- Serica Initiative
- 19 hours ago
- 7 min read
This Serica Storytellers feature is written by Julia Cai, Programs & Communications Coordinator at Serica
BD Wong has the storied career across theater, TV, and film that many actors can only dream of. From his Broadway debut in award-winning play M. Butterfly, to household-name roles in the Jurassic Park franchise and Law and Order: SVU, to groundbreaking representation in I, Robot, Wong’s career has evolved him into a bona fide Asian American icon—alongside his open and unending support of nonprofit and charity organizations.
Those in the Serica Initiative community will be familiar with Wong’s support. He has featured in our award-winning program Voices Rising: What’s Next for Asian Americans in the Arts and served as host in our sellout Climate, Comedy, and Cocktails event in 2024. With a career that continues to evolve across acting, advocacy, and storytelling, Wong is now developing new projects as a writer and director. We were honored to catch up with him to reflect on his journey and the work he’s excited to pursue next.
A Character Actor’s Career in Context
Wong gained wide recognition for his portrayal of Dr. Henry Wu in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). However, the role of Dr. Wu, originally a significant supporting character in Michael Crichton’s novel, was reduced to a brief appearance in the film.
“I was very disappointed as a young actor, being given what I thought was going to be a great opportunity for an Asian American actor…to be booked on the movie for only one day, when I finally got booked,” Wong recalled. Besides appearing in only one scene, much of Dr. Wu’s role in explaining the dinosaur cloning process was instead taken over by Mr. DNA, a cartoon animation of an anthropomorphic strand of DNA with a southern drawl.
“I was feeling very, very invisible,” Wong said. Reflecting on the ongoing struggle for Asian representation across film, television, and theater, he added, “I feel like it goes in ebbs and flows.”
Wong pointed to the recurring issue of yellowface as an example of these cycles of exclusion. “There’s an ongoing and recurring conversation about what we call yellowface, which is non Asian actors playing Asian characters, that I realized—because I’ve been in the business long enough now—recurs every 10, 12, 15 years,” he said. “Someone always needs to be reminded that it’s really not cool, and that it does represent a lack of opportunities being taken away from us.”
In the spirit of artistic freedom, Wong believes many shy away from drawing firm boundaries around proper Asian representation, and therefore, leading to producers and directors to continue testing these limits again and again.
In fact, Wong has been a central witness and participant in two significant protests of yellowface in theater. When the play Miss Saigon transferred over to Broadway in 1990, protests erupted over Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce’s casting as the Engineer, a French Vietnamese character. At the time, Wong wrote public letters to protest Pryce’s casting:
“There is no doubt in my mind of the irreparable damage to my rights as an actor that would be wrought if (at the threshold of the 21st century) Asian actors are kept from bringing their unique dignity to the specifically Asian roles in Miss Saigon, and therefore to all racially specific roles in every future production which will look to the precedent Miss Saigon is about to set as a concrete model.”
More recently, the South Korea-set Broadway musical Maybe Happy Ending came under fire in August 2025 when non-Asian actor Andrew Barth Feldman was announced to be taking over the role of Oliver from Asian American actor Darren Criss. Wong responded by writing an open letter condemning the casting decision, which garnered over 2,847 signatures from fellow actors, theater artists, and supporters.
Wong wrote, “Advocating for one’s own representation is stultifyingly self-debasing. No, we don’t want to ‘get somebody fired.’ We must express, though, how painful it is to be passed over, yet how used to it we’ve become.” Criss later returned to his role on November 5, while Feldman continued to fill in during the interim. Wong expressed how the conversation around Maybe Happy Ending reflected a familiar pattern of Asian exclusion in the entertainment industry—one that he had witnessed recur from decade to decade. Still, he maintained that these conversations are a form of progress, by making available marginalized perspectives to the producers and directors in decision making positions.
