star trek asian dude

George Takei

Who Is George Takei?

George Takei overcame the racial barriers of his time to launch a successful acting career. He starred as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu during the three-year television run of Star Trek , and later reprised the role for six movies. Prominently involved with gay rights and Japanese American groups, Takei has become a highly popular social-media presence.

Early Years

George Hosato Takei was born on April 20, 1937, in Los Angeles, California. At the age of 5, he and his family were uprooted from their home and forced to live at Japanese internment camps in Arkansas and northern California. They returned to Los Angeles after World War II, and Takei enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley to study architecture.

Stage and Screen

While in college, Takei responded to a newspaper ad looking for Asian voiceover actors for the English version of the Japanese monster movie Rodan (1956). That led to more voiceover work, as well as small parts in television programs such as Perry Mason and the film Ice Palace (1960). Deciding to focus on acting full time, Takei transferred to the University of California Los Angeles, where he earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in theater.

In 1966, Takei became one of the few Asian Americans to be featured prominently on TV when he starred as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu on the science-fiction series Star Trek. He returned after taking time off during the second season to film The Green Berets (1968), but his role as Sulu was temporarily shelved when Star Trek was canceled in 1969.

Takei continued to make regular TV appearances in the 1970s, on such programs as The Six Million Dollar Man and Hawaii Five-O , while providing the voice of Sulu for the Star Trek animated series. Momentum gathered for the making of the movie, and Takei reunited with the rest of his old castmates for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and five sequels over the next dozen years.

Takei was involved in a project close to his heart when he took on a starring role in Allegiance , a production about the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. The play premiered at San Diego's Old Globe Theater in September 2012.

Public Service and Private Revelations

Takei has remained a busy man away from show business. After narrowly losing his bid for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council in 1973, he joined the board of directors for the Southern California Transit District from 1973 to 1984.

Takei served on the board of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission for President Bill Clinton and was conferred with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by His Majesty the Emperor of Japan in 2004. He is also chairman emeritus of the Japanese American National Museum's board of trustees and serves as chair of the council of governors of East West Players, a renowned Asian-American theater organization.

In 2005, Takei publicly announced his homosexuality to Frontiers magazine. He married his longtime partner, Brad Altman, in September 2008.

In recent years, Takei has earned a following from a new generation of fans with his funny, incisive posts on Facebook. His expansive social-media presence, along with the 2013 release of Star Trek Into Darkness , has helped keep this accomplished actor and activist in the public eye.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: George Takei
• Birth Year: 1937
• Birth date: April 20, 1937
• Birth State: California
• Birth City: Los Angeles
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Japanese American actor George Takei played Lieutenant Sulu in the original 'Star Trek' television series and movies and is a popular social-media presence.
• Writing and Publishing
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• University of California at Berkeley
• Cultural Associations
• Asian American

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: George Takei Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/actors/george-takei
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 30, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• Since I was a little boy, I was a ham. And there's a ham in everybody. Some of us are just better cured than others.

Famous Actors

Lily Gladstone

Riley Keough

Maya Rudolph

Anthony Hopkins

Jamie Lee Curtis

Timothée Chalamet

Anya Taylor-Joy

Cillian Murphy

Olivia Munn

George Takei

• Born April 20 , 1937 · Los Angeles, California, USA
• Birth name Hosato Takei
• Uncle George
• Height 5′ 8″ (1.73 m)
• George Takei was born Hosato Takei in Los Angeles, California. His mother was born in Sacramento to Japanese parents & his father was born in Japan. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he & his family were relocated from Los Angeles to the Rohwer Relocation Center in Arkansas. Later, they were moved to a camp at Tule Lake in Northern California. His first-hand knowledge of the unjust internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans in World War II, poignantly chronicled in his autobiography, created a lifelong interest in politics & community affairs. After graduating from Los Angeles High School in 1956, he studied architecture at UC Berkeley. An ad in a Japanese community paper led to a summer job on the MGM lot where he dubbed 8 characters from Japanese into English for Rodan (1956) . Bitten by the acting bug, he transferred to UCLA as a theater arts major. Contacting an agent he had met at MGM led to his appearance as an embittered soldier in postwar Japan in the Playhouse 90 (1956) production. Being spotted in a UCLA theater production by a Warner Bros. casting director led to his feature film debut in Ice Palace (1960) , various roles in Hawaiian Eye (1959) &other feature work. In June 1960, he completed his degree at UCLA and studied at the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-Upon-Avon in England that summer. After starting a master's degree program at UCLA, he was cast in the socially relevant stage musical production Fly Blackbird! but was replaced when the show moved to New York. He took odd jobs until returning to his role at the end of the run. Getting little work in Manhattan, he returned to Los Angeles to continue his studies, once again appearing in TV & films. He earned his master's in 1964. Wanting a multi-racial crew, Gene Roddenberry cast him in Where No Man Has Gone Before, the second Star Trek (1966) pilot. Mr. Sulu remained a regular character when the series went into production. In the hiatus after the end of shooting the first season, he worked on The Green Berets (1968) , playing a South Vietnamese Special Forces officer. After Star Trek (1966) was canceled, he did guest stints in several TV shows, voiced Sulu for the animated Star Trek series & regularly appeared at Star Trek conventions. He also produced & hosted a public affairs show Expression East/West, which aired in Los Angeles from 1971-1973. That year, he ran for the L.A. City Council. Although he lost by a small margin, Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to the board of directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, where he served until 1984 & contributed to plans for the subway. During this period, he co-wrote a sci-fi novel Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe. He campaigned to get more respect for his character in the Star Trek features, resulting in Sulu finally obtaining the rank of captain in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) , a role reprised in the Star Trek: Voyager (1995) episode Flashback. He has run several marathons and was in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Torch Relay. He received a star on Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame in 1986. He also left his signature & hand print in cement at the Chinese Theater in 1991. His 1994 autobiography, To the Stars, was well-received. He remains active as a stage, TV & film actor as well as as an advocate for the interests of Japanese Americans. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Brian Greenhalgh
• Spouse Brad Takei (September 14, 2008 - present)
• Parents Takekuma Norman Takei Fumiko Emily Takei
• Deep smooth voice
• Catchphrase: "Oh my!"
• Unique clipped manner of speaking
• During World War II, Takei lived with his family in several government internment camps for people of Japanese ancestry. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the applicable Executive Order No. 9066, on February 19th 1942. In December 1944, President Roosevelt suspended Executive Order 9066. Incarcerees were released, often to resettlement facilities and temporary housing, and the camps were shut down by 1946. Ironically, George shares a birthday with Adolf Hitler ; he was born on Hitler's 48th birthday so he was still alive.
• When he met with Gene Roddenberry about a role on Star Trek (1966) , Roddenberry called him Takei (pronouncing it "Ta-KAI"), which translates from the Japanese as "expensive" or "tall" (his name is actually pronounced "Ta-KAY", which rhymes with "okay"). This is how Roddenberry remembered his name.
• Has initially objected to the scene in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) where the tall Starfleet guard calls him "tiny". When the scene was screened for audiences, the audiences cheered Sulu (Takei) when he defeated the tall guard, and Takei later apologized to writer Harve Bennett for it.
• His family was incarcerated at an internment camp in Arkansas when he was 4 to 8 years old. He learned to recite the Pledge of Allegiance while surrounded by guard towers and barbed-wire fences.
• At the University of California, Los Angeles, he and classmate Francis Ford Coppola made a student film together called "Christopher".
• [on William Shatner ]: He's just a wonderful actor who created a singular character. No one could have done Kirk the way Bill did. His energy and his determination, that's Bill. And that's also Captain Kirk.
• (2005) The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay. The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young.
• [during a 2006 interview with Scott Simon on National Public Radio] I went to school in a black tar-paper barrack [as a child in internment camps] and began the day seeing the barbed-wire fence, and thank god those barbed-wire fences are now long gone for Japanese Americans. But I still see an invisible, legalistic barbed-wire that keeps me, my partner of 19 years, Brad Altman, and another group of Americans separated from a normal life. That's what I've been advocating on the Human Rights Campaign Equality Tour--I call it the "Equality Trek".
• [on the Occupy Wall Street movement] The struggle is not only social, economic and political - it is *structural*. No matter what side you are on, it is worth listening to what they have to say.
• John D.F. Black who wrote The Naked Time (1966) came to me and said he was thinking of having Sulu use a Samurai sword. I told him, "It certainly is ethnically appropriate because I am of Japanese ancestry but what about a rapier? I was born in this country and when I was a kid I didn't play Samurai. I played Robin Hood." He asked me if I know how to fence to which I replied, "Of course." That night I grabbed the phonebook and was furiously trying to find fencing schools so I could learn at least the basics.

Contribute to this page

• Learn more about contributing

More from this person

• View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro

More to explore

Recently viewed

• Film performers
• VOY performers
• ST performers
• LD performers
• Audiobook performers
• Star Trek reference authors
• Video game performers
• Engage guests

George Takei

• View history

George Hosato Takei ( born 20 April 1937 ; age 87), pronounced "Ta-Kay", is a Japanese-American actor best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the Star Trek franchise.

He debuted as Sulu in the Star Trek: The Original Series first season episode " Where No Man Has Gone Before ", with his character making the transition from the physics department to the helm by the next episode, " The Corbomite Maneuver ". In total, he appeared in 51 of the 79 original series episodes.

He later voiced Sulu in Star Trek: The Animated Series and displayed his vocal talents playing other guest characters. He then reprised the role in the first six Star Trek motion pictures , and the Star Trek: Voyager third season episode " Flashback ". His image also appeared in Star Trek Generations in a photograph in Kirk's cabin in the Nexus and again more prominently in Star Trek Beyond in a photograph that was among Spock 's possessions bequeathed to his alternate reality counterpart .

He has both narrated and recorded dialogue as Sulu in numerous audio novels and interactive games . Due to the fact that Sulu did not appear in the episode " The Trouble with Tribbles " (he was filming The Green Berets at the time), Takei was the only Original Series star not to appear in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 30th anniversary episode " Trials and Tribble-ations ". He did, however, appear as Captain Sulu in Star Trek: Voyager 's 30th anniversary episode, " Flashback ".

Takei most recently played Sulu in an episode of the fan films Star Trek: New Voyages entitled "World Enough and Time", which premiered in 2007 and featured fellow Trek performers Grace Lee Whitney , Majel Barrett Roddenberry , James Cawley , Jeffery Quinn , and John Carrigan . The episode was directed by Marc Scott Zicree and written by Zicree and Michael Reaves . Stuntman Tom Morga worked as fencing coach for Takei while stunt coordinator Leslie Hoffman served as his personal assistant.

Issue 356 of Starburst Magazine stated that Takei would be appearing in 2009 's Star Trek , directed and produced by J.J. Abrams . The magazine claimed that Takei would be featured in a "flash forward sequence" with Leonard Nimoy . [1] (X) TrekMovie.com subsequently confirmed this to be false. [2]

• 2 Early career
• 3 After Star Trek
• 4 Politics and activism
• 5 Awards and honors
• 6.1 Appearances as Sulu
• 6.2 Other characters
• 6.3 Other media
• 7.3 Web publishings
• 8 External links

Personal [ ]

Takei was born in Los Angeles, California, on 20 April 1937. According to Takei on the 9 January 2006 airing of The Howard Stern Show , he was named after King George VI, who had just become king of the United Kingdom.

In 1942, Takei and his family were interned by the United States at the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas, along with many other Japanese-Americans. They were later sent to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California and returned to Los Angeles after World War II. Takei discussed this experience in a 1996 interview, stating:

Takei was educated at Mount Vernon Junior High School (where he served as student body president) and Los Angeles High School. He attended the University of California in Berkeley but transferred to the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), where he began studying theater. He earned a bachelor of arts in theater from UCLA in 1960, followed by a master of arts in theater four years later. After attending the Shakespeare Institute in England and the Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, he returned to the States where he studied acting at the Desilu Workshop.

Takei has been with his husband, Brad Altman, since 1988, having met at a gay and lesbian running and walking club. On 28 October 2005, Takei decided to publicly "come out of the closet" as gay, though this had been open information for some time. The story was widely reported in the media and was hailed by LGBT communities as a positive step for the larger gay community as well as for Star Trek .

