Suzanne Whang is an actor, television host, and stand-up comedian. As an actor, Suzanne has appeared in The Practice, NYPD Blue, Strong Medicine, Robbery Homicide Division, Still Standing, Two and a Half Men, Norm, and VIP. She most recently appeared in the feature film Constantine with Keanu Reeves. Suzanne also starred in the short film Seoul Mates which won the Best Acting and Audience Awards at the Los Angeles 48 Hour Film Festival.
Suzanne is currently hosting her fourth season of House Hunters on HGTV. Previous hosting experience includes Bloopers with Dick Clark, Fox After Breakfast, New Attitudes, Breakfast Time, The Pet Department, and Personal FX. Suzanne was also a red carpet host for An Evening at the Academy Awards and she emceed the Korean Concert Society Anniversary Gala at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. She recently served as a celebrity judge at Kollaboration, a Korean-American talent showcase in LA.
As a stand-up comedian, Suzanne recently won the Andy Kaufman Award at the first annual New York Comedy Festival and Best Up-and-Coming Comedian at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival, playing her controversial alter ego, Sung Hee Park. She will be appearing on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend in late 2005.
Suzanne has worked at both the Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe Improv. In LA, she has performed at the Comedy Store, the Laugh Factory, the Improv, the Ice House, the Friars Club, Ha-Ha Café, House of Blues, and the Comedy Union. Her act’s slogan is, “Don’t judge a gook by her cover.”
Suzanne studies at the Beverly Hills Playhouse’s advanced class with Milton Katselas, Richard Lawson, and Gary Imhoff. Suzanne has a BA in Psychology from Yale University and an MS in Cognitive Psychology from Brown University.
I study at the Beverly Hills Playhouse—the place that Milton Katselas created. Richard Lawson is one of my teachers there. They encourage you to risk and challenge yourself and dare and write your own stuff and anything you want. It’s an incredibly magical place, if you take advantage of what they’re offering. I thought, “I’m going to try stand-up comedy.” I’m known for my really big, big balls. I’ve been skydiving, hang gliding, bungee jumping. Why not stand-up comedy? I’m an adrenaline junkie. I decided to try stand-up just so I could say I did it once in the safety of my acting class. They’re all my friends, they’re supportive. My initial stand-up bit came from when I was a field host for Fox After Breakfast. That was a New York-based national morning show. I used to be one of the Road Warriors who would travel around the United States interviewing people, doing live, human-interest segments for the show. It was a phenomenal experience. It was the best job ever. I went to almost every state in the US, met interesting people doing wild things, and got to have adventures. I got to go SCUBA diving to an underwater hotel. I got to sit on top of a cable car thirteen-hundred feet aboveground with the guy who inspects the cables for safety. And I got paid to do things that nobody gets to do. It was so much fun.
However, I decided after my travels around the US that I wanted to write a book called Stupid Shit People Say to Asian Women. I know I look like this, but I was born in Virginia. The ignorance in people and the things they would say to me, I was like, “Fuck you.” That was how my act came about, dealing with people in Alabama going, “Do you speak Oriental?” or in North Dakota: “How does that dry-cleaning process actually work? I’ve always wanted to know,” or, “Can you teach me that karate?” or assuming that my vagina is on sideways—this is a myth about Asian women that I didn’t know. Basically, I’d go around the country and people would say these things to me and I’d go, “Are you joking?” That was what my material was about: playing all the different characters who would say stupid things. It went great. My teacher said, “Fantastic. Go out and do that in comedy clubs. It’s smart. You have a voice. You have a responsibility. Get it out there. You have a point of view. You have courage. You have humor. But I still would love for you to try to embrace the stereotype of Asian women that you hate so much.” I wanted to kill him: “I spent my whole life proving to everyone that I’m not this.” He said, “Exactly. You’re spending so much energy resisting it that you’re still at the effect of it. Why not embrace that as part of your artistic palette and just see what happens?” It was Earth-shattering advice. It changed my whole life.
I hated him at that moment. I thought he was wrong. I was contorting in the critique chair in the class. I wanted to kill him. I didn’t say anything but I was like, “Oh my God, what are you asking of me?” They call that an “organ rejecting class.” Somebody says something to you and you basically have an organ reject. “No. I’m sorry. That will not be accepted into my body. That’s foreign matter. Forget it.” I figure, I’m paying for the class, he’s a very wise man, I’ve always taken his suggestions in the past, why pay for a class and then not do what the teacher recommends and at least see if it’s worth something?
