John Cho’s Latest Role Took Him Back to the Life He Almost Lived

Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios8 min readOne of John Cho’s strongest childhood memories involves wearing a cowboy hat. Decades ago, just after the now 54-year-old actor had arrived from South Korea with his family, there was something called (to the best of Cho’s memory) “Western Heritage Day.” While it sounds like a bad hashtag cooked up by a far-right podcaster, the way the Harold & Kumar star describes it, it was just dress-up fun.“All the kids had to come to school in a cowboy hat and boots. And my Korean mother was like, What?” Cho tells me. “I don’t know how, but she scrambled and got us a ten-gallon hat and boots.”Years later, on the set of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Cho’s faint memory of rolling up to school all yee-haw and yee-howdy came flooding back. “When we did the fitting for Hwan, I was like, Oh, jeez. I’m doing this. This could have been me.”For close to thirty years, John Cho has been one of the most consistently interesting—and reliable—actors in Hollywood. Since his 1997 debut in the bizarre indie comedy Shopping for Fangs (co-directed by future Fast & Furious helmer Justin Lin), Cho has led a storied career in which he’s finely tuned to the spirit of whatever story he’s telling. Moviegoers first knew him in American Pie as a hormonal teenager who coined “MILF” and Frenched a photo of Jennifer Coolidge. Audiences have since seen him be serious (Searching), somber (Columbus), swoon-worthy (the short-lived Selfie), and slick with swagger (Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop). With Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Cho was determined to show off a different side to himself.In the acclaimed action-thriller by Bassam Tariq, Mahershala Ali stars as Latif, a hitman, widower, and devout Muslim desperate for breast milk to feed his infant child. Among the forces working against Latif is Hwan (Cho), a U.S. Army veteran and pastor whose ministry is armed to the teeth with Bibles and rifles—and they’re locked and loaded on Latif’s family and community.“I saw it almost as a coming-of-age action story,” Cho observes. “A father who has to grow up in the absence of his wife, and his daughter who has to grow up in the absence of her mother, and how they find one another in that grief where the stakes are as high as they could be. It is an American story. It is filled with people trying to practice their faith as honestly as they can, and it’s hard sometimes.”The chance to play a red-blooded American of Korean descent allowed the actor to imagine a life he might have had. Like Hwan, Cho lived in Houston before his family settled in Los Angeles. His father was a minister in the Church of Christ, and he encouraged John and his younger brother to assimilate into American culture to survive. Cho’s portrayal of Hwan is of an actor wearing the boots of a man he almost was. “The exercise for me was: How could I, John Cho who lived in Houston, have become that person?” he says. “All kinds of things happened that led me to where I am now, but how could I become that person? It was a fantasy for me as an actor to do all these things. I find him [Hwan] to be so psychologically interesting.”Below, Cho unloads on his latest turn as a villain for Bassam Tariq’s acclaimed festival feature, how he looks back on #StarringJohnCho ten years later, and future projects that may or may not include a long-awaited sequel to a millennial comedy classic.This interview has been edited for clarity.Take us to the beginning of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. Bassam Tariq told me before that he wanted to have you involved from the start. How did you come aboard?There were three elements. The script, the filmmaker, and Mahershala Ali. I read the script first. It made me return to my experience as a first-time father. That feeling of breast milk as the most precious resource on Earth—I was like, This is getting me to an anxious place. It was an incredibly fulfilling read. Then I watched Bassam’s first movie Mogul Mowgli, and was so impressed. Then the question was: Can I hold my own against Mahershala? I’m such an admirer of his. My fears were allayed when we met. I knew he was going to take care of me. He’s a real leader and made sure I was gonna do my best work.Was there a formal audition?We just talked. My personal malfunction is that I like to talk in abstract all the time. It frustrates people in my family. Bassam’s like that too. I was like, Okay, I have a kindred spirit. His script led us to a wide-ranging discussion. He had to take a leap with me, because I don’t think any of us knew what that character was going to be based on the script. There were blanks we had to fill in together. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but I trusted my partners to make sure everything felt okay.Talk to me about becoming Hwan. What drew him to you as an actor?One thing Bassam and I agreed on was that I didn’t want this portrayal of this right-wing preacher to be a commentary on anyone. There’s a world in which we play him as a crook or a charlatan. For this to work, I wanted to play him authentically to what he’s saying. He really believes this. I was excited to explore how someone gets there. I’ve seen so many kinds of people walking down political paths I wasn’t even aware of. I’m like, How does someone get there? I have been thinking about it in my personal life a lot, [and this movie] was a chance to explore all that.How did your childhood in Houston, raised by a minister father, help you understand Hwan and other ethnic minority conservatives?You’re right to assume, but I don’t see any crossover between Hwan’s beliefs and the Christianity