‘Always Be My Maybe’: Asian excellence and the revolutionary rom com

Even before it premiered on Netflix, Ali Wong and Randall Park’s latest romantic comedy has been hailed for highlighting Asian talent. Here’s why.

Representation is a tough topic in the entertainment industry — Hollywood, most especially. For a country that is considered a melting pot of cultures, American cinema and television has always been decidedly white and male. It’s been this way for the longest time, and only recently have people truly realized that having a token black guy in a buddy cop movie wasn’t enough to say, “Hey, we’re totally diverse y’all.” The struggle to break into showbiz — despite race, gender, color, or creed — is still real. (Surprise, there are still sexists out here!) But more voices are being heard, and people are beginning to understand the importance of having different people on- and offscreen. Because everyone wants their stories to be heard, and there are people out there who actually want to listen.

As for myself, seeing versions of me (and who I wanted to become) became such an empowering experience — even more than I thought it would be. (I mean, I’m not a particularly emotional person, so it was a shock, so to say.) I was a young girl who grew up reading Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and re-watching Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail. My (light, funny, cute) histrionics, whether on paper or in real life, were often compared to Hannah Horvath on Girls. (And it was not a compliment? How dare they.) These have certainly been influential to me, as a woman and as a writer, but there have been such few examples of women of color that have managed to break into the scene and show us that hey — there are some damn funny gals you’ve been totally ignoring.

Gal pals: Michelle Buteau and Ali Wong play co-workers turned friends in Always Be My Maybe.

Writer, comedian and actress Ali Wong had been one of those people for me. (It’s a longer list than you think, but I will leave that out for the sake of time and space.) Ali Wong first came to my attention in the Netflix special Baby Cobra, in which Wong does stand-up while being fully pregnant. I distinctly remember feeling like a light had lit up inside me: there she was, unapologetic about herself, talking about topics that would make aunties blush to their toes. And she was funny. She was really funny.

I learned that apart from doing stand-up, Wong is credited as one of the writers of Fresh off the Boat, a ‘90s-set sitcom that tells the story of a Taiwanese-American family living in Orlando, Florida. It’s a show that broke its own barriers: an all-Asian leading cast, created by Khan. Randall Park, who’s been in countless movies and TV shows — such as Ant-Man and the Wasp, HBO’s Veep, and of course Kim Jong Un in the controversial The Dictator — plays Louis Huang, the family patriarch on the show.

FOTB bears mentioning because Wong, Khan and Park are the brains behind Netflix’s newest romantic comedy offering Always Be My Maybe. Wong and Park play childhood friends Sasha and Marcus respectively, who have grown apart. Sasha has become a celebrity chef, inspired by Marcus’ mom’s cooking; Marcus, on the other hand, has remained at home to work in his dad’s modest business — while still playing in the same band from his youth. A chance encounter brings them back in each other’s lives, but things don’t go as smoothly as they thought it would be.

I got to watch the premiere last May 22 at the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles and the tears in my eyes were both from a mixture of too much laughter and just enough drama. Wong and Park play their roles perfectly — Sasha, a slightly neurotic overachiever who obsesses over the perfect life; and Marcus, a lovable slacker with a penchant for smoking pot.

The two leads actually wrote the script themselves, along with Michael Golamco, who is half-Filipino. The three met at a theater company in UCLA, and the story touches on their shared experiences of being third-culture kids. It’s also loosely based on their lives and their friendship — Park really did have a band back in the day, and Ali did grow up in San Francisco. It was that collaborative experience that they believe really added to the film’s overall magic, according to Wong during our interview in LA.

Rock star: Randall Park's character Marcus plays vocals and keyboard in a band, much like himself when he was younger.

 “[With stand-up], it’s all on me, and I’m writing every single joke and word, and no one’s gonna care about what goes onstage as much as me. This, we all care very deeply, we’re all very invested,” Wong says.

“We’re all very supported. There’s someone who dresses me, there’s someone who brings, you know, different shoes for my feet. I don’t even think I buckled any of my own sandals,” she continues. “It takes a village, and sometimes people don’t like that, because it’s like, you lose creative control. But for me, when you have that trust, and that admiration and respect for each other, it’s really quite a joy and a relief to collaborate.”

That perhaps is what adds even more value to the film in its entirety, that the collaboration did not just involved the talents of Khan, Wong, Park and Golamco – the rest of the cast, as far as movie viewers are concerned, are pretty damn excellent. No one is a token — not even Keanu Reeves in a refreshing cameo — and every relationship in the film adds value to the entire story, whether it be an emotional connection or a brief but campy moment. It’s a strong testament to how important it is to empower good storytellers, not just for their skin color, but for their ability to contribute a fresh narrative.

Always Be My Maybe talks about love and relationships in the context of the Asian-American experience — not as a catch-all for the entire Asian experience, but as a specific tale of how second- third-generation immigrants are living out their own dreams, but also defining their own versions of success.

Wong was right — it takes a village. And Always Be My Maybe is not just the success of one person, but a conscious effort to bring talent and narrative together in a funny and intelligent way. It doesn’t explicitly make a case for why representation in the media matters, but it simply stands on its own — a statement it and of itself. Asian people are goddamn funny. Deal with it, then please pass the popcorn and the plastic-covered remote control.

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Always Be Maybe is now streaming on Netflix.