The only way that I could think of to approach this assignment was to work from the outside-in. I went to Koreatown the next day and I went to one of those little shops and I bought a full-length, pink hanbok—it’s a full-length, Korean, traditional dress. I bought the dress, I bought the little Korean fan, I bought the little Korean shoes. I went to my house, put it all on, and I’m standing there. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m just standing there in my house going, “Now what? What am I doing? I hate my teacher. This is stupid. I’m going to get hives. I’m going to projectile vomit.” But I was patient enough—which has never been one of my best qualities—to wait for some sort of divine inspiration. Finally, I thought, “What if she were a stand-up comedian? What if she just got here from Korea? What if she has a really thick accent? What if she’s terrible? What if she does it all wrong? What if she actually says racist, vulgar, horrific, inappropriate, offensive things, but she doesn’t realize it because she’s naïve and she just wants to do well, and she wants to come to Hollywood and make it and make people laugh and bring joy to people?” It made me realize sometimes people say things because they don’t know, and it doesn’t have to be out of malice. I don’t have to get so angry about it. It was such a healing thing for me as an artist and as a human being. Unbelievable.
And now I have turned it into my ticket to the party. I won the Andy Kaufman Award at the New York Comedy Festival. I won the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. I’m going to be on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend. Basically, I’ve had meetings at NBC and SpikeTV and Comedy Central in their talent development departments because of this character. Richard Lawson basically wants every actor to mine the gold within them. Sometimes the gold is the one thing that you are the most violently opposed to and resist. One thing he said was, “Whatever you criticize, you cannot have.” That is so true. I had such a critic in me! Now it’s become a satire of racism in America. Laughter levels the playing field. It breaks down people’s defenses and you can get your message in. You sort of sneak it in instead of bashing them over the head with it, up on a pulpit. People sometimes just shut down to that. But people don’t tend to shut down to laughter.
That’s not to say that it’s not controversial. Some people love it or they hate it, but I embrace the controversy. Some people don’t get it. Some people are convinced that I’m trying to perpetuate racism in America. Why would an Asian woman born in America who has experienced racism have the goal to perpetuate racism? Some Asian-born Asians especially don’t really understand American satire and all they know is they heard the word “gook” and that’s it. Frankly, I think we give words power by not saying them or by whispering them sometimes. The way that black people use the word—not nigger—niggah as a term of endearment sort of turns the power around. It desensitizes it for them. I’m America’s favorite gook. I sign my emails, “In gooks we trust” or “In a gooka-da-vida” or “Yours gookly.” My younger friends who look to me for advice call me their “gookru.” And now that word sounds funny to me. There’s no power in it. I don’t go “Oh, ouch!” I’m not going to remain a victim about words. What’s even funnier is that when I was a kid, people used to call me “chink” and “jap” and I’m thinking, “Hey, I’m a gook! At least get it right! I’m Korean! If you’re going to slur me, do it right!” But we don’t even get our own slur because the Vietnamese have the same one. I’m like, “Fuck! We don’t even get our own? We get a shared racial slur? That’s not right!”
What happened when you brought this character to class?
They gave me a standing ovation. They were falling off their chairs. They were hyperventilating. They were crying. I could tell, that night, from that response, that I was on to something that was going to be revolutionary and that was going to set me apart from every other stand-up comedian. It’s more like performance art. It’s a theatre piece more than strictly stand-up comedy. It still works in comedy clubs. The premise is, I have the emcee say, “Ladies and gentlemen, this next comic is brand new to the United States. It’s her first time ever doing stand-up comedy. Please be nice to her. All the way from Seoul, Korea, please give a warm, United States welcome to Sung Hee Park.” You can tell people want to sneak out the back door. They’re so uncomfortable, going, “Oh, look. Poor thing. She’s shaking. Oh, no.” There was one time I was at the Comedy Store and there was a row full of black women in the front and they kept going, “She did not say that!” They were laughing their asses off. I didn’t know if the black people were going to beat me up in the parking lot afterwards or the Hispanics or the Asians. I didn’t know if people would get it. For the most part, it’s the minorities who are the first people to run up to me and say, “Thank God! Thank you!” Political correctness can be very damaging, for us to all put a happy face on it. Mine is no different from Archie Bunker’s character in All in the Family. Norman Lear’s goal was not to increase racism in America. It was to shine a light on it, disturb people, have them laugh, have them uncomfortable, rattle them up enough to think. That excites me, about what art can do.
When did you know you wanted to become an actor?
I was always the outgoing, wild energy kid. I always sang and danced in musicals in junior high and high school and one in college. When I was seventeen, I acted in a short film that ended up on PBS and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy. It was about racism. It was one of those educational films where it was me and my Caucasian female best friend in high school. We wanted to go to the prom and I had an Asian boyfriend and she had a White boyfriend and her White boyfriend wanted to take her to the exclusive, all-White country club. There’s conflict between the two friends and it ends unresolved. It’s supposed to be shown in schools across the country and people discuss it. I think my mother’s friend in the Korean church—the church organist or something—found out about this audition and so I went and I got it. That’s basically been the story of my entire career. I just audition for it and I get it. I end up thinking, “Isn’t that what happens? You just audition and you get it.”