Takei and Altman currently reside in Los Angeles, California. In 2008, following the California Supreme Court's decision to overturn a ruling which banned same-sex marriages in the state, Takei announced that he and Altman were engaged to be married. [4] [5] [6] Takei and Altman married in the Democracy Forum at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California on 14 September 2008 . Takei's TOS co-stars Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols were Takei's best man and "best lady", respectively. [7] Leonard Nimoy and his wife, Susan Bay , were among the invited guests. [8] Takei claimed to have invited his co-star William Shatner , for whom he'd had bitter feelings for years. Shatner remarked that he never received an invitation and lashed out at Takei, calling him a "poor man" and accusing him of having a "psychosis". The two have been feuding in the press since. [9] [10] [11]

In 2017, Takei was accused of sexually assaulting model Scott R. Brunton in 1981. [12] A year later, Brunton recanted his story. [13]

Early career [ ]

Takei's show business career began when he answered a newspaper advertisement for voice casting in 1957 and was hired to dub Japanese dialogue for the "monster movie" Rodan into English. He voiced eight different characters in the film. Shortly thereafter, he did voice dubbing for another Japanese monster movie, Gigantis the Fire Monster (also known as Godzilla Raids Again ).

Two years later, Takei made his acting debut on live television, appearing in an episode of Playhouse 90 with Dean Stockwell , which was followed by an appearance on Perry Mason . That same year, he acted in his first film, the drama Ice Palace . He soon after made an uncredited appearance in the war film Never So Few (which also featured Whit Bissell and John Hoyt ), although this film was actually released a month before Ice Palace . This was followed with a role in Hell to Eternity , a film starring Jeffrey Hunter , the man originally destined to play the captain of the Enterprise on Star Trek .

Takei went on to appear in the films A Majority of One (1961, with Madlyn Rhue ), PT 109 (starring James Gregory ), and Morituri (with Roy Jenson ). He had supporting roles in 1965's Red Line 7000 (co-starring Marianna Hill ) and 1966's Walk Don't Run (starring Samantha Eggar , with an appearance by Miko Mayama ) and An American Dream , as well as uncredited roles in the 1966 Matt Helm caper Murderers' Row (with James Gregory) and Jerry Lewis' 1967 comedy The Big Mouth .

In addition, he made guest appearances on numerous television programs, including The Twilight Zone , Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea , My Three Sons , I Spy (including an episode with John Abbott and Roger C. Carmel ), Felony Squad (with Ricardo Montalban ) and Mission: Impossible (with Eddie Paskey and Barry Russo ). It was around this time that Takei was cast as Sulu for the original Star Trek series.

Takei took leave from Star Trek to film a supporting role in the popular Vietnam War film The Green Berets . The filming of that movie, however, went over schedule and Takei was forced to miss work on a number of Star Trek episodes in the second season – most notably "The Trouble with Tribbles," in which Sulu was to have a "substantial role." His lines in the episode were given to Walter Koenig , the actor playing Pavel Chekov . [14] (X)

After Star Trek [ ]

Following Star Trek 's cancellation in 1969 , Takei appeared in another Jerry Lewis comedy, Which Way to the Front? , released in 1970. He appeared on a number of television shows, as well, including Ironside , Kung Fu , Baa Baa Black Sheep (starring John Larroquette and James Whitmore, Jr. ), an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man (with France Nuyen and Alan Oppenheimer ), an episode of Hawaii Five-O (with John Colicos ), and an episode of Hallmark Hall of Fame with ( Adrienne Barbeau ). In 1979, he and his fellow Star Trek castmates brought their characters to the big screen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture .

In 2004, he was in the commentary booth to record commentary alongside the cast of Invader ZIM ; the episode with his commentary is the first one, The Nightmare Begins .

Takei would go on to star in five more Star Trek films. His other credits throughout the years include guest spots on MacGyver (in an episode co-produced and co-written by Stephen Kandel ), Murder, She Wrote , Miami Vice , Kung Fu: The Legend Continues , and 3rd Rock from the Sun ("I'm George Takei, dammit!"). He also starred in films like Return from the River Kwai , Prisoners of the Sun (co-starring Terry O'Quinn ), Live by the Fist , and the science fiction westerns Oblivion , and Oblivion 2: Backlash . The latter two films – in which Takei plays the role of "Doc Valentine" – also stars the likes of Meg Foster , Julie Newmar , Jimmie F. Skaggs , Carel Struycken , and Musetta Vander . The 1998 B-grade movie Bug Buster featured both Takei and his former Star Trek co-star James Doohan , but the two did not share any scenes together.

Takei's more recent acting work includes the 2003 TV movie DC 9/11: Time of Crisis (co-starring fellow Trek alumni Gregory Itzin , Penny Johnson , Stephen Macht , Lawrence Pressman , and Allan G. Royal ) and the 2006 direct-to-DVD release A.I. Assault (co-starring Michael Dorn , Lisa LoCicero , Bill Mumy , Robert Picardo , and Terrell Tilford ), as well as guest spots on shows like The Young and the Restless , Will & Grace , and Scrubs . He also participated in the short film Roddenberry on Patrol , a comic look at Gene Roddenberry 's creation of Star Trek directed by Tim Russ and co-starring Russ, Robert Beltran , Richard Herd , Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols , Robert O'Reilly , Ethan Phillips , and Robert Picardo. He was also in the 2009 comedy movie The Pool Boys , which co-starred Enterprise regular John Billingsley .

In addition, Takei, known for his deep, low voice, has done voice-overs for a number of animated productions and video games. For Disney, he voiced the "First Ancestor" in 1998's Mulan (also featuring the voices of Miguel Ferrer and Frank Welker ), a role Takei would reprise in the 2005 direct-to-video sequel. Takei also provided the voice of Master Sensei in the Disney Channel series Kim Possible . Ricardo Montalban also had a recurring role on the series, and other Trek performers who appeared in the same episodes as Takei included John Cho and Clancy Brown . In 2009, Takei also voiced " Lok Durd " in two episodes of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series , becoming the first main Star Trek cast member to participate in a Star Wars television show production [15] ( Charles Rocket had previously been a Trek guest star who later did voice-overs for a Star Wars videogame spin-off).

Takei in Bender's Game

Takei has also supplied voice-overs for Hey, Arnold! , Batman Beyond (with Sherman Howard ), The Brak Show , the video game Freelancer , various episodes of The Simpsons , and Avatar: The Last Airbender , among many other projects. Perhaps most notably, Takei and many of his Star Trek castmates voiced parodies of themselves in the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" . Takei also appeared in the direct-to-DVD Futurama movie, Bender's Game , and in the 2010 Futurama episode "Proposition Infinity", in which he served as a moderator in a debate on the aforementioned proposition which would legalize robosexual (humanoid/robot) marriages.

On 9 January 2006, Takei was named the official announcer of Sirius Satellite Radio's The Howard Stern Show . He has been a semi-regular on the show ever since. In addition, Takei has served as guest narrator for several symphony orchestras, the most recent being the Seattle Symphony Orchestra's Sci-Fi Favorites concert in September 2007.

Takei had a recurring role on the NBC series Heroes , playing Kaito Nakamura , the father of time-traveling Trekkie Hiro Nakamura. As an in-joke , Kaito's car's license plate is NCC-1701 . Among the other Star Trek actors who performed in the series are Joanna Cassidy , Michael Dorn , Greg Grunberg , Dominic Keating , Malcolm McDowell , Zachary Quinto , and Cristine Rose ; Takei's Star Trek co-star Nichelle Nichols appeared in the show's second season. He concurrently met fellow Japanese-American performer Tamlyn Tomita on the set who played Kaito's daughter Ishi . With Tomita, Takei had a personal connection as her father had been one of the internees of the Manzanar internment camp during World War II and whose plight became a prime motivator for Takei's social engagement activism in later live, having been one himself. Tomita went on to guest star in Star Trek: Picard .

John Cho and Takei

On April 08, 2008 George appeared on Secret Talents of the Stars , a celebrity talent competition series which lasted for one episode on CBS . On the show, he publicly expressed his hidden, "secret" interest and talent in country singing, going on to train with Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry, whom he found out are both Star Trek fans. Takei then performed on the show.

Also in early April, Takei filmed a "last minute cameo" for the Adam Sandler comedy You Don't Mess with the Zohan . He also plays a "snooty maître d'" in the comedy American Summer , from the producer of the American Pie films. [16] In addition, he recently co-starred with John Savage in the action film The Red Canvas .

Takei appeared in the 2008 video game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 . In the first episode of the game show Wanna Bet? (broadcast 21 July 2008), Takei won $106,150 for his charity: The Japanese American National Museum. He was also a contestant in the 2008 series of I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here .

Takei's most recent film roles are in the Tom Hanks starred and directed comedy Larry Crowne teamed with Margot Farley and Holmes R. Osborne and the drama Strange Fame:Love & Sax with Michael Dorn and Ron Glass . In September 2010, Takei performed in a benefit for the Washington Shakespeare Company, in which excerpts from Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing were performed in Klingon . [17]

The science fiction icons lamenting being typecast

In the same year Takei also appeared in the "The Hot Troll Deviation" episode of CBS' popular, heavily Star Trek referencing, sitcom The Big Bang Theory as a figment of the imagination of lead character Howard Wolowitz, trying to give him romantic advise. Dressed in his Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home outfit he appears alongside the equally imaginary actress Katee Sackhoff , likewise clad in her Battlestar Galactica outfit, trying to do the same. Sackhoff starts bickering with Takei, questioning his credentials to give Wolowitz romantic advice, while poking fun at Takei's homosexuality. Both however, are also lamenting and exchanging notes on being typecast as their science fiction alter egos Starbuck and Sulu respectively, with Takei complaining that while he had done stage plays by Strindberg and O'Neill , all people want to hear is " Course laid in, captain! ". Takei was the first Original Series regular to make an appearance on the popular show and was later followed by Leonard Nimoy as voice actor, with William Shatner following suit in the final season of the series.

Takei was one of the contestants on the seventh season of Celebrity Apprentice, appearing in fourteen episodes.

As of August 2012, Takei was in filming for the second season of Supah Ninjas on Nickelodeon, playing the Grandfather and his evil twin, Kagema Fukanaga. He is also currently in rehearsal for the new musical Allegiance, in which he stars as Old Sam Kimura and Ojii-san. The play opened on September 7 at The Old Globe in San Diego, CA.

Politics and activism [ ]

In 1973, while the animated Star Trek series was on the air, Takei ran for and narrowly lost a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. He ultimately chose to continue acting rather than to pursue a political career, though he would remain involved in civic affairs.

Takei served on the Southern California Rapid Transit District's board of directors from 1973 through 1984. He also once served as a vice president of the American Public Transit Association and served two terms on the board of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, a position bestowed upon him by then-President of the United States, Bill Clinton.

He currently serves as chair of the council of governors of East West Players, America's foremost Asian Pacific American theater. He is also chairman emeritus of the Japanese American National Museum's board of trustees and was once a member of the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program's advisory committee. In addition, he is a member of the board of directors of the United States-Japan Bridging Foundation.

Takei is also a member of the Human Rights Campaign and was a spokesman for the organization's Coming Out Project. In April 2006, Takei spoke about being a gay Japanese American to audiences nationwide during a tour he called "Equality Trek".

Takei joined the many celebrities who took to protesting actor/comedian Tracy Morgan. Morgan onstage doing a stand-up routine, made several homophobic statements. Takei publicly declared Morgan, " A sad, sad man! " [18]

Takei frequently criticized Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, particularly for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He stated in 2020 that Trump calling COVID-19 "The Chinese Virus" sent "a cold chill throughout the Asian-American community, because he's sending a signal to the haters." [19]

Awards and honors [ ]

Takei received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1986. The following year, he and Leonard Nimoy shared a Grammy Award nomination in the "Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording" category for the audio version of the adaptation of The Voyage Home .

In 1991, Takei received the honor of placing his hand-prints and signature in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Emperor Akihito of Japan conferred Takei with the Order of the Rising Sun 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette in recognition of his work in Japan-United States relations.

Takei received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 8th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival in October 2007. [20] [21]

In 2007, the asteroid 7307 Takei was named for him, both in recognition for his work on Star Trek and also for his public service work. [22] [23] (X) [24]

On 29 June 2009, Takei received the Ivy Bethune Tri-Union Diversity Award for his outstanding support on issues of marriage equality and sexual orientation discrimination and for his work on the Arts in Transit program. Screen Actors Guild Magazine , Volume 50, No, 3, page 21

Star Trek appearances [ ]

Appearances as sulu [ ].

