Let us now have a summary of Hong Chau’s night at the Golden Globes, shall we?
She was nominated for her role in Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, which is kind of notable on its own, because the movie is…not considered to be that great. As in 51% ‘Rotten’ on Rotten Tomatoes. But her performance is considered a breakout – even though some critics thought the accent she used was stereotypical, even though it was based on her own parents, something we discussed a few weeks ago on the #ShowYourWork podcast.
So she arrived on the carpet – by all accounts under-covered. She was, however, pictured on one of the photo agencies.
Or at least, someone was:
This woman isn’t Hong Chau.
This is Hong Chau.
The mislabeled person has been since been unlabelled, but there’s still room for someone to print that photo with her name on it.
Then, as previously mentioned, she got to do one of the punchlines in the ‘Jokes Seth Can’t Say’ segment… except that while Seth does the setup, telling us that only 5% of speaking roles in Hollywood are played by Asian actors, Hong Chau gets the tiredest punchline of them all. “But the numbers might be off, since a white person did the math.”
Right. That’s a fresh new idea.
Then of course, she didn’t win. But nobody expected her to, because her category was stacked, because Allison Janney. She probably had that ‘I just get to enjoy the show’ thing going on.
And she looked fantastic, and her agent’s phone will be ringing off the hook tomorrow. I’m not saying it wasn’t a net positive night, but… seriously, for her first time out, it’s an honour just to be in the room (and as Twitter pointed out, not having to play a punchline to Ted “How I Met Your Mother” Mosby.) Not to be the focus for less-than-great reasons. I can be happy she was there and still wish it didn’t go down like this.