Nearly twenty years after the original Jurassic Park film, Wong returned to the franchise in 2015 as Dr. Henry Wu, with a significantly expanded role across the Jurassic World trilogy. Though his character was unceremoniously abandoned in Jurassic Park, Wong recalled how the uncertainty around Dr. Wu’s fate ultimately led to his return in the sequel:
“That, ironically, opened the door many years later for the director and writer to revisit this character because he hadn’t been killed or accounted for in the melee. So that turned out to be a good thing for me, and the side effect of poor representation…A lot has happened between my involvement in those two movies, and I was able to enjoy and experience how our representation has grown."
Generations in Conversation
For Wong, his recent work in Mr. Robot represents both a deeply personal role and a meaningful step forward into nuanced representation for queer and Asian characters on the big screen. Wong played Whiterose, a transgender woman and leader of Chinese hacker group Dark Army who also masqueraded publicly as the male Zhi Zhang, the Chinese Minister of State Security.
Beyond more nuanced roles for Asian actors and performers, Wong believes the new generation of Asian American superstars indicate a broader landscape of opportunity for young entertainers.
“When I was younger, I was taught to morph my personality into anything but what it actually was. And that was part of, one, a vague idea of assimilation, and two, a survival technique. And partly what drove me to become what we call a character actor,” Wong said. “I was always somebody that liked to change shape, but part of that changing shape was escaping from the fear of the stigma of being Asian.”
Bowen Yang and Awkwafina, two prominent Asian American entertainers, have recently praised Wong for his work as an actor and activist. To Wong, their success represents a cultural shift and a new era for Asian American performers: “They are so uniquely talented and their personalities are so strong and the time is right for them to inhabit themselves fully. They don’t apologize or try to be anything but who they are. And that is super powerful to me, and encouraging to see in 2025, that people can do that and can sustain a career and be lauded and adored.”
Besides his acting work, Wong has been deeply involved in advocacy for the next generation and marginalized communities, acting as a spokesperson for LGBTQ+ youth, arts education, and Asian American representation. For Wong, the advocacy comes natural with the celebrity.
“I think wanting to be famous, or wanting to be a celebrity, is a natural part of being an actor…But at a certain point it feels a little hollow to me—like, okay, then what?” Wong recalled how as he began facing challenges as an actor related to his Asian identity, he realized the need to discuss and address these challenges.
“I realized that there was a connection between the celebrity and the ability to have a voice,” Wong said. “When you’re given even a slightly bigger mouthpiece, you gain a responsibility that goes with it, as well as finding yourself in the somewhat perilous position of having your words scrutinized or even misinterpreted. And the best way to do that in this world is to align yourself with a nonprofit organization that has a mission that you believe in, to show what you’re really about and who you really are through not only your words but through your deeds.”
Wong has been a staunch supporter of us here at the Serica Initiative, lending his voice to many of our public programs to amplify the stories of other Asian American creators and performers. Wong also spoke about his ongoing involvement with Apex for Youth, a nonprofit organization that empowers Asian American youth from low-income and immigrant backgrounds.
As Wong had mentioned in his open letter regarding Maybe Happy Ending, “All I have to placate the rage and exclusion this summons is my voice. Can it open the eyes of anyone hesitant to empathize? One can dream.”
Creating for the Future
After a career filled with successful stints on long-running series and major franchises, Wong is now turning toward more personally driven, original projects.
“For the better part of my career, I was hustling and as an actor, always trying to be chosen,” Wong said. “And then I realized sometime, that my own self-generation of my own work—my writing, my work as a director—many of which have to do with my identity as either a queer person or as an Asian American person, those things became more and more important.”
Wong shared with us two exciting projects that spoke to his identity as an Asian American actor, performer, and mentor. The first is a documentary about Asian American actors, inspired by his experience working on an all Asian show.
“The first time I worked in an all Asian show, I had such a camaraderie with the other actors—about our collective experience, our frustrations, and the racism we experience, but in a more light-hearted way,” he said. In addition to producing and directing the documentary, Wong is also co-writing and directing a musical adaptation of Mr. Holland’s Opus, which he calls “a love letter to teachers.”
For Wong, acting, advocacy, creativity, and celebrity are all owed to the efforts of a community: “Everything is—I’m learning in such a wonderful way—about collaboration and meeting new people. And I find that fascinating. Oh, I see. I’m a part of this equation, actually.”