• " Where No Man Has Gone Before "
• " The Corbomite Maneuver "
• " Mudd's Women "
• " The Enemy Within "
• " The Man Trap "
• " The Naked Time "
• " Balance of Terror "
• " The Galileo Seven "
• " Shore Leave "
• " The Squire of Gothos "
• " Tomorrow is Yesterday "
• " The Return of the Archons "
• " This Side of Paradise "
• " Errand of Mercy "
• " The City on the Edge of Forever "
• " Operation -- Annihilate! "
• " Catspaw "
• " Metamorphosis "
• " Friday's Child "
• " Who Mourns for Adonais? "
• " Amok Time "
• " The Doomsday Machine "
• " Wolf in the Fold "
• " The Changeling "
• " Mirror, Mirror "
• " The Deadly Years "
• " I, Mudd "
• " Return to Tomorrow "
• " The Ultimate Computer "
• " The Omega Glory "
• " Assignment: Earth "
• " Elaan of Troyius "
• " The Paradise Syndrome "
• " The Enterprise Incident "
• " And the Children Shall Lead "
• " Spock's Brain "
• " Is There in Truth No Beauty? "
• " The Empath "
• " The Tholian Web "
• " For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky "
• " Day of the Dove "
• " Wink of an Eye "
• " That Which Survives "
• " Let That Be Your Last Battlefield "
• " Whom Gods Destroy "
• " The Mark of Gideon "
• " The Lights of Zetar "
• " The Cloud Minders " (stock footage; uncredited)
• " The Way to Eden "
• " The Savage Curtain "
• " Turnabout Intruder "
• " Beyond the Farthest Star "
• " One of Our Planets Is Missing "
• " The Lorelei Signal "
• " More Tribbles, More Troubles "
• " The Survivor "
• " The Infinite Vulcan "
• " The Magicks of Megas-Tu "
• " Once Upon a Planet "
• " Mudd's Passion "
• " The Terratin Incident "
• " The Time Trap "
• " The Slaver Weapon "
• " The Eye of the Beholder "
• " The Jihad "
• " The Pirates of Orion "
• " The Practical Joker "
• " Albatross "
• " The Counter-Clock Incident "
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
• Star Trek Generations (picture only)
• Star Trek Beyond (picture only)
• VOY : " Flashback "
• ST : " Ephraim and Dot " (archive audio)

Other characters [ ]

Other media [ ]

• George Takei also appeared in the games Star Trek: Shattered Universe and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy .
• Transformations
• Takei co-wrote (with Peter David ) a comic book annual for DC Comics , " So Near the Touch ".
• Takei narrated the audio novel of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier .
• Takei made an audio introduction to Star Trek: Federation - The First 150 Years .

Retrospectives [ ]

• Excelsior: The Many Lives of George Takei
• Lions and Tigers and Bears: The Internet Strikes Back [25]
• New Frontiers: The Many Worlds Of George Takei [26]
• Oh Myyy! (There Goes the Internet) [27]
• They Called Us Enemy [28]
• To the Stars
• Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe
• To Be Takei

Web publishings [ ]

• Takei's biography at his official site
• Interview with Takei (X) at StarTrek.com

External links [ ]

• GeorgeTakei.com – official website
• George Takei at Mastodon
• George Takei at the Internet Movie Database
• George Takei  at MySpace.com
• George Takei at the Miami Vice Wiki
• George Takei at Wikipedia
• George Takei interview at BBC – May 2006
• Interview at Archive of American Television
• George Takei at TriviaTribute.com – pictures, links, and trivia

George Takei, the Best Driver in the Galaxy

The man who played mr. sulu on “star trek” talks about stereotypes, william shatner’s gaydar fail, and his new musical on the japanese internment..

Nicole Pasulka

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter

George Takei Shutterstock/Helga Esteb

Back in the 1960s, when actor George Takei landed the part of Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek , he knew how lucky he was. Sulu defied the two-dimensional stereotypes that infused most of the roles then available to Asian American actors, and Takei knew from experience how insidious those stereotypes could be. He has clear childhood memories of men with guns arriving at his Los Angeles home post-Pearl Harbor to haul the family away—first to a horse track in Arcadia and later to a United States internment camp in Arkansas—and has since been active in efforts to remind people about what happened in America during that dreadful time. Takei, who is gay, also has been an outspoken champion of LGBT rights. His irresistible persona, and Star Trek ‘s host of loyal fans, have contributed to Takei’s huge online following, which the self-described “Queen of Meme” hopes will help him bring his latest endeavor— a musical about the Japanese internment opening September 19 at the Old Globe in San Diego—all the way to Broadway. I spoke with Takei about his theater obsession, Asian drivers, and William Shatner’s gaydar fail.

Mother Jones: I can’t believe I’m talking to someone with 2 million Facebook fans!

George Takei: Obviously the Star Trek fan base—the geeks, as they call themselves—is large. I’ve also been vocal on issues of equality for LGBT people, and I consider it my mission in life to make Americans aware of Japanese internment, that dark chapter of American history.

MJ: Hence your starring role in Allegiance , your new musical about a Japanese American family in an internment camp. How did that come about?

GT: When my husband Brad and I are in New York, we practically live in the theaters—we’re there almost every night. One night there were two guys sitting in front of us and one of them recognized my voice. He was a composer-lyricist who had a musical on in San Francisco, and the guy with him was his producer. The next night we went to see a Tony-award-winning musical about a Puerto Rican family in Washington Heights. The same two guys were in the very same row as us. Near the end of the first act the father sings a song, “Inútil”—which means “useless.” He wants to do so much for his children and he feels he can’t because of economic circumstances and the various hurdles that he faces. And that suddenly triggered a memory for me of my father in the Arkansas internment camp. I’m one of these people who doesn’t just sniffle, I bawl, and I lost it. Of course the intermission comes and the lights blaze up immediately—I think it’s done maliciously fast when there’s a scene like that—so I was quickly wiping my face when the two guys came climbing over the knees of people to chat with us again. The composer-lyricist is an Asian guy and he said, “How did that song strike you so deeply?” I told him. We started talking, and the idea of doing a musical was born.

MJ: I’m always surprised by how many people are oblivious to the internment.

Also, Japanese Americans of my parents’ generation didn’t talk about that experience with their children. I was fortunate to have a father who did. Here’s an example of a very revealing situation: I was walking through the internment camp gallery at the Japanese American National Museum where I’m a board member and I noticed there was an elderly gentleman, a middle-aged man, and two preteen boys in the internment camp gallery. The boys were asking, “Grandpa, you were there ?” The father of the boys, the son of the elderly man, was saying, “Dad, you never told me that!” He could not tell his own son when he was growing up. Now with the passage of time and a respected museum setting that had some dignity about it, grandpa felt comfortable enough to share with his grandsons what he could not tell his own son.

MJ: Maybe it’s because people feared that it could happen again.

GT: We sensed it immediately after 9/11. People react hysterically when a event of that magnitude happens. In our case, we just happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor.

MJ: What do you recall most vividly about your family’s internment?

GT: I still remember that very scary day when we were ordered out of our two-bedroom home on Garnet Street here in Los Angeles. Two soldiers came up to our front door. I was looking out the living room window and I saw them marching up our driveway and they stomped onto the porch and banged on the door and we were ordered out of our homes. We were taken to the horse stables of Santa Anita racetrack. My mother said that was the most degrading, humiliating experience—the whole family forced at gunpoint, literally, to live in narrow horse stall that still had the stench of manure.

MJ: And so you became an activist.

GT: I was involved in the civil rights movement way back in the late ’50s and through the ’60s and ’70s. I was doing a civil rights musical here in Los Angeles and we sang at one of the rallies where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke, and I remember the thrill I felt when we were introduced to him. To have him shake your hand was an absolutely unforgettable experience. Even before I could vote, I was involved in the political arena. My father was an admirer of Adlai Stevenson and he took me to the Stevenson for President headquarters and he volunteered me. That was my introduction to electoral politics, which was exciting and fun and thrilling, and very theatrical.

MJ: Speaking of theatrical, your videos skewering anti-gay laws and politicians are hilarious.

GT: Humor is a powerful tool, and some of these politicians are so far out and easy to lampoon. They just provide such delicious opportunity.

MJ: Tell me about the “ It’s OK to be Takei ” video.

GT: In Tennessee they have a whole cast of yahoo politicians. One named Stacey Campfield sponsored a bill criminalizing teachers using the word “gay” or “homosexual.” Well, if they’re going to ban the word gay, my surname rhymes with gay. So you can use Takei in its place and march in a Takei Pride Parade and at Christmas time sing “Don we now our Takei apparel,  Fa, La, La, La, La, La-La-La-La.”

MJ: Were you out of the closet during Star Trek days?

GT: No. I was quietly out with a very small circle of my gay friends. I went to gay bars and I was a member of a gay running club, you know, but we knew the social climate. At bars I sometimes recognized other actors. We might nod and smile, maybe have a brief conversation but when we’d encounter each other on the studio lot we played as though that hadn’t happened.

MJ: Did the cast know you were gay?

GT: Most of them knew, but they were cool. They knew what impact it could have on an actor’s career. Once I was at work chatting with Walter Koenig, who played Pavel Chekov, and he started gesturing at a group of young extras who were dressed in the Starfleet shirt. There was a gorgeous young guy with a fantastic build and that tight shirt on him and that’s when I knew that Walter knew. I turned back to him and he was grinning. He was helping me out! Bill [Shatner] was oblivious. In fact, when he was on the Howard Stern Show , Howard had me call in and chat with Bill. I mentioned Brad and he didn’t know who Brad was. Everybody knew! We had a very public wedding. Bill says, “Who’s Brad?”

MJ: Sulu never had a romantic attachment on the show, right?

GT: You’re right. During the first season I lobbied Gene Roddenberry and the directors and the writing staff to beef up the role—well, everybody was doing that, and when you have seven regulars it gets to be very difficult. Gene said, “This is the first season and we really have to strengthen the two leads.” But he promised me that in the second season he’d devote more attention to the other characters. He did keep his promise and develop wonderful roles for Sulu. But I got cast during the hiatus in The Green Berets , the John Wayne movie. We ran way over schedule and I couldn’t be back in time for the beginning of the second season. Walter Koenig was brought in to essentially say the words that were written for me. I had already memorized them because I was so excited. When I came back I hated Walter sight unseen.

MJ: Did you work it out?

GT: We worked it out. As a matter of fact, we had a shortage of dressing rooms so they asked me to share my dressing room with Walter—a person who had stolen my part! But he turned out to be a really good friend.

MJ: Did you feel a sense of responsibility as the rare Asian face on television?

GT: Yes. Up until the time I was cast in Star Trek , the roles were pretty shallow—thin, stereotyped, one-dimensional roles. I knew this character was a breakthrough role, certainly for me as an individual actor but also for the image of an Asian character: no accent, a member of the elite leadership team. I was supposed to be the best helmsman in the Starfleet, No. 1 graduate in the Starfleet Academy. At that time there was the horrible stereotype about Asians being bad drivers. I was the best driver in the galaxy! So many young Asian Americans came up to me then—and still do today, although they’re not that young anymore—to tell me that seeing me on their television screen made them feel so proud. I lobbied to develop the character. I tried to get mentions of my family, to humanize the character, and because of the circumstances—like getting cast in a feature film with John Wayne—that really didn’t happen.

MJ: Did you ever feel tokenized?

GT: No, no. My father told me, “Don’t do anything that would bring shame to the family.” I was always mindful of that. When I told him I wanted to pursue a career as an actor, my father said, “Look at what you see on television at the movies, is that what you want to be doing? Do you want to make a life out of that?” And I said, “Daddy, I’m going to change it.”

MJ: I like how you connect your activism to your acting.

GT: It’s that image that created the perception that made it easier for the government to incarcerate a whole group of people. At that time, in comic books and radio dramas, we were depicted as cutthroat and coldhearted and cruel—unfeeling—or we were wily or suspicious or the buffoon. That was the general perception of Japanese Americans. We weren’t seen as Americans. If someone spoke without an accent, we were exotically Americanized foreigners. My father knew the importance of the image of Asians in the media and how that shapes perceptions. We were complicit in it at that time: We went out there and rented our faces out and played cruel Japanese soldiers or bumbling Chinese waiters.