When you grow up with somewhat traditional Korean parents, they don’t teach you, “Why don’t you pretend for a living?” You’re raised to be very practical. Normally, it’s: Be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a professor and leave that other stuff to other people. When I left graduate school to become an actor—no, wait, I left graduate school because I hated graduate school—I got a job at a healthcare consulting firm in Boston. I ended up doing extra work on Spenser: For Hire. This is a guardian angel story. I was at my nine-to-five job, doing healthcare consulting in Boston. It was the only nine-to-five job I could ever have because, after two years, I was ready to kill somebody. I was listening to the radio and they were having a cattle call for extras on that show Spenser: For Hire with Robert Urich. I thought, “Oh, that’ll be fun. I want to do extra work!” I had had a little experience, doing that film when I was seventeen. So I took a long lunch and I stood in line with everyone and their grandmother and their dog in Boston, getting their Polaroid taken and filling out a little size card. And then a month later, Ann Baker of Ann Baker Casting called and said, “We’d like you to come and do extra work next Thursday.” I said, “Sure!” It was forty bucks I think for as many hours as they wanted. It was nonunion; bring your own lunch, that kind of thing. I didn’t care.
Well, I’m not a morning person and the calltime was, I think, 7am. I called in sick to work. I used my acting skills! And then the power went out in my apartment building the night before. My alarm clock was plugged into the wall. And I probably went to sleep at like two or three in the morning. At like seven-thirty in the morning, when the calltime was seven, the phone rings. I wake up, the woman says, “Suzanne, this is Ann Baker calling. I’m wondering if you’re planning to show up on the set this morning.” I looked at my clock radio flashing and said, “Oh, Anne, I’m so sorry. The power must’ve gone out.” The set was walking distance from where I lived so I said, “Please, please, please let me still go there. I can run there.” She said, “You’d better get here so fast!” and she hung up on me. I didn’t have time to shower. I don’t know if I was wearing underwear or shoes. I was throwing shit together and running down to the location. And of course, nothing was happening! It was hurry up and wait. There were still four hours before we shot anything. I think I probably gave her flowers the next day to apologize. I’m sure they cost more than I made that day. But while I was on the set, I was soaking everything up like a sponge: “What is all this stuff? What is everybody doing?” Taking it all in. This character actor named Arnie Cox came over to me and said, “Who are you? How come I don’t know you?” Everyone in Boston knew each other. There were like a hundred actors in Boston and they all knew each other. It was a big family. He said, “How come I haven’t seen you around?” I said, “Oh, I have a real job,” as if what he does for a living isn’t legitimate. I totally insulted him, but he didn’t care. He said, “Here’s what you should do,” and he wrote on a piece of paper and said, “You do these ten things tomorrow and you’ll be working all the time as an actor in Boston.” There were things like: Get your headshots taken, set up your resume so it looks like this, send all these things to these five casting directors in Boston, start taking acting classes, take an on-camera class. Nothing crazy or magical, but stuff that I didn’t know to do. I did those ten things and literally within a month I had quit my job, I was in SAG, I booked the first commercial I auditioned for, which was the Boston Herald, I was acting all the time. I was making my living as an actor! I don’t believe in accidents. I believe that I was manifesting that my entire life to get to that moment. So, Boston was mainly an industrial market. I did a lot of industrials. I did a lot of commercials. I did a movie called HouseSitter with Steve Martin. That was quite an experience! I became big fish in a small pond there and then I moved to New York City.
What made you choose New York and then Los Angeles?
I moved to New York City because a friend of mine, Jesse Moore, kept saying, “You have to send your headshot to Carrie Morgan in New York City. She’s at Cunningham-Escott-Dipene. And send to Carol Nadell, this casting director in New York City. You have to send your stuff.” I was on top of the world in Boston. Why would I want to do that? New York City is disgusting and it’s scary and it’s dirty and it’s crazy. He kept bugging me. So, finally, just to shut him up, I sent my pictures to both of them. Literally, I sent the pictures on a Monday and the next day, Carol Nadell called and said, “Suzanne, can you come to New York? I have a callback for an industrial. I would love for you to come in.” So, I took the Amtrak—a five-hour train ride—to New York, went to the audition, wasn’t even going to stay, and as I’m leaving the audition, she’s running after me going, “Suzanne, you booked the part. They’re not going to see anybody else. You booked it. Can you stay in New York and meet with my friend Carrie Morgan?” Of course, that’s the other person I’d sent my picture to. She called her and said, “Carrie, you have to see this Asian woman who lives in Boston!” I said, “Oh, all right.” Totally the opposite of the whole, “Please, please like me,” thing. I go and meet with Carrie Morgan and she says, “So, when are you moving to New York City?” I said, “I’m not moving to New York City!” And I thought it was normal that she walked me around and introduced me to all of the seven other agents. Apparently, that never happens. I think it was my whole attitude of, “I don’t need this. I don’t need you. I’m confident. I love my life,” that did it. So, as I’m leaving the building, she calls me on my cell phone and says, “Pack your bags. You’re moving to New York. It’s unanimous. We’re signing you. You have to move to New York City.” I ended up absolutely loving New York and having the time of my life. When I first moved to New York City, my agent told me, “If you get one out of twenty things, we would be ecstatic.” I booked eighteen of the first twenty things she sent me on. She was like, “Who are you?” My nickname was “Booker” while I lived in New York City.
