sung Kang
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (born April 8, 1972 in Gainesville, Georgia) is a Korean American actor. His first major role is that of Han from Better Luck Tomorrow. He was also one of the stars in The Motel, in which he played Sam Kim, and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, in which he played Han, this time as a mentor to the main character Sean Boswell. On MADtv, Sung has been playing the recurring role of the narcissistic President Gin Kew Yun Chun Yew Nee in the overly-cliched Korean drama parody, "Tae Do" or "Attitudes and Feelings, Both Desirable and Sometimes Secretive. He also owns a restaurant called Saketini in Brentwood, California [1]. It offers a wide range of Pacific Rim foods and has Eun San Yi as head chef. .
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Asian Week, News Feature, Phillip W. Chung, Posted: Jun 24, 2006
If one understands the way that Hollywood typically works, Sung Kang should not have been cast in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The Korean American actor had starred in director Justin Lin’s breakthrough film Better Luck Tomorrow, and even though Lin had just signed on to direct the third installment of the popular action and fast cars movie franchise, the odds of Kang being cast looked slim.
For one thing, Han, Kang’s character in the film who serves as a mentor to the main character played by Lucas Black, did not exist in the script. Director Lin initially asked Kang to read for the lead role of Sean Boswell, but the studios wanted a white person for the lead.
“So I was instructed to prepare to read for the main villain,” Kang remembers. “Then Justin changed his mind about me reading for the villain. In the original script, there was a small part of an ultra cool African American character named Pharell. [The character] had lots of ladies and was cool. Justin called me the night before and said to prepare for Pharell. I was confused by now and really stressed.”
But Kang soon learned there was method to Lin’s madness. Kang impressed the producers with his reading and this allowed Lin to create the character of Han specifically for Kang to play.
“All the auditioning was to let my work as an actor speak for itself, so when Justin presented the Han character to the heads, they weren’t totally surprised,” Kang says. “Otherwise the studio would have been like — ‘what are you crazy, an Asian American dude can’t pull this off!’ I give all the credit to Justin, his strategy was ingenious.”