MJ: Do your Trekkie fans show interest in your political issues?  

GT: I didn’t think the internment story would connect with the geek community, but as it turns out it does. They feel like a minority community, so they understand.

What Regina Spektor Sees From the Cheap Seats

Hannah Levintova

“A Queer and Pleasant Danger”: Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor

Sweden Moves to End Forced Sterilization of Transgender People

Dan Savage on “It Gets Better” and Surging Santorum

We recommend.

Samuel Alito Has a Very Strange Theory for How to Protect Democracy

Trump Denies the Affairs at the Heart of the Hush-Money Case. Almost No One Believes Him.

Dan Friedman

Utility That Bribed Ohio Regulators Secretly Bankrolled Republican Mike DeWine’s 2018 Governor Bid, Records Show

Mario Alejandro Ariza and Jessie Balmert

The GOP’s “Election Integrity” Lawyer Was Just Indicted for Election Subversion

Students Are Demanding Universities Divest From Israel—and Dirty Energy

Dharna Noor

“Get Off Our Campus!”: Mike Johnson Met With Boos and Anger During Columbia Visit

Julianne McShane

John Cage Would Want You to Listen to Columbia’s Pro-Palestinian Protesters

Idaho Wants the Supreme Court to Ignore Reality. The Justices Seem Ready to Oblige.

Sign up for our free newsletter.

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use , and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones ' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Independent. In print. In your mailbox.

Inexpensive, too! Subscribe today and get a full year of Mother Jones for just $14.95.

Bold. Brave. Beautiful.

Award-winning photojournalism. Stunning video. Fearless conversations.

Looking for news you can trust?

We noticed you have an ad blocker on..

Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? We're a nonprofit (so it's tax-deductible), and reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget.

We noticed you have an ad blocker on. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism?

Don't let an algorithm decide what news you see.

Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

George Takei

Filmography, life events.

• Photos & Videos

Bibliography

Photos & videos.

Mr. Sulu's first name is Hikaru.

In 1986 Takei became the first Japanese-American actor to be granted a star on Hollywood's fabled Walk of Fame.

A hero to science fiction fans, Asian-Americans, and the LGBT community, George Takei was an actor, writer and activist who earned his place in pop culture history as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the starship Enterprise on "Star Trek" (NBC, 1966-68) and six of its subsequent feature film spin-offs. Takei had been a prolific actor on television and in films and theater prior to "Star Trek," and he continued to appear in a wide variety of projects after its demise, including the science fiction series "Heroes" (NBC, 2006-2010) and as a popular guest announcer for Howard Stern's radio program. A well-known political activist in San Francisco and West Hollywood, Takei also brought a familiar and friendly face to the debate over gay rights and gay marriage after revealing his own homosexuality in 2005, surprising many a Trekkie who had been unaware of his long-closeted way of life. Whether it was for his iconic signature role as the dedicated Enterprise helmsman, the unmistakable quality of his baritone voice (best heard in his signature exclamation "Oh myyyy"), or for his work as an advocate within the Asian-American and gay communities, Takei continued to engender the admiration and devotion of generations of fans.

Born George Hosato Takei (pronounced Ta-kay) on April 20, 1937, he was the son of real estate agent Takekuma Norman Takei and Fumiko Emily Nakamura; Takei's father was an Anglophile and named his son after the recently coronated George VI of England. At the height of paranoia following the 1941 sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, the family, along with thousands of other Japanese-Americans, were taken from their homes and placed in concentration-type camps. In 1941, the Takei family was interred at the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas and later the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California. Takei would detail the pain and anger he felt as a result of the experience in his 1994 autobiography To the Stars , as well as how it informed his own views on politics in America and his decision to become an active participant in local and national government issues.

Post-war, Takei and his family returned to Los Angeles, and after graduating from Mount Vernon High School and Los Angeles High School, began his studies in architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. A newspaper ad looking for Asian actors to provide English dubbing for the Japanese monster movie "Rodan" (1956) led to subsequent dubbing jobs and onscreen acting roles on television on such shows as "Playhouse 90" (CBS, 1956-1961) and in such film as "The Ice House" (1960). He eventually transferred to the University of California Los Angeles, where he earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in theater. His acting education continued at both the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon in England and Sophia University in Tokyo before returning to the United States for training at the Desilu Workshop in Hollywood.

After a brief stint in New York with the play "Fly Blackbird," Takei returned to Los Angeles and found work in films and television. Frequently cast in supporting roles as a Japanese soldier in such films as the JFK WWII biopic "PT 109" (1963), he made an impression as a young Japanese-American struggling with racism in a controversial 1964 episode of "The Twilight Zone" (CBS, 1959-1965) before meeting with producer Gene Roddenberry for a new science fiction series he viewed as "'Wagon Train' (NBC/ABC, 1957-1965) to the stars." Roddenberry's vision of the future saw the human race fully integrated and working together in harmony - a fairly bold statement for a science fiction series in the late-'60s - and Takei was cast as Lt. Hikaru Sulu, helmsman for the U.S.S. Enterprise . Sulu made his first appearance on the series in "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second "Star Trek" pilot - the original pilot, "The Cage," had been rejected by the network - which saw him as the ship's botanist. Sulu was quietly promoted to helmsman for the remainder of the series, which saw him lend cool support to lead stars William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in many of their adventures. On several occasions, the character took a more central role in an episode, such in "The Naked Time," in which Takei got to show off his fencing skills when a water-borne alien virus induces delusions in the crew, pushing Sulu to believe himself to be the reincarnation of fictional Musketeer, D'Artagnan. Sulu also succumbed to alien spores which nearly caused him to leave the Enterprise in "The City on the Edge of Forever," and was reduced to infancy when the ship entered an anti-matter universe in "The Counter-Clock Incident." Like many of the supporting cast on "Star Trek," Sulu took his lumps, but remained cheery and professional throughout his tenure on the show, despite having growing issues with its sometimes egotistical star, Shatner.

The producers planned to flesh out Sulu's role with the launch of the second season, but Takei's participation in John Wayne's overwrought Vietnam war fantasy "The Green Berets" made him unavailable for many episodes. In response, Roddenberry created a new character, Russian Ensign Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), to stand in for Sulu as helmsmen. When shooting wrapped on the Wayne film, Takei returned to work on "Star Trek" and soon made fast friends with his new co-star. However, the pair soon found themselves out of work at NBC. Despite its rabid following, the ratings on "Star Trek" could not support the cost of producing the show, and it was axed by NBC in 1969; as unbelievable as that would seem to Trekkies decades later.

Unlike many of his "Star Trek" castmates, Takei had little trouble finding work after the show's demise, and seemed more than happy to participate in the spin-offs and conventions that followed in its wake. Takei returned to regular guest appearances on television series while developing an interest in local programming and government. From 1971 to 1973, he and actress Beulah Quo produced and hosted a public affairs show in Los Angeles called "East/West," and he later ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, which he lost by only a narrow margin. The loss forced Takei to consider the future direction of his career, and he ultimately decided to focus most of his energy in acting while retaining an interest in civic affairs. Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley recognized his passion for public duty and appointed him to the board of directors for the Southern California Transit District, where he served from 1973 to 1984. Takei, in fact, delivered the tie-breaking vote that resulted in the creation of the Los Angeles subway system in 1978. In addition to this myriad of duties, Takei also found time to co-author a science fiction novel, Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe , in 1979.

Takei reprised Lt. Sulu in the Emmy-winning animated "Star Trek" series (NBC, 1973-75) before returning to the role in the flesh for Robert Wise's "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979). Sulu's role in the picture was limited once again to support, though he had received a promotion to Lieutenant Commander in the years between the series and the feature. The film endured endless complications during and after its shoot, and received a less-than-warm response from critics due to its length and slow pace. But it was popular with audiences, and a sequel was announced in 1982. Takei, however, was less than enthused about returning to the part, which had earned little screen time in the previous film. The intervention of William Shatner helped to change his mind, so Sulu enjoyed a more substantial role in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." He was promoted again - this time to commander and educator - along with Nimoy's Spock. In the film's opening, both are seeing suffering fatal wounds in a Klingon attack, only to reveal that the combat was a training exercise for Starfleet Academy students. Well-received by critics and audiences alike, "The Wrath of Khan" ensured that a franchise could be built from the "Star Trek" series.

In subsequent "Star Trek" features, Takei was adamant about not letting Sulu blend into the background action, and enjoyed his own moments of adventure in most of the films. In "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (1986), he not only piloted the Klingon Bird of Prey that brought the revived Spock and crew back to Earth, but enjoyed a few moments of nimble comedy when Sulu, along with McCoy (DeForest Kelly) and Scotty (James Doohan) are pressed into conning a Plexiglass company for building materials in order to convert the Bird of Prey's cargo bay into a whale tank. Sulu later commandeered a helicopter to transport the Plexiglass. That same year, Takei received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as well as a Grammy Award nomination for his participation in the audio book adaptation of "Star Trek IV."

In "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" (1989) - the least successful film in the franchise starring the original cast - Sulu joins the passive mutiny that wrestles the Enterprise from Kirk, when he and others on board fall under Spock's half-brother Sybok's influence. The franchise's final outing, "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" (1991), found now Captain Sulu in command of the U.S.S. Excelsior , which he used to rescue Kirk and McCoy from life sentences after being framed for the murder of a Klingon ambassador. By then, Takei was lending his distinctive voice to numerous "Star Trek"-related games and audio books, and even reprised the role in an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" (UPN, 1995-2001). His life outside of acting was busy as well; President Bill Clinton had appointed him to the board of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, with which he served two terms. He was later bestowed the Order of the Rising Sun award from Japanese Emperor Akihito for his service to both countries.

Takei was an in-demand voiceover actor throughout much of the 1990s; among his animated credits during this period were that of First Ancestor in the Disney feature "Mulan" (1998) and multiple episodes of "The Simpsons" (Fox, 1989- ). Takei was also happy to poke gentle fun at his "Star Trek" past in various television shows; in "3rd Rock from the Sun" (NBC, 1996-2001), he encountered the show's cast of real aliens at a science fiction convention, while in the short-lived "Brotherly Love" (NBC/The WB, 1995-97), he played a man who was a committed fan of "Star Trek" and actor George Takei in particular. In 1991, he and other "Star Trek" actors placed their hand and footprints in the legendary walkway outside Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

During this period, Takei also began a long and decidedly unexpected relationship with radio shock jock Howard Stern and his program. He was invited onto the show in 1994 to promote his autobiography, To the Stars , and was prompted to speak about his long-standing problems with Shatner during the making of the original series. Stern was taken with Takei's friendly demeanor and asked him to record several sound bites, many of which were played numerous times on subsequent shows. In 2006, he was named official announcer for Stern's show on Sirius Radio, and frequently credited Stern for the revived interest in his career.

Takei's sexuality was a matter of semi-public record among "Star Trek" devotees, but he did not affirm his status as a gay man until a 2005 interview with Frontiers magazine. He received considerable air time to discuss his sexuality on the Stern show, which treated the subject with surprising respect, and the host later presented Takei with a Freedom of Speech award on behalf of the radio trade publication Talkers . He soon became a popular and well-respected spokesman for gay rights and tolerance; in 2006, he launched a national speaking tour called "Equality Trek," which encouraged others to share similar stories in a positive environment. That same year, he joined Korean actress-comedienne Margaret Cho as narrator of the Peabody Award-winning radio documentary "Crossing East," which explored the history of Asians in America.

In 2007, Takei was cast on the action-fantasy series "Heroes" (NBC, 2006-2010) as the stern businessman father to Masi Oka's time-traveling superhero. Though Takei's character was dispatched in a second season episode, the producers indicated that he may return and even reveal a super power of his own in subsequent seasons. That same year, he again reprised Sulu for "Star Trek: New Voyages," an Internet-only series produced for and by fans of the show. He was also on the receiving end of numerous awards and accolades that year; not only did Leonard Nimoy present him with the Human Rights Campaign's Equality Award, but astronomers paid tribute to the former Enterprise crew member by naming an asteroid, 7307 Takei, after him.

