Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Babs Olusanmokun is having an incredible year. After returning to the “Dune” franchise as Jamis in “Dune: Part Two,” the actor will next be seen in Guy Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”, which opens in theaters on April 19. The Nigerian American actor is also a cast member of the “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” series, portraying Dr. Joseph M’Benga.
“I have filmed most in New York. The good is that New York is really its own character and that can change the shape of a project in such a beautiful way,” said “This is Me…Now” actress Ashley Versher. “But as for the bad, I mean it’s New York, so wild things can happen at any moment of the day.”
SUBSTACK is the space where I curate my reviews and views about Korean-centric things happening in the pop culture realm (and beyond) that pique my interest…and I hope yours, too.
“My parents escaped Vietnam on a boat after the war ended in 1975 and they came to the United States as refugees,” said coffee entrepreneur Sahra Nguyen. “I was born and raised in Boston … surrounded by lots of immigrant families from the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico. I attended the Boston public school system, which was as diverse as the city of Boston. Having a lot of exposure to diverse cultures at a young age helped shape my love for culture and community.”
One of the strangest things about Korean celebrity culture is the number of famous people who are essentially forced to issue apologies for doing normal, everyday things (that their detractors themselves are probably doing).
“At eight years of age, it was an easy transition [to the U.S.],” said “Squid Game: The Challenge” winner Mai Whelan. “The hardest was learning English, because there are so many tenses. In Vietnamese, we have general, formal and no tenses.”
“I didn’t feel comfortable writing in Cree before, but as I’ve become more comfortable with writing songs and making music, now it feels like more of a natural fit,” said “Precious Diamonds” musician Adrian Sutherland. “I’m pleased with how the songs turned out.”
“I knew that I had to have a comeback eventually, because I had promised my fans that I would,” says the adventurous K-pop star Chung Ha. “This is what I love to do”
In the Academy Award-nominated film “Past Lives,” the Korean concept of inyeon is used to lead viewers into believing that Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae-sung (Teo Yoo) are destined to be together – if not in this lifetime, then in the future. Or perhaps they were together in a distant past that neither can recall. The introduction of the word leaves moviegoers hoping that these two can have a happily-ever-after ending, despite his living in Seoul, 7,000 miles from her apartment in New York City.
“It’s always interesting to me the weight that [some Asian Americans] carry around from not having grown up with people who look like them,” said “Quantum Leap” star Raymond Lee. “I was fortunate enough to grow up in Koreatown and Glendale, where our star quarterback was Asian and the smartest three students in our class were Asian.”