I grew up with. There’s little crossover, except maybe their fervent belief that they’re doing the right thing. I knew people in the churches I grew up [who had conviction] in what they were doing. I wanted to bring that into [my performance].I’ve always known that there’s more variation in people of color than most people understand. If you watch CNN, you just see voting blocs. It’s more fractured than that. Particularly for Asian Americans, because the political situations in their home countries can inform how they lean. So it’s always been obvious to me, and I thought it was cool that it was clear to Bassam. He wanted to shine a light on it.Jaclyn MartinezJohn Cho (left) stars in the acclaimed thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, playing a conservative pastor who preaches hellfire and arms his ministry with assault rifles.I know Hwan isn’t the first time you’ve played an antagonist. I point to your guest role on How I Met Your Mother as an early indicator that—[Laughs] You’ve done research, my man.It showed your range for treachery! But after years of playing good guys, fathers, and romantic leads, what do you hope people see in you after wearing cowboy hats and preaching about God with guns?I feel privileged to have had as many shots at this as I’ve had, and to have a variety within that is really delightful to me. It’s hard to get the opportunity to do something different. I hope people appreciate it. That’s all.You said just now that you played Hwan as someone who believes so strongly in what he preaches. By the end of the film, it looks like Hwan himself doesn’t know what he believes in anymore. What’s your take on Hwan at the very end? I’m not sure what the day after is like for Hwan. I think we’ve all had this experience of having our worlds shook. Even when we receive information that what we believe is wrong, we tend to go back to what we feel comfortable. I don’t know whether Hwan was changed permanently. But he could have been. He saw something extraordinary.Ten years ago, you were the face of #StarringJohnCho. How do you look back at that moment? What do you think it did for your career and for the industry?It’s hard to understand what it did for me. It’s not like people sent me scripts. It was a clever, intelligent way to have a conversation I thought we needed to be having. Look at this poster. Why is this bizarre? Is it strange to you? Why? It’s hard to have a conversation like that these days in a way that’s not preachy. I thought it was a brilliant thing, I’m glad we had that conversation, and I’m glad to have been part of that.Do you think the conversation around representation has moved forward or has it regressed? I wonder if #StarringJohnCho could have happened now if it didn’t happen then.Back then, I thought we were past the monoculture. Looking back now, that seems so much closer to the monoculture than now. Every year, I think it’s impossible to have a big discussion, because our information diet is so much more fractured than it was six or twelve months ago. My inclination is that it’s just harder to have a single conversation with a lot of people now. But who knows? [Hashtag creator] Will Yu was someone who had digital literacy and knew how to talk to people. There’s gotta be someone around the corner who can do that. The idea is still a worthwhile one to bring up. We need the next Will Yu. Maybe we need Will Yu to answer again.Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios“I did think about what it would be like to live there now,” John Cho says about his performance of a preacher in Houston, where Cho himself lived as a child.About five years ago, you starred in Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop, a huge live-action adaptation of an influential anime. How do you feel about how that show was received? Was there ever talk of a season 2?There was talk of a season 2. I’m struggling to remember what decisions were made about the direction. But I look back on it fondly. We didn’t get season 2, but I wish we had. I felt like I got the melody down. I’d like to go off melody and play with it a little more. I wish we could have done that. We came at it, from a very venerant place. We really liked and respected the material, and we tried to honor that as best we could. I don’t have regrets except that we didn’t get to do more.More recently, you debuted on Korean television in the series Tempest last year. After a long career as a Korean-American in Hollywood, what culture shock did you experience working as a Hollywood actor in Korea?I was so curious what that experience would be like. I, selfishly, just wanted to know what that was, and if that was a real path to doing stuff [there]. There are differences that are significant, but the commonalities outweigh the differences. It’s mostly linguistic and cultural stuff. The talent level is so high. I’m optimistic we’ll see more of these co-productions. And personally, having been born in Korea, it was cool. I brought my family. We spent the summer, and it deepened the experience.Your next project is something called The Off Weeks. What can you tell me about it?It’s an Apple TV series. It stars Jessica Chastain, Ben Stiller, and Richard Gere. It’s a mystery, a comedy, a thriller. The attraction for me was to work with that cast, and I’m excited for you to see it. It’s bananas. I worked with all those actors, and they were all very different and all thrilling.It’s been a long time since audiences have seen Harold and Kumar. I know a continuation has been thrown around for a long time. What’s the latest word?There are people who are trying to give the people what they want. We’ll see if we can do it. It might be a good thing to make a Harold & Kumar 4. That’s all I’ll say.