The following year was marked by more appearances in film and on television, including a turn as himself in the Adam Sandler comedy "You Don't Mess with the Zohan." But the biggest news from Takei in 2008 was the announcement that he would wed his longtime partner, Brad Altman, at a ceremony outside Los Angeles' Japanese-American Museum, which Takei helped found. "Star Trek" co-stars Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), were the best man and maid of honor, while Leonard Nimoy was among the guests. Takei continued to keep busy with gigs that included voicing the world-devouring alien Galactus for several episodes of the cartoon adventure series "The Super Hero Squad Show" (Cartoon Network, 2009-2011). He made a brief feature film appearance as a college professor in the Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts romantic-comedy "Larry Crowne" (2011), in addition to a recurring role on the short-lived adventure show, "Supah Ninjas" (Nickelodeon, 2011). In the fall of 2011, Takei was one of the contestants on Donald Trump's celebrity version of "The Apprentice" (NBC, 2004-2015), a development made all the more interesting in light of The Donald's anti-gay marriage statements years earlier. Alongside a documentary about his life and activism, "To Be Takei" (2013), Takei began workshopping "Allegiance," a musical about World War II Japanese interment that was a passion project. Following its premiere in San Diego in 2012, the play landed on Broadway during the 2015-16 season, with Takei and the rest of the cast earning strong reviews.

Cast (Feature Film)

Music (feature film), misc. crew (feature film), cast (special), cast (tv mini-series).

Provided voiceover for several characters in the English dub of the Japanese monster film "Rodan"

TV debut on the Emmy award winning series, "Playhouse 90" (CBS)

First notable film role, "Ice Palace"

Breakthrough role, playing Mr. Sulu on the sci-fi series, "Star Trek" (NBC)

Voiced Mr. Sulu for NBC's animated series, "Star Trek"

Co-wrote (with Robert Asprin) the science-fiction novel <i>Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe</i>

Reprised role of Mr. Sulu for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"

Again portrayed Mr. Sulu in "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan"

Once again reprised role of Mr. Sulu for "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock"

Co-starred in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home"

Played Mr. Sulu for the fifth film, "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier"

Played a leading role in the feature film, "Return to the River Kwai"

Last film appearance as Mr. Sulu in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"

Voiced First Ancestor Fain Disney's animated feature "Mulan"

Voiced the villainous Mr. Fixx in animated series, "Batman Beyond"

Voiced Sensei in Disney's animated series, "Kim Possible"

Joined the cast of NBC's "Heroes" playing the father of Hiro Nakamura

Takei was nominated in 1988 for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for the novelization of "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home".

Takei is a recipient of the Scotsman First Award, for the play "Undertow" by Simon Wincelberg, performed at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival (1988)

Sign Up now to stay up to date with all of the latest news from TCM.

Your Browser is Not Supported

To view this content, please use one of the following compatible browsers:

Safari v11+

Firefox Quantum

Microsoft Edge

'Star Trek' star George Takei on why his activism roots are deeply personal and being a Twitter legend

Takei was 5 when he was forced into a Japanese internment camps during WWII.

Famed “ Star Trek ” star George Takei was a child when he and his family were forced into American internment camps in the 1940s, and he says he still remembers being taught to recite the Pledge of Allegiance while being imprisoned, surrounded by barbed wire.

“I remember reciting the words, ‘With liberty and justice for all’ — innocent child — totally oblivious of the stinging irony of those words: ‘Liberty and justice for all,’” he said.

Watch the full story on "Nightline" TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET

Takei, best known for playing Hikaru Sulu in the original “Star Trek” TV series , was imprisoned with his family between the ages of 5 and 9 along with hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II . He depicts this part of his childhood in his new graphic memoir, “They Called Us Enemy.”

“I am hoping that there'll come a day when enough Americans know about this history — this dark and cruel history of America — that they will not allow it to repeat itself,” he said.

Takei, 82, has long been a vocal political activist . Most recently, he has come out against President Donald Trump’s rhetoric regarding immigration and the federal government’s decisions to detain migrants at temporary facilities and separate migrant families.

“This president is someone who doesn't know history, who is reckless and he is inhuman. We have reached a new low with this president. … Every day is a new outrage,” Takei said.

He said he believes the fear mongering over immigrants coming into the U.S. is happening "at a grotesque scale."

“What's happening now on the Southern border with people who are coming here out of sheer desperation, fleeing for their lives, fleeing poverty and violence, some have seen their parents shot down in front of their eyes,” he continued. "We as children were always together with our family. My parents were always protecting us."

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced imprisonment of an estimated total of 120,000 Japanese Americans living in the U.S.

During World War II, horse racing was suspended at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California, and the federal government designated the park for multiple uses, including as a processing center for 20,000 Japanese Americans. Takei’s family was among them.

(MORE: George Takei starts petition to 'Stand Up For Muslims')

Though they were U.S. citizens, Takei said his family was targeted for their Japanese heritage.

“We looked exactly like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor,” he said. “Money was never, you know, returned. It was gone. And our home. You couldn't make mortgage payments. That was lost. We were stripped naked and brought here to a smelly horse stall.”

He and his family were held at the Southern California racetrack before being sent elsewhere.

“[Santa Anita Park] is where we were assembled,” Takei said. “And then from here, we were sent out to the actual barbed wire concentration camps that became the place where we would have stayed.”

From the race track, the Takei family was then sent to Rohwer Internment Camp in Arkansas and Tule Lake Internment Camp in California, where, altogether, they spent three years of their lives.

“It was, for my parents, a harrowing experience,” Takei said. “Just imagine, the government takes everything from you, everything that you worked for, in the middle of your life, and to have your business, your bank account, the home that you built taken away from you, and unjustly imprisoned, and having soldiers pointing guns at you… with our children.”

“But thank God, in today's context, thank God we were with our parents. We were grateful for that,” he added.

In “They Called Us Enemy,” which was released this summer, Takei depicts his journey living in the barracks of these internment camps and how he grasped for understanding of the situation from his father.

“[I’m] introducing the story through a 5-year-old's eyes, then I tell my adult story, what my parents were enduring, and all of the challenges and pain and anguish that they were going through. And so, it's a parallel story,” he said.

His graphic memoir will soon be available in every public library across America in an effort to keep this history alive for future generations. These truths of his experience are immortalized at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, of which Takei is a proud cofounder.

(MORE: 'Star Trek' Star George Takei reveals secrets of social media success)

He has used his childhood horror in other projects, too. He is a credited consultant on the TV series “The Terror: Infamy,” which debuted on AMC this week, and the Broadway show “Allegiance” was based on his family’s internment.

Takei broke barriers in his “Star Trek” TV role as an Asian-American actor working in 1960s Hollywood. By portraying the beloved character Hikaru Sulu — the helmsman of the USS Enterprise — Takei was able to weaken stereotypes of Asian Americans at the time.

“I was certainly mindful of the role that I'm playing because of the kind of roles that had previously been played by Asian and Asian American actors and actresses,” he said.

Arguably one of his most legendary scenes on the show was his fencing scene.

“The writer had to be on the set, and he told me about the story, and he told me about the samurai sword and I suggested a fencing foil. And he said, ‘Oh, yeah, that's interesting. Do you fence?’ And I said, ‘It's my favorite sport.’”

(MORE: 'Star Trek' 50th: A look back at 5 decades)

Takei then trained with the same fencing instructor who choreographed the fencing scenes in the TV series “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” He went on to reprise his role as Sulu in an animated “Star Trek” TV series in the ‘70s, "Star Trek" video games and “Star Trek” films. He has also appeared in dozens of other films and TV series, including "The Simpsons."

Over the years, Takei has become an outspoken activist, including being a champion for marriage equality alongside his husband, Brad Takei. The two were married in September 2008 at the L.A. museum Takei helped cofound, and they call themselves “Team Takei.”

“For 21 years of my life with George as a committed couple — same-sex couple — we didn't really have any legal rights. And so we really were living, from the government's eyes, as two single men,” Brad Takei said. “But once we got married, we got all the rights and privileges that come with marriage. And we found out that marriage is really cool.”

“The other thing that's important to us is what if something happens to one of us, and we are taken to a hospital? Being unmarried meant that we couldn't visit each other,” George Takei added. “If Brad was injured in an accident, I couldn't go see him at bedside. That was a frightening thought.”

George Takei has become a modern-day legend on Twitter with more than three million followers.

“I try to humanize what I say,” he said. “Yes, I can be outraged and angry, but...I also see the ridiculousness of it and [I try] to laugh at the human condition.”

Takei doesn’t shy away from calling out what he describes as the “blind hypocrisy” of Trump and many of his policies, including the president’s stance on LGBTQ rights.

(MORE: Simon Pegg and Zachary Quinto respond to George Takei in the gay Sulu 'Star Trek' debate)

“He is a man who speaks without any information, without any knowledge of history, and vilifies and inflicts cruelty. That's a demagogue,” he said.

Trump is one of Takei’s most frequent targets on Twitter, even though they know each other from Takei’s involvement on Trump’s reality show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Takei recalled a moment when, during a press conference for “Celebrity Apprentice,” he asked Trump to have lunch with him to discuss marriage equality. This was before marriage equality was legalized and before Trump became president.

“We had lunch,” Takei said. “And I said to him, ‘You're a businessman. Marriage equality would be good for you; you'll make a lot of money. … LGBT people will love to come to New York and get married there… and he said, ‘Yeah, that's true, but I believe in traditional marriage.’”

“He was on his third marriage,” Takei continued. “I said to him, ‘I believe in traditional marriage, too.’”

Takei isn’t slowing down, from an ongoing book tour to promote his graphic novel to making Comic Con appearances to continuing his tireless public advocacy.

“I consider it my responsibility as an American citizen to actively participate, particularly because I know my childhood imprisonment — the unjust imprisonment,” he said. “If we don't participate, if we don't educate our fellow Americans to the vulnerability of our democracy, how fragile it can be, then we're not being responsible citizens.”

The Untold Truth Of George Takei

For most people, George Takei is the guy who played Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek , but, to others, he's the man that said some highly controversial things as a guest on The Howard Stern Show . Takei wears many masks. Even for those fans that have followed his career closely, his chameleon-like quality in show business makes him difficult to pin down. All at once, he is a pop-culture icon, an author , a Broadway star, an  activist , and a social media influencer .

Takei has shown that he's not afraid to speak his mind and, for some, including the Trump family , he can be quite the nuisance. Still, as popular and familiar as Takei appears on the surface, he remains a mystery for many. For that reason, we boldly go beyond Takei's Star Trek fame and explore his rich past filled with trailblazing, controversy, and everything in between. Here is the untold truth of George Takei.

A 'horrific, traumatic' childhood

Takei has spoken at length about his childhood spent in a Japanese internment camp, and he even starred in a Broadway musical, Allegiance , that was based on his experiences. When he was 5 years old, Takei and his family were stripped of their possessions and forced to move from their home in Los Angeles to an internment camp in the swamps of Arkansas. For three years, home was a barracks enclosed by barbed wire and dotted by armed sentry towers, but they adjusted to life inside the fences.

Leaving the camp at age 8 brought new challenges for Takei and his family. "We lost everything. We were given a one-way ticket to wherever in the United States we wanted to go to, plus $20," he said (via  i09 ). "Many people were very embittered about their West Coast experience, and they chose to go to the Midwest, places like Chicago or Milwaukee, or further east to New Jersey, New York, Boston. My parents decided to go back to Los Angeles."

With no work and no housing available to them, Takei's family settled in the decrepit Skid Row neighborhood. For Takei, being forced to leave home in the first place was bad, but "coming home was a horrific, traumatic experience."

He blazed a trail for Asian actors and characters

Star Trek  fans are well aware of just how groundbreaking the show was, but even for die-hard fans, George Takei's groundbreaking role in the entertainment industry is often overshadowed by that of his co-stars. For example, many are aware that the kiss between Captain Kirk ( William Shatner ) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) was the first interracial kiss  on television, but fewer fans recognize just how much Takei blazed a trail for Asian actors. 

"There were very few opportunities, and the few opportunities that there were, were unattractive characters — the villain, the servant, or the buffoon," said Takei. "It was very difficult to get roles where we were human beings." Well, that's what Sulu was on Star Trek  – a human being.

With Takei performing this role so well and for so long on such a popular and iconic show, his influence stretched far and wide. "So many people came up and told that, for the first time, they had someone that they could relate to and be proud of when they turn on Star Trek ," Takei said . "They saw an Asian character who was not a stereotype, who was, in many ways a hero, who was part of the leadership team of the ship. He didn't talk with an accent. He was a great guy."

