The stars of the Kim’s Convenience are speaking out following the series’ cancellation, revealing the show’s “painful” lack of diversity and “overtly racist” storylines.
Actor Simu Liu, who will star in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, was the first to open up about the CBC/Netflix comedy, which revolves around a Korean Canadian family that runs a convenience store in Toronto.
In a now-deleted Facebook post, Liu claimed that there was chaos behind the scenes, that the actors’ creative input was ignored, the cast was underpaid, and that the production and writing team lacked diversity.
Liu wrote,
“It was always my understanding that the lead actors were the stewards of character and would grow to have more creative insight as the show went on.
This was not the case on our show, which was doubly confusing because our producers were overwhelmingly white and we were a cast of Asian Canadians who had a plethora of lived experiences to draw from and offer to writers.”
The series was created by Ins Choi and Kevin White and based on Choi’s stage play. But Liu claimed that Choi did not offer proper support.
“Aside from Ins [Choi], there were no other Korean voices in the room.
And personally, I do not think he did enough to be a champion for those voices (including ours). When he left (without so much as a goodbye note to the cast), he left no protégé, no padawan learner, no Korean talent that could have replaced him.”
Following an article that blasted Liu for being “bitter,” actress Jean Yoon, who also starred in the sitcom as the mother, shared her experiences on the show.
“As an Asian Canadian woman, a Korean-Canadian woman w more experience and knowledge of the world of my characters, the lack of Asian female, especially Korean writers in the writers room of Kims made my life VERY DIFFICULT & the experience of working on the show painful.”
Yoon went on to claim that White “set the parameters” for the show and that many of the storylines in the draft scripts for Season 5 were “overtly racist” and
“extremely culturally inaccurate.”
Kim’s Convenience was canceled in March following Choi and White’s departure. The fifth and final season is currently airing on Netflix.
(via TV Insider)
