Sherry Cola on How Randall Park’s Directorial Debut ‘Shortcomings’ Puts ‘the Glasses-Wearing, Chubby, Asian Queer Girl on the Map’
06.08.2023 - 17:49
/ variety.com
Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor SPOILER ALERT: This contains spoilers from “Shortcomings,” now in theaters. Sherry Cola calls working with Randall Park in his directorial debut, “Shortcomings,” a full circle moment. Not only has she been watching the actor-director’s work for years, encountering him at parties, and having mutual acquaintances, but she had always wanted to be on MTV’s “Wild ‘N Out,’ a show Park was a regular on. “I was so impressed seeing an Asian dude representing with the rhymes and comedy,” she says that she auditioned to be a cast member.
She didn’t get the part. A few years later, she was asked to be on the team and the first person she called was Park, who told her he had been thinking about her for a role in his upcoming film. “Alice, my character in the film, is me.
Also, I play Alice on ‘Good Trouble.’ And so it was magical how it all happened,” says Cola. She adds, “Every week I hit him up to play my dad in something.” The film follows Min, a man in his ’30s who doesn’t quite have his life together. Things worsen when his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) leaves him for an internship in New York.
Cola plays his complicated best friend with relationship issues of her own. Cola talked about playing a different type of queer ending and how her final message to Justin H. Min’s character Ben in the film came about.
“Shortcomings” was so refreshing for me to express range. It was so different from “Joy Ride” because it’s sitting, talking, standing and fighting. It could not be more human when we explore these relationships of very flawed people, but we root for them.
With Alice, on top of the queerness because I identify as bisexual, the fact she was queer was so liberating. She wears glasses. She’s not a
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