Those infamous Star Trek feuds

William Shatner (Capt. James T. Kirk) reportedly feuded with several of his Star Trek co-stars , including Leonard Nimoy (Spock), the late James Doohan (Capt. Montgomery "Scotty" Scott), and George Takei. According to Takei's autobiography, To the Stars (via the  New York Post ), Shatner allegedly pretended he didn't even know Takei on set and supposedly tried to change the script for Star Trek V to diminish Takei's role.

Shatner said those claims are bogus: "There must be something else inside George that is festering, and it makes him so unhappy that he takes it out on me, in effect a total stranger," he said (via the  New York Post ). "Why would he go out of his way to denigrate me? It's sad, I feel nothing but pity for him."

Takei also feuded with Walter Koenig (Chekov) over changes to the script. "Walter Koenig was brought in to essentially say the words that were written for me," Takei claimed in an interview with Mother Jones . "I had already memorized them because I was so excited. When I came back I hated Walter sight unseen," he said. "We worked it out. As a matter of fact, we had a shortage of dressing rooms so they asked me to share my dressing room with Walter — a person who had stolen my part! But he turned out to be a really good friend." Koenig even served as Takei's best man at his wedding.

Playing the game with his sexuality

Although Takei reportedly "came out" in 2005 , he sees the process a little differently. According to an interview with Frontiers , Takei's announcement was "not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen."

During a talk at South by Southwest Interactive, Takei discussed that journey. "By the time I was nine or 10, I was making discoveries about my sexual orientation," he said, but he worried that being openly gay would "block" his acting dreams. "You live under the fear of being outed all the time," he told  The Guardian . "I played the game. I took a female friend to premieres and parties, and then I'd take her home and go to a gay bar. It was a double life." Takei became more outspoken during the AIDS epidemic in the '80s, telling the South by Southwest audience that he began "giving money to all these causes." Around that time, Takei also joined a gay Los Angeles running club called  Frontrunners , where he met his future husband, Brad Altman.

Patriotism through protest

Takei has shown great interest in politics and activism throughout much of his career. He's dedicated substantial time and energy to educating the public on America's past, specifically in regards to the internment of Japanese-Americans . He  fought for gay rights , galvanized by then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto of a marriage-equality bill.

When professional football players made waves for kneeling during the national anthem, Takei made his feelings known by  tweeting : "Protest is patriotic." Takei has participated in some of the most famous protests in U.S. history. He  marched  with Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s, and he  shook hands with King after performing in a musical about civil rights at UCLA. In the documentary  To Be Takei , the actor says (via Wired ) he was also "in the peace movement with Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland" during the war in Vietnam. Takei insists that his advocacy is always rooted in patriotism. "I am dedicated to making my country an even better America," he said during a  TED Talk , "to making our government an even truer democracy."

That one time in summer camp

It's not unusual for guests on  The Howard Stern Show   to tell eyebrow-raising stories , but during a 2010 segment  of the radio program, George Takei courted controversy when he recalled his earliest sexual encounter, which took place at a summer camp when he was 13 or 14 years old.

In the story, one that Takei repeated during a Reddit AMA and in the To Be Takei documentary, he says he was seduced by a camp counselor that he describes as an "experienced" male about "18 or 19" years old. As the encounter turned sexual, Takei describes it as "frightening, shocking and wonderful." Though Takei insisted the experience was not molestation, he was criticized for romanticizing a potentially dangerous situation. Takei's personal anecdote may not have been harmful to him, but that same situation for another person could easily be construed as assault.

Takei as the 'naughty gay grandpa'

The summer camp piece wasn't the only segment on The Howard Stern show that landed Takei in hot water. In 2017, he addressed the flood of sexual assault allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in a very uncomfortable way. Takei joked about his own use of persuasive tactics on "people that are kind of skittish or maybe afraid." Takei admitted that he had groped and/or grabbed others, but he attempted to distance himself from Weinstein by stating that "it didn't involve power over the other."

Those comments did not go unnoticed. Shortly after the segment aired, Takei issued an apology (sort of) on his Facebook page : "I agree that the joke was distasteful, and I'm very sorry [Stern] and I made fun out of a serious matter." He also claimed that when he appears on  The Howard Stern Show , he plays the part of the "naughty gay grandpa," thus playing up some of the more salacious aspects of his life.

He was accused of sexual misconduct

When sexual misconduct allegations surfaced against George Takei in 2017, fans were shocked and many were angered as the actor joined a  growing list  of alleged wrongdoers in Hollywood. Takei has vehemently  denied claims that he groped a model named Scott Brunton at the actor's Los Angeles condo in 1981. Takei said he was "shocked and bewildered" by the accusations made by a man he doesn't remember.

The  Observer  interviewed Brunton and reported that the accuser's story did present some troubling discrepancies. According to reporter Shane Snow, "just because [Brunton] is inconsistent in his accounts does not mean we should jump to the conclusion that none of this happened at all. Victims often change details, out of panic or memory fallibility." Snow said he also doesn't "fault Takei for feeling unfairly judged, or, at 80 years old, for not remembering Brunton." 

Where does that leave Takei and his reputation? To date, no one else has come forward reporting predatory behavior from Takei, and according to Snow, Brunton said he "just wanted to spur an old friend to reach out and to say sorry for an unwanted situation." Should Takei's "name go on lists alongside rapists and pedophiles? ... Should the story of [his] human rights work be deleted from books? Should the accusation appear in [his] obituary?" Snow asks, noting that those details are on you to decide.

Takei vs. the Trumps

George Takei has butted heads with Donald Trump for years. He's slammed Trump's policies and mocked him for the way he answers questions in interviews. Takei even developed an app called Trumpy Cat designed to ridicule the president. "This is, without a doubt, one of the most absurd and tragic moments in U.S. history. We should feel upset about some of the things that are happening, but we created this app so we can laugh about some of the more ridiculous stuff," the actor said.

But the feud between Takei and the Trump family has not been purely one-sided . After Takei poked fun at the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., over his alleged involvement with Russia, Don Jr. fired back , taking aim at Takei's aforementioned sexual misconduct allegation via an awkward joke on social media. "Wrong again Georgie..." Don Jr. tweeted. "I guess you have a bit more free time to read #fakenews now that it's a bit tougher to ply kids with alcohol to assault them??? You know with all the added scrutiny."

Yes, there was work beyond Star Trek

George Takei's Star Trek past attracts plenty of attention because of the show's legacy and because his career was associated with the show for so long, but Star Trek wasn't Takei's first showbiz gig. In fact, he started acting more than a decade before that breakout role.

One of Takei's early jobs was dubbing English voices into the American edits of the Japanese films  Godzilla Raids Again and Rodan . "There was one word that we had tremendous difficulty getting the meaning of and finding an English word that fit the lip movement," Takei recalled . "The Japanese word was 'bakayaro,' which means 'stupid fool.' And finally, the director came up with a word, and we tried it and it fit. The English word was: banana oil."

Takei appeared to catch his big break in 1964 when he landed an episode of The Twilight Zone , but that episode, "The Encounter," gain notoriety for the wrong reasons and only aired once. According to Takei, "because it dealt with this young man's father, who was a Japanese-American who signaled Japanese planes that bombed Pearl Harbor, it roused a little controversy, particularly with Japanese-American and Asian-American civil liberties groups."

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

New Podcast Will Hear From Asian Actors Who've Appeared On 'Star Trek'

Phil Yu, curator of the Angry Asian Man blog, has released a new podcast called All The Asians On Star Trek . He plans to interview every Asian who has ever appeared on Star Trek .

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Space, the final frontier.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

For as long as there has been "Star Trek" - and it is a lot longer than a five-year mission at this point - people have analyzed the TV program and movie series, the universe of "Star Trek." Now a new podcast out this week aims to take a different look at the franchise.

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "ALL THE ASIANS ON STAR TREK")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Space, the final frontier. These are...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PHIL YU: Hello. And welcome to "All The Asians On Star Trek," the podcast in which we interview all the Asians on "Star Trek."

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

That's creator Phil Yu. He runs the Angry Asian Man blog, a site about news in Hollywood and pop culture. He's also a huge, huge "Star Trek" fan - and so this podcast.

YU: It's kind of a collision of the two interests. "Star Trek" has been at the vanguard of diversity in a very inclusive vision of the future, but it's always been a little bit lacking in its depiction of Asians and Asian Americans.

INSKEEP: "Star Trek's" most famous Asian character as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu played by George Takei. But Yu wants listeners to go beyond.

GEORGE TAKEI: (As Hikaru Sulu) Mr. Spock has orders to kill you, captain. He will succeed.

YU: Like I watch anything else, I watch "Star Trek" going like, there should be - I feel like there should be more Asians in the future. And then so whenever I spot a guest star or a background extra even, I take note of that. And then one day I just thought, wouldn't it be funny if you just talked to each of those people and give them their proper shine?

GREENE: No character is too small.

YU: There was someone who walked by in the background of a episode of "Star Trek: Voyager," and I could see, like - oh, wait, she's Asian; I want to talk to that person.

GREENE: Yu already has a list of some 50 people he wants to interview, and he plans for the podcast to eventually explore the diversity of Asians and Asian Americans represented throughout all of the "Star Trek" universe.

YU: I think "Star Trek" represents our best ideals, and it's a vision of a future where humanity has come together and kind of put aside a lot of our differences. And I would hope that Asians have a place in that vision of humanity.

INSKEEP: That is highly logical.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALEXANDER COURAGE'S "THEME FROM STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES")

Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

From George Takei's Sulu To Michelle Yeoh's Georgiou, 8 Strong Asian Characters Who Are Important To Star Trek

These folks are integral to the success of Starfleet.

Star Trek is a series that has, since its beginning, celebrated diversity. "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" is a cornerstone of Vulcan ideology and one the franchise has always embraced. In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islanders Month, we decided to revisit the notable Asian characters and actors who contribute to the franchise's diversity and served as an inspiration to others who came after them. 

From George Takei 's Hikaru Sulu to Michelle Yeoh 's Phillipa Georgiou, Asians have held notable roles in Star Trek throughout its run. Here are a few of the standouts over the years and a little on the actors who have made them so special. 

Hikaru Sulu (George Takei)

Hikaru Sulu was born in San Francisco, California, and rose to prominence in Starfleet during his time on the USS Enterprise with Captain James Kirk. He later would go on to Captain the Excelsior and would lead such a successful career that Starfleet named a ship after him decades later. 

George Takei, the actor behind Sulu, was a trailblazer for Asian actors in science fiction and someone who has been open about his own experiences and why diversity is so important. Takei grew up in a Japanese internment camp, and when he's not feuding with former co-star William Shatner , he's spending these days promoting his musical, Allegiance , which is centered on a Japanese-American family uprooted from their home and relocated following the attacks on Pearl Harbor. 

Phillipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh)

Phillipa Georgiou was the Malaysian-born captain of the Shenzhou, but perished after engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a Klingon. Her former officer, Michael Burnham, later came into contact with another Georgiou from the Mirror Universe, who was then sucked into the Prime timeline. Though she once lived as a fierce Terran Empress, Georgiou eventually acclimated to the identity of her Prime universe doppelgänger and became a force for good in Starfleet. 

Actress Michelle Yeoh is someone who needs no introduction these days. Yeoh chased her exit on Star Trek: Discovery with the film Everything Everywhere All At Once , which earned her the honor of the first Asian actress to win a Best Actress Oscar. Now, Yeoh will return as Georgiou for a Star Trek: Section 31 movie that those with a Parmount+ subscription will enjoy later this year. 

Harry Kim (Garrett Wang)

Ensign Harry Kim was vital to the successful return of the USS Voyager in Star Trek: Voyager , though he never received the same level of acclaim his crewmates did. Frankly, Voyager did Harry Kim dirty , but those who watch the series will see plenty of great episodes with the ensign performing in even the toughest of circumstances and succeeding. 

Actor Garrett Wang was born in California and has advocated for justice for Harry Kim over the years. Apparently, he almost got an opportunity to reprise the role in Star Trek: Picard Season 3 (via Slashfilm ) but things fell through. Hopefully, Wang will get a chance to reprise the role in a future Trek series and finally get the justice for Harry Kim that he should've gotten on Voyager . 

Hoshi Sato (Linda Park)

Japanese-born linguist Hoshi Sato became one of the first humans to explore space on the Enterprise alongside Captain Jonathan Archer on Star Trek: Enterprise . Among her various achievements as part of that mission, Sato ultimately developed the linguacode universal linguistics matrix that would help future generations of explorers communicate with more ease than in her early years. 

Actress Linda Park was born in South Korea but was raised in California. She seemed to enjoy her time on Enterprise overall, but did mention in an interview with StarTrek.com that she felt most of Hoshi's stories were isolated from the rest of the crew. Park wished that Hoshi would've had more inter-character interaction with the other actors, but did enjoy the scenes that she did have with other characters such as John Billingsley's Dr. Phlox. 

Keiko O'Brien (Rosalind Chao)

Miles O'Brien is the unsung hero of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine , and behind every strong man is an even stronger woman. Keiko O'Brien served as a botanist on the Enterprise D , but when she realized she didn't need to be one on Deep Space Nine, she transitioned to a primary school teacher. Keiko was admittedly not thrilled about the change of scenery but remained a supportive partner and even helped save her husband's skin a few times. 

Actress Rosalind Chao was born in Anaheim, California, and almost portrayed a completely different character in the Star Trek universe. According to an unearthed casting memo from TNG , Chao was the original favorite for the role of Tasha Yar (via TrekToday.com ). That role ultimately went to actress Denise Crosby, and one could argue Chao got the better role in the end, given Yar's short run before being killed off. 

Samanthan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero)

Ensign Samanthan "Sam" Rutherford serves on the USS Cerritos on Star Trek: Lower Decks . Sam is a character that seems to excel in whatever role he's given in Starfleet, but never lets it go to his head. That's a great trait to have on the Cerritos , as the crew often gets into some hairy situations that needs people like him to keep the ship functional. 

Detroit's own Eugene Cordero serves as the voice of Sam Rutherford, who is also of Filipino descent. Cordero is also known for his live-action roles in shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , The Good Place , and Silicon Valley . 

Nurse Alyssa Ogawa (Patti Yasutake)

Nurse Alyssa Ogawa was often seen around Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the Enterprise D , she was one of the head nurses, and later a senior sickbay staff member. In the event that Crusher was away, Ogawa would make reports to senior staff in her absence.

Actress Patti Yasutake might be someone currently in the limelight for her role in the Beef cast for hit Netflix series. Of course, she has had a wonderful career in Hollywood with many roles in television and film. 

La'an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong)

La'an Noonien Singh is the chief security officer on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and a character with a direct link to one of the franchise's greatest villains. La'an is a distant descendant of Khan Noonien Singh, who was one of the main players in the Eugenics wars. La'an is very different from her ancestor , however, and has spent her time in Starfleet doing good for others around the universe. 

La'an is from space, but British actress Christina Chong is of Chinese descent on her father's side. Chong has made a huge impact with Star Trek fans in her limited time in the franchise, and viewers will know her from her roles in 24: Live Another Day and Doctor Who .  

Those looking to watch a whole lot of Star Trek will need a Paramount+ subscription to enjoy a wide variety of it. With that said, Pluto TV also has some Star Trek content available to its subscribers, provided they are fine with watching a rotating playlist. 

CINEMABLEND NEWSLETTER

Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News

Mick Joest is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend with his hand in an eclectic mix of television goodness. Star Trek is his main jam, but he also regularly reports on happenings in the world of Star Trek, WWE, Doctor Who, 90 Day Fiancé, Quantum Leap, and Big Brother. He graduated from the University of Southern Indiana with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Radio and Television. He's great at hosting panels and appearing on podcasts if given the chance as well.

Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2: What We Know So Far

That Time Joseph Quinn Realized He Was Getting Famous Thanks To Stranger Things, And How Jack Black Was Involved

Every Best Picture Winner From The First 40 Years Of The Oscars

Most Popular

• 2 After New Details About Game Of Thrones’ Scrapped 10,000 Ships Spinoff, Here’s How Faithful It Would Have Been To George R.R. Martin’s Source Material
• 3 Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2: What We Know So Far
• 4 Billie Eilish Opens Up About Sexuality After Being Outed On A Red Carpet: ‘The Whole World Suddenly Decided Who I Was’
• 5 As James Gunn Celebrates The Joker's 84th Anniversary, I Have Ideas For Who Should Play The DCU's Clown Prince

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

‘It’s weird how we divide ourselves in so many ways’: actor John Cho on Star Trek, social media and tackling racial stereotypes

John Cho starred as the new Sulu in Star Trek, and was the first Asian American to take the lead in a Hollywood thriller. Now busier than ever, he says the best way to tackle racial stereotypes is to laugh at them

A telling snapshot from the young life of John Cho. He is at college, majoring in English Literature when a drama company commandeers the campus theatre to mount a production of Woman Warrior , based on the best-selling memoir by Maxine Hong Kingston. There is, however, a caveat. In return for the use of the theatre the production company is required to cast a few college students. Enter Cho, who scores a small role. The die is cast.

“It was the first time I met professional Asian actors,” Cho recalls. “Frankly, I didn’t know they existed. I guess I’d seen some Asians on television, but, in my head, they were just people recruited off the street or something. I didn’t know you could work all year, and do that.”

Cho, now 50, and I are sitting in a nondescript room in a mid-town hotel in New York, where all morning he has been answering questions from groups of writers about his new film, Don’t Make Me Go , a small indie with a lot of heart and an unexpected twist in the tail. Cho is tired, having arrived from LA the night before. We sit in chairs opposite each other, while a publicist lurks in the gloom behind me, but directly in Cho’s sightline.

But it turns out that even when John Cho is tired he thrums with a bright, nervous energy. And once in his stride he can take you by surprise, kicking up a dust storm of acute observations. Where others like to simplify, he prefers to complicate, like someone rescrambling the squares of a Rubik’s cube, determined to figure out its logic. He navigates questions with the same care and scrutiny that he’s applied to his work, avoiding the industry’s tendency to pigeonhole by moving nimbly between genres, from comedy to artsy indie to blockbuster, and back again. For someone who came to fame by playing “MILF Guy #2” in American Pie , before his break-out in the gross-out stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle , it’s an impressive evolution.

Then again, Harold & Kumar was not your typical gross-out stoner comedy, deploying a classic American narrative – the road trip – to subvert and obliterate racial stereotypes. The timing, three years into the so-called war on terror, coincided with a growing backlash to the war in Iraq. People were receptive to the movie’s witty but unambiguous critique of what we now call white privilege.

“Its posture towards race is to laugh at it,” says Cho. “Instead of elevating it, it took the stereotypes and turned the sock inside out. Looking back, I think we were ahead of our time a little bit.”

Turning the sock inside out is something that Cho spends a lot of time thinking about. “In America, everyone sees your race first, but that’s not the way you feel,” he says. “I never feel Asian, necessarily – it’s the world that makes me think about it.” Early in the Covid pandemic, Cho wrote an opinion piece for the LA Times in which he described having to warn his parents to be careful at a moment when Asian Americans were subject to a wave of attacks. “The pandemic is reminding us that our belonging is conditional,” Cho wrote. “One moment we are Americans, the next we are all foreigners, who ‘brought’ the virus here.” Although it won him plaudits, he’s ambivalent about being a spokesperson for Asian Americans. “I don’t think I’m informed enough as an actor, and I don’t know the ins and outs of policy, but when something strikes me close to the bone I’ll do it for myself,” he says. “I don’t consider what I’m doing as some kind of clarion call, it’s a self-serving expression.”

The arc of Cho’s career mirrors America’s post-September 11 reckoning. By the time of the Harold & Kumar 2008 sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay , people were ready for change. Barack Obama won his bid for the White House six months later. Cho’s Harold & Kumar co-star, Kal Penn, left Hollywood behind to work in the Obama White House, while Cho landed the iconic role of Sulu in the reboot of the Star Trek movie franchise. He’d grown up watching the television series and was struck by the singular fact that Sulu was played by George Takei , among the very few Asian faces on TV. “He was the only one,” he says. “And it was a really thoughtful show. Even then I was, like, ‘The special effects are hokey, but the ideas are pristine.’ I knew they were trying to say meaningful things.”

When the producers of Star Trek began casting for a new Sulu, Cho quickly realised how badly he wanted the role. “That was the last time I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going do if I lose out on this part’,” he says. “I was like, ‘I’m going to start weeping, maybe I’ll quit. If I don’t get this, the world is going to end’.”

Why was it so critical? Cho had long wanted to do a sci-fi picture, and to work with director JJ Abrams , but it was primarily because of the totemic weight of playing a role made famous by a pioneering Asian actor. Although slowly changing, leading roles for Asian Americans in film and television are still scarce. Takei had proved that it didn’t have to be that way. “It was a mantle that I wanted from George Takei,” Cho says. “I wanted the baton. When he threw it back, I wanted to be the one to grab it.”

Star Trek turned Cho into a bona-fide box-office draw – there have been three movies to date, with a fourth, untitled sequel currently in preproduction. But in recent years he’s gravitated to smaller, less showy independent movies to showcase his repertoire – films like the elegant, emotionally complex Columbus , in which Cho plays the son of a critically ill, architect father, or the 2018 mystery thriller Searching , an unexpected hit, in which a father attempts to track down his missing daughter.

Now there’s Don’t Make Me Go , which recasts the well-worn tropes of the American road movie through the prism of a single parent, Max (Cho) and his mixed-race teenage daughter Wally (played by newcomer Mia Isaac). Cho, who has a daughter of his own, gives a beautifully modulated performance, authentic and true, as a father trying to temper his anxiety for his daughter with respect for her growing independence.

“The attraction of the movie was this elemental bond between father and child,” he says. “It’s weird how we can divide ourselves in so many ways, when the most overwhelmingly important parts of our lives, something we have in common with every human being that’s ever lived, is wanting to do right by the people we love. And yet we’re bickering over everything else that is so much less important to each one of us.”

In Don’t Make Me Go , the purpose of the road trip is for Max to spend quality time with Wally before he succumbs to a recently diagnosed cancer. Along the way, father and daughter bicker, reconcile and deepen their relationship against the rolling backdrop of America’s vastness (in fact New Zealand, where the movie was filmed), and a soundtrack of Iggy Pop’s The Passenger.

Although Don’t Make Me Go plays down the virtues of its multiracial casting, it’s rare to see a movie in which neither of the leads is white. The casting decisions are not lost on Cho; he was drawn to the script in part for the opportunity to play an Asian character with a fully fledged romantic life. “In America there’s scant representation of Asian love,” he says. “And that was really important to me. It goes against the grain of what we see Asians do on screen, which is part of the attraction for me always.”

Cho isn’t wrong. Numbers compiled by the University of Southern California suggest that 58% of Asian men on screen are presented as devoid of romantic attachments. “I don’t want this to sound whiny, but we have been seen as less than men for so long,” Cho says. “I fully appreciate that Asian men who are younger than me may be living in a different world, but certainly my generation was dismissed by larger society so much, and I just know from all my friends that they had a breaking point. And when it happened, you didn’t want to be around to see it, because the clenched fist in the pocket was often literal – it could come flying out. It was definitely a young man thing, but it was also informed by a culture that doesn’t value us very much. We grew up with that, and it took me some time to untangle it and to calm down and to not think that people are after me.”

Much of this is generational. Cho has noticed that his father’s generation – men who grew up in Korea – have thicker skins. “You can call them every ethnic slur in the book,” he says. “It doesn’t matter to them. They didn’t grow up here. I was thinking people in Asia don’t really think of themselves as Asian per se, because they’re the majority – they just are , just as a white person walks around without needing to put an adjective before white.” At university he was similarly struck by Hawaiian students he met. “I was, like, ‘These guys, why are they different? They look like me, but they’re different .’ And then I realised it’s because they grew up in the majority and they had a different posture towards the world. I said to myself, ‘I need some of what they’re drinking .’ ”

Cho moved to the United States with his family when he was six years old, settling first in Texas, but then frequently on the move. His favourite books were Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series about pioneer-era settlers, Little House on the Prairie – tales that celebrated endurance and resilience, but were also very white. What could they offer to a young Korean boy in 1970s America? “Actually, it was the immigrant that made me relate so much to those books. I was reading about this family in a covered wagon, all alone, travelling across America,” he says. “And I thought, ‘This is us, except it’s a Ford Pinto .’ They were literally alone in these unsettled territories and we felt similarly alone in that we were apart from our extended family, and in another sense, we were often the only Asians around.”

