How Michelle Yeoh and an Epic New Role Brought GOONIES and INDIANA JONES Star Ke Huy Quan Back to Acting
Every kid growing up in the 80s was a fan of the actor Ke Huy Quan. He played the breakout character Short Round in the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and followed it with the inventor character Data in the 1985 classic Goonies. After that, we saw the actor less and less, in just a few more films and series before he retired altogether. He went on to graduate from the University of Southern California School of Cinema Television, and has stayed out of the spotlight, as he believed there just weren’t enough great roles for him out there. That is, until he was inspired by the global success of the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians, starring Michelle Yeoh. Quan got himself an agent and hoped to get back in the game.
Meanwhile, writers and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert had just finished the script for their action adventure comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once, and they were unsuccessfully looking for their leading man. Kwan told EW:
"With this character, we needed someone who could do the drama, do the comedy, [be] bilingual, maybe even trilingual, a martial artist, and then on top of that, be able to be convincingly dopey and sweet. A lot of people who do martial arts tend to skew in the other direction and so we struggled for a while."
One day, the director was scrolling through Twitter when he came across a gif of child actor Ke Huy Quan as the character Short Round in 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Kwan said:
"I started doing the math in my head. I was, like, he would be the right age. What is that guy up to? I went down a rabbit hole and found out he had quit acting because there weren't that many roles for him. So he moved on."
So Quan got his agent, and everything starts falling into place. He explainsed:
“Two weeks later, I got this call about this project that's written and directed by the Daniels and stars Michelle Yeoh. I was like, oh my God! I mean, Michelle is the reason why I'm even thinking about getting back into acting in the first place."
Director Kwan went on to add:
"He was the first person we auditioned for the role, and he became instantly our favorite. Because he is Waymond, he's a sweetheart who is just full of joy, who just wants to play, who just wants to welcome you into that energy. That's the person we imagined when we were writing this role."
Ke Huy Quan voiced his immense excitement to return to acting, especially in this role, saying:
"I can't tell you how happy I am. To have Everything Everywhere... as my comeback movie, I'm speechless. I'm really happy, and I'm really excited, and I just can't wait to see what's going to happen next."
This movie looks so exciting, and it’s so cool to see Ke Huy Quan back on the big screen. Quan and Yeoh are joined in the cast by Jenny Slate, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Harry Shum Jr., and Andy Lee. In the film, “Meet Evelyn Wang, a Chinese immigrant in her mid 50's, currently sitting through a boring and patronizing lecture from a tax office employee. Mrs. Wang has a husband, a daughter, and (what looks like) an aging father whom she cares for dearly. Buried under a pile of receipts and struggling to accurately file her taxes, Evelyn is monotonously pinned against the wall by the monsters of mundane, slow, everyday problems. That is, until she finds herself actually pinned against the wall, in a broom closet, by a version of her husband from an alternate universe.”
Check out the trailer for the movie below, and watch Everything Everywhere All At Once in limited theaters on March 25th, and released wide April 8th.