He told himself acting wasn’t fun anymore. He appears not to have fully believed it.
## Watching From the Audience
In 2018, Ke Huy Quan went to see *Crazy Rich Asians*.
The Jon M. Chu film was a cultural event — the first Hollywood studio film in 25 years with an all-Asian principal cast, based on Kevin Kwan’s bestselling novel, a romantic comedy that announced itself as both entertainment and statement. It was made for and about Asian and Asian-American people in a way that American studio films simply had not been for most of the preceding decade. It was also very successful commercially, earning more than $238 million against a $30 million budget.
Quan saw it three times in theaters. He cried each time.
The crying, he has explained in multiple interviews, was not straightforwardly joyful — or not only joyful. He was watching Asian actors on a Hollywood screen in leading roles, doing what he had always wanted to do, and the feeling was what he described as “serious FOMO.” He wanted to be up there with them. He had given up the possibility — or told himself he had — and here it was, actually happening, right in front of him.
“That movie dared me to pursue acting again,” he told an interviewer. The word “dared” is precisely chosen: it implies that the pursuit required courage, that the risk of trying and failing again was real, and that the film gave him a reason to take that risk.
He called an agent friend. He said he wanted to act. The friend agreed to represent him. About two weeks later, the agent called back about a script.