Melting-pot America felt far from the Houston suburbs of the 1970s. Cho recalls bringing home a notice from his school announcing the date of the annual “American Dress Day.” If you need to ask what American Dress means in Texas, you’ve not watched enough westerns. “My mum, a Korean immigrant who has just arrived here and doesn’t speak English very well, has to get cowboy boots and a cowboy hat and a western shirt for her son to wear to school.” Cho smiles wryly. “So, that was definitely culture shock, right there.”

Last year, Cho published a young adult novel about the LA Riots of 1992 that were sparked by the police beating of Rodney King , and the related shooting of a Black teenage girl by a Korean shopkeeper who wrongly assumed she was stealing orange juice. It’s a complicated story of race and community with no real heroes. Suffice to say it was another exercise in Cho-style complexity.

“I’m not sure why I needed to go back to that event, but it seemed like it was just a part of our genesis story,” Cho says. “And it lays out a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about lately: how are we here? What are the forces that shape the conditions of the world we’re living in right now? Right now, our discourse has become very slogan-based, and I often feel like it sounds good, but it doesn’t completely work because it’s simplified too much, to the point that you can’t really apply it. It’s not useful any more. We have to actually take it apart to understand it. And the LA riots was one event that I thought could use some disassembly and examination.”

Cho is deeply sceptical of social media’s tendency to reduce complex issues to rhetoric. “If you were to physicalise social media, it would be entering an auditorium full of strangers, two or three times a day, and reading a sentence into a microphone. And then everyone would write down comments on that sentence, and you would read all their comments. Let’s do this every day. What does it do to your brain? Is it good for you? It would be absurd – transparently unhealthy – to feel the need to rush into auditoriums and shout our opinions at people.”

What slogans does he think have simplified a complex question? And here I feel Cho shifting his stride. His voice rises and quickens, the canter turns into a gallop. “I still don’t understand why people are punching elderly Asians in the face,” he says. “I can’t get a handle on that, but I also think, ‘Stop Asian Hate’ [a popular social media hashtag], is that right? Is that what’s going on? What is the dynamic at play here? I feel it’s a slogan that may or may not be useful. I’m not sure that hate is what’s behind it. Is it the non-recognition of our humanity? Is it scapegoating? It’s some combination of things. I don’t know that Asians experience hate in the way that, say, Mexican Americans experience hate in America. There’s a component of hate, but it’s really easy for people to say, ‘I don’t hate Asians so this isn’t my problem, there is no problem .’ But there’s something going on across the nation, because it’s happening all over. And I want to know what it is. I want to know what the root cause is, but you put a slogan to it and then you don’t have to examine it any more.”

Instead, Cho says he’d prefer to reframe the conversation as a question: what’s happening? “We could ask what’s happening a million times, and that’s fine with me,” he says. “We’ll come up with a different answer each time, as long as we keep interrogating it. But the instant you put a label on it and call it something, then you don’t have to examine it any more. Maybe for some people that’s good because you could say, ‘I’m against it.’ But as well as being against it, what you have to do is examine it. And keep burrowing and burrowing under it, and say what’s happening? And then when we learn what’s happening, how do we prevent it from happening again? Because it keeps happening every 30 years. What is the root cause? And when are we going to solve it?”

Cho’s eloquent, raw soliloquy hangs in the air. And then a voice from behind us breaks the silence. It’s the publicist.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, we’re over time,” she says. The energy leaks from the room. Behind us three people sit in chairs facing us.

Cho smiles awkwardly. “Getting incendiary,” he says “Sorry.”

We stand up to shake hands, before I exit through the hotel and into the bright chaotic street wishing that actors would get incendiary more often.

Don’t Make Me Go is now on Amazon Prime Video

• The Observer

Most viewed

• More to Explore
• Series & Movies

Published Jun 6, 2022

Gene Roddenberry Planted the Seeds for Asian Representation and Acceptance

Roddenberry's utopian vision helped shaped the depiction of Asian characters onscreen

StarTrek.com

When I first saw Sulu in Star Trek: The Original Series in the 1970's, it blew my mind. As a child, seeing an Asian man on mainstream TV treated as a friend and equal by his white peers was unheard of. I only realized later the impact his character would have on my psyche and those of countless others. Sulu’s inclusion in Star Trek was groundbreaking. His presence and personality helped to positively shape Western views of Asian Americans. Other Asian actors have since followed in his footsteps.

According to George Takei , Gene Roddenberry said "that the Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for Starship Earth, and the strength of this starship lay in its diversity coming together." Takei was the original Sulu, a Japanese-American cast to represent all of Asia. The character’s name came from the Sulu Sea, which touches several Asian countries. (In the spirit of Roddenberry, Korean-American John Cho was cast as the new Sulu in the reboot movie series.) Thanks to Roddenberry's belief in strength in diversity, he gave us Sulu whose presence helped normalize and integrate Asians into North American culture for the past six decades.

Roddenberry was ahead of his time. Back in the 1960's, he already intuited that there needed to be representation of minorities in his show. They would be seen as real people. Sadly, the rest of society lagged. Western culture continued with underrepresentation of minorities, and even worse, misrepresentation. It wasn't until 2020, that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement made America conscious and motivated to change these practices. The effect spilled over to other minority groups, including Asians. Today we see a plethora of people of color in advertisements, TV, and movies.

What binds Star Trek fans together is Star Trek 's idealistic portrayal of an ideal human civilization: exploring new worlds on a spaceship for the sake of curiosity and adventure, living in a world without poverty or money, and living in a society where those from different cultures would be a reason for closeness rather than distance. There's a sense of inclusion, fairness, and wonder. When I meet fellow fans, I feel like we get each other and that my Asian ethnicity is seen as either a neutral or a positive.

I was born in Canada in 1970 and watched US TV channels. In 1994, I emigrated into the US, and became a dual citizen. I believe the impact of Star Trek on racism in both cultures to be comparable. As a Chinese-Canadian child, I was treated as the "other." In my heart, I wished to become white some day. I yearned to be accepted by the other kids. When I was growing up, the stereotypical Asian TV character was an evil male Karate fighter; sometimes it was a white man made up to look like an Asian man. He hurled strings of foreign verbiage at a white opponent before kicking butt. The other typical Asian character was a caricature of a somber, wise old man, with a long, white Fu Manchu. He used Kung Fu magic to kick butt.

Then, there were the commercials with a young Asian couple who admired their clean laundry. "Ancient Chinese secret," they said knowingly to each other, before looking at the camera. (Alas, there were no karate chops or shrieks involved in doing laundry.) In contrast, seeing Sulu on TV planted a seed in my brain that things didn't have to be this way. One day, I could be seen as part of the team -- a fellow citizen that belonged, not an alien to be feared or bullied (or work in a laundromat).

Sulu was of course no Asian stereotype. He was an everyday person with eccentricities, friends, and interests that went far beyond his Asian heritage. From the viewpoint of a second generation Asian American, I connect with his cultural mix. There are traditions and behaviors that I carry over from my Asian ancestral home while adopting many aspects of Western culture.

Over the course of the show, we see different aspects of Sulu. He had a good buddy, Chekhov, that he joked around with. He was a hard worker that was rewarded for his efforts and skill. He developed hobbies outside of his work, such as botany and fencing. In a memorable scene, while infected with a virus that lowers the crew’s inhibitions, he gets carried away with fencing. Shirtless and thinking he's a Musketeer, he comically confronts crew members in the ship's hallways in the episode “The Naked Time.”

Sulu is also portrayed as a regular guy, with a sense of humor. As part of the landing party to the planet Alfa 177  in “The Enemy Within,” he feels a fondness for a unicorn dog creature he discovers on the planet’s surface. Kirk forewarns that the temperature will drop to -120 degrees overnight, and later, Sulu and other crew members are stranded on the planet's surface awaiting repair of the transporter while back on the ship, Kirk is having an existential crisis as he contends with the evil Kirk. It's a bit of a nail-biting episode, with poor Sulu asking the Enterprise to hurry up and beam them back. When the temperature drops to -41 degrees, Sulu jokes to Kirk, "find a long rope somewhere and lower us down a pot of hot coffee." He adds, "rice wine will do, if you're short on coffee." He faces the challenge of being on a freezing planet with humor, rather than with fear.

Sulu is also portrayed as being a loyal friend who stands by his crew. Decades later in the Star Trek universe, Sulu opens up about his loyalty to his friends on Voyager ("Flashback.")  He tells Tuvok:

"You'll find that more happens on the bridge of a starship than just carrying out orders and observing regulations.There is a sense of loyalty to the men and women you serve with. A sense of family. Those two men [Kirk and McCoy] on trial... I served with them for a long time. I owe them my life a dozen times over. And right now, they're in trouble and I'm going to help them; let the regulations be damned."

Regulations be damned. Sheesh!  Another tear-jerker, Star Trek !

After The Original Series , Star Trek continued to push the theme of being inclusive of Asian Americans. Deep Space Nine introduced an interracial relationship between Miles O'Brien and his wife Keiko. More recently, in Discovery and Picard , we see female Asian lead characters such as both Emperor and Captain Philippa Georgiou, and the synth, Soji Asha. They don't come with an Asian culture connection. Rather, they're everyday people who happen to look Asian. Okay, everyday aliens and androids that happen to look Asian.

In Voyager , Harry Kim is a real catch. He's handsome, smart, likable, and well-rounded. He is also a notoriously awkward dater. Kim's buddy, Tom Paris, thinks Kim goes after the wrong women. Some of my favorite scenes from Star Trek are when Kim attempts to start an intimate relationship with Seven. She more than takes the bait, stunning Kim.

This new way of casting characters feels like progress. It reflects the increased integration of Asians into mainstream culture. In my opinion, Star Trek still remains one step ahead of everyone else in carrying the torch for integrated minority representation on TV.

As we saw during the pandemic, violence against Asians increased. It exposed the underlying racism against Asians still present in our country. Even so, I have hope things will improve. We as Asians have already come this far with regards to representation thanks to people like Gene Roddenberry. Sulu is more than a TV character to me. He represents a great quality of life for American Asians.

Karen Ni (she/her) is a psychiatrist and writer. She is from Ottawa and lives on the Olympic Peninsula where she enjoys performing improv comedy and singing.

Get Updates By Email

Asian Representation in Movies: Best and Worst Examples Through the Years

By Becky Davis

Becky Davis

China Correspondent

• U.S. Drama ‘Green Book’ Touted as Oscar Win for China 5 years ago
• ‘Green Book’ Lands Post-Oscars Theatrical Release in China 5 years ago
• Why ‘Aquaman’ Slayed in China 5 years ago

Film and TV have cemented their fare share of East Asian stereotypes over the years, thanks to decades of yellow face, racist scripts and a lack of roles for nuanced Asian characters. Stereotypical Asian tropes written and played by Caucasians have persisted from the dawn of movie-making, starting with D.W. Griffith’s 1910 short “The Chink at Golden Gulch,” to Mickey Rooney’s unforgettable “Japanese” Mr. Yunioshi character in 1961’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” In recent years, viewers still encountered portrayals like the horrible 2014 “How I Met Your Mother” episode where three white principals dress in silk robes and Fu Manchu mustaches to dispense sage kung fu advice in fake Chinese accents.

The U.S. industry has tried to recover lost ground in recent years with works like “The Farewell” and “Always Be My Maybe.” It can feel like changes are afoot in a year when the Academy has nominated an Asian American best actor in Steven Yeun for the first time ever and put Chinese filmmaker Chloe Zhao in the spotlight as the first woman of color ever given a nod for best director. But for many, such recognition is still too little too late.

Here’s a look at some different ways East Asian American characters have appeared in our pre- and post-“Crazy Rich Asians” world.

GOOD: Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as 'Appa' on 'Kim’s Convenience'

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee’s heartfelt portrayal of a Korean “Appa” in “Kim’s Convenience” brought the old trope of a traditionally minded Asian patriarch to life while staying away from cliches.

The TV show, which follows the travails of a Toronto immigrant family that runs a convenience store, was Canada’s first with an all-Asian lead cast. Although Lee puts on an overblown Korean accent he doesn’t actually have for the role, he’s said that it’s in service of creating a nuanced, three-dimensional character — an archetype, rather than a stereotype.

From the first scene of the first season, in which he tries to prove his acceptance of LGBTQ customers by making up a “gay discount,” Appa’s humor and choices have defied set expectations of how a Korean immigrant of his generation might act. His grounding presence in the store also sets the stage for an effortlessly multicultural picture of Toronto as customers