To promote his new movie Sorry to Bother You, actor Steven Yeun sat down with co-stars Jermaine Fowler and Armie Hammer for a couple of rounds of the WIRED Autocomplete Interview, in which they answered some of the internet's most searched questions about themselves. You might already know where this is going.
It starts off fairly trivial (i.e. "how do you pronounce steven yeun?" "where did steven yeun grow up"), but further down the list, the search questions reveal a sad truth about Yeun's career and the state of Asian representation in media: he is consistently mistaken for other Asians in movies and television. The former Walking Dead star takes the opportunity to drop some knowledge.
"We're getting to some real shit right now." Watch and learn a thing or two:
"is steven yeun in the jake from state farm commercial." I'm not even sure what commercial this is referring to, but I'm guessing it involves an Asian actor who may or may not even resemble Steven Yeun. But because there are so few Asian faces in film and television, for many clueless viewers, Yeun might be their only point of reference. "This is why we need more Asian people on the fucking screen," he declares.
"was steven yeun in raiders of the lost ark." Ditto. This is in reference to the long-held misconception that Yeun played Indiana Jones' sidekick Short Round in 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -- presumably because Yeun also wore a baseball cap in the first few season of The Walking Dead. And people can't tell Asians apart. It's not even the right Indiana Jones movie! With respect to Jonathan Ke Quan, the guy who actually played Short Round, Steven points out that he is not that old.
When in doubt, try to remember Steven Yeun's "special message": "Live your life. Be comfortable with yourself. Also, I'm not all the Asians on TV." Good to know.