New York is where I became a television host. My first one was for FX for a show called Breakfast Time. It was a two and a half hour cable morning show with Tom Bergeron and Laurie Hibberd in a big apartment. It was a ball! That led to a job on The Pet Department on FX which is all about people who have everything from hissing cockroaches to ferrets to goats as pets. They made me hold a hissing cockroach—I have a bug phobia—and I left my body. I floated up to the ceiling. It was too traumatizing, and yes, I jump out of planes. Then I did a show called Personal FX: The Collectibles Show which was about collectors. I got to travel the country interviewing people who collect things. It was so great because they’re nuts. They’re passionate and they’re nuts, which makes for great television. Then Breakfast Time turned into Fox After Breakfast. So, Fox picked up the cable show and made it a network show. Then I got a job offer in LA to host New Attitudes on Lifetime. It was a half-hour, nightly show, magazine format, good stuff for women, informative. I co-hosted that with Leanza Cornett. So then I moved to LA. I grew so attached to New York; I did not want to live in LA. I especially didn’t want to live in LA because it was so yuck! I’m an East Coast girl! Born in Virginia, went to Yale undergrad, went to Brown for my Master’s, and moved to Massachusetts, and then New York: I am an East Coast girl! Instead of having a going-away party when I moved to LA, I had a wake. Everyone had to wear black.
I’ve made a great life here, now. My career is great, my personal life is great, I have such a fantastic life here, I like the weather, I bought a house. I still don’t prefer LA. I’d rather somebody say “fuck you” to my face than act like they like me and then say “fuck you” after I’ve left the room. I really prefer not to have my time wasted. I like direct people much better. I like people who do what they say they’re going to do. I was raised that you do what you say you’re going to do, so I really appreciate that.
How does House Hunters handle your controversial alter-ego?
I always make sure that there is no morality clause in my contract so that no gig is allowed to tell me that I can’t do or say something. But the truth is, with any contract, they could fire me for whatever reason they want and not say that it’s because of my stand-up act. I’ve been doing House Hunters for five seasons. It’s the number one show on the network. It’s a whole different side of me, but it is part of me. It’s the girl-next-door, very friendly.
What advice would you give to a performer starting out?
I think that you have to be persistent. You have to work on your self-esteem and not be looking to anybody in this industry to give you self-esteem. Don’t take things personally. Sometimes you don’t get a job because you’re not the right height or you have the wrong haircolor or you remind the director of his ex-girlfriend who he hates. You can’t control that. Always give people help when they want help. Karma is a big-ass boomerang. Any inkling that anyone has to be an actor or any sort of artist, embrace it and do it. I really do believe we were put on the planet to be creative. I think one of the reasons that people get miserable and we have war is because people are not nurturing the artist and creativity within them. They feel suffocated and miserable and act out in whatever way. Drinking, whatever—everybody has their pathology. I really think there’d be a lot less pathology if people were just nurturing whatever artistic thing is in them.
If your family members or close friends think you’re stupid for doing it, then you really don’t have to communicate with them. You can set very clear boundaries and say, “That’s not okay! I’m going to get new friends that think this rocks!” Most of those people are just failed artists themselves that want to spew their bile onto you. They don’t want you to have what they are too frightened to go for. I used to call them “My 911 Friends.” They’d call me at four in the morning and go, “I’m in the emergency room! I need you to come help me! Everything’s so bad!” I used to always just jump in there and fix it for them. So, when I say, “help people,” I mean help them to do good stuff. I don’t mean enable them. Go to an Al-Anon meeting if you’re spending your life making everyone else’s problems more important than your own.
One huge thing that is changing my life is this book called Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting. I’ve bought it for everyone I know. If anyone who reads this book reads that book and has an open valve, we will change the world! I want to go out and leave copies on random people’s doorsteps. I want to say, “You don’t know me, but read this!” Also, get The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Every creative person needs those two books—and this one, of course!
This interview was conducted on February 15, 2005, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.