A new red band trailer has been released for the upcoming movie Joy Ride. Joy Ride premiered at SXSW back in March and the reception was overwhelmingly positive. It is currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with 15 reviews, so it might come down a bit… but given everything we’ve heard so far about the movie, the quality is there – a raunchy comedy with something to say about identity and finding your place in the world, with supportive friends by your side.
A month after SXSW, the cast of Joy Ride was in Vegas to accept the Comedy Ensemble of the Year Award. That’s Ashley Park, Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola, and Sabrina Wu, four East Asian American women, headlining a comedy, and getting an award for it. We love to see it!
And we love to see Ashley Park on the call sheet in the top spot. Ashley covers the new issue of Women’s Health and she tells the magazine that when she first read the script for Joy Ride, she was only thinking that she’d be in a supporting role. Reminds me of what Sandra Oh said when she got the script for Killing Eve – she’d been so conditioned up to that point to expect that she would not be the lead. But she was the lead, and in becoming the lead she’s opened up that possibility for others to become leads themselves. What she at one time couldn’t even imagine for herself is now a reality for others, and sooner. Sandra was in her 40s when she acted for the first time as the lead in a television series. Ashley is 32 years old and she tells Women’s Health about the difference it’s made:
“You don’t have to be, like, ‘Here’s my one scene…how do I make it about this other person’s story?’”
Over time, when the only options you have to play are always in service of someone else’s story, you start to accept that your own story is secondary:
“I got to a point where I found my worth in not being the central focus,” she says. “I was still treating myself like I was a supporting character.”
Joy Ride, however, was the first step in reversing that assumption:
“I deserve to take care of myself and not just everyone else,” Ashley says. “I’m treating myself like a lead now.”
Ashley Park is in her leading lady era. And I love what she said about how she made her way there. She got her start in theatre, making her way from the ensemble to supporting parts. Then, of course, came Emily in Paris. Now she’s headlining a summer comedy.
For her, then, it wasn’t zero to a hundred – instead, for Ashley, the progress was incremental:
“I’m very proud that I’ve worked on every rung of the ladder,” Ashley says. “When you go to college, you don’t want to be a senior right away—you want to be a freshman.”
Using that analogy then, Ashley has now moved out of the freshman phase and even though Joy Ride is a huge move forward, I hope that only means she’s somewhere between sophomore and junior year – because there should be more, more leading opportunities, more parts where the story moves around her.
As for Joy Ride, what’s great about this second trailer is that it’s not just a rehash of the chaos we were shown in the first red band trailer. What I hope after seeing this second trailer though is that there’s still something left to discover. That they haven’t already shown us all the funny bits – even though what’s here is very, very, very funny. I lost it at the part where Sherry is, um, talking about sex. That’s all I’ll tell you because I don’t want to spoil the moment if you haven’t seen it yet. But this is exactly the kind of stupid f-ckery mess that I’m signing up for.
This is basically my entire chat history with Sasha, including voice notes.
Also attached – Stephanie Hsu at the Tony Awards last weekend and at the Chanel dinner this week.