Considering James Hong’s hundreds of acting credits across his 70-year career, there’s a very high chance you’ve experienced the 95-year-old’s talent. Yet, I don’t feel like we talk about the prolific character actor’s career enough. That became abundantly clear to me after speaking to Hong about his voiceover experiences as he reprises his role in the animated Gremlins series.
CinemaBlend spoke to James Hong and Ming-Na Wen about returning for the second season of the Gremlins series, which is available to stream with a Max subscription. They both reflected on their careers as voice actors, and Ming-Na Wen shared with us how her perspective on voiceover has changed since her first experience on Mulan. Here’s what James Hong shared about his history in the vocal booth:
For me, it's a long, long journey. If I can go back a few years, if you can imagine the original black and white Godzilla, the Japanese version. I did the voices, the director/producer just called. He bought the film I think for two or $3,000 for United States rights, think of how much money he has made since. But we just sat down at a card table and he didn't even have a script. He threw the Hollywood in front of me and Sammee Tong, and he said, ‘Read this,’ and I read it in different voices. And, I thought, ‘Well, this is stupid. The guy doesn't have a script. He doesn't have anything’. He says, ‘You got the job, you come back.’
Talk about an incredible debut in voiceover acting! James Hong was an English voice in the first English-language Godzilla movie, and it sounds like he remembers it like it was yesterday. The actor has an incredible Hollywood career that began after he served in the Minnesota Army National Guard as a young man. He was asked to be in charge of the camp’s live shows instead of being deployed to Korea.
After the war, Hong moved to Los Angeles where he split his time between being a road engineer and acting in his time off. It wasn’t long before he became part of 1956's Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
As James Hong recalled, voiceover acting was a lot more casual at the time. In his words:
We didn't even see the film. He just put out the script on little sheets of paper again on a card table and said, ‘Just read this.’ And then he says, ‘A little faster, a little slower’. And that was the beginning of my voiceover career. In the original Godzilla, I did about six voices in that movie. And, from there I graduated to Mulan and Kung Fu Panda 1, 2, 3, 4, and who knows if there's a five? But that's the whole thing. I wasn't [supposed to play Mr. Ping to begin with], but got that job just as a second choice.
There’s a lot to celebrate about James Hong’s career, between his role as Mr. Ping in all the Kung Fu Panda movies to being in Big Trouble In Little China (he was one of those actors that really was everywhere in the '80s and '90s in particular) to Best Picture winner, Everything Everywhere All At Once. It’s so interesting to hear about how his first voiceover role shook out, and how he’s seen the industry change in recent years. As he continued:
It's been a journey, obviously, you know, from 70 some odd years of being in Hollywood, when Hollywood didn't have any Asian Americans playing major roles. And, now look at [Gremlins costar Ming-Na Wen]. She's beautiful, she plays major roles. She can do anything, but we were kept down, pressed down because the producers didn't want us Asians to play big roles. That's the way it was.
Hollywood has changed a lot since James Hong got his start back in the 1950s, but as he spoke to, Asian stories are getting more of a spotlight than ever. From the first Asian lead on The Bachelorette earlier this year to the commercial success of a movie like Crazy Rich Asians, Hong has seen some major growth from his early days in Hollywood. In the interview, he also said he plans to speak further on his life through a memoir.
Also, Gremlins stars a predominantly Asian cast that includes George Takei as the main villain and the talents of Simu Liu, Jimmy O. Yang, BD Wong and Izaac Wang. You can check out the first five episodes of Season 2 now on Max, with the rest of the season to come at a later date on the 2024 TV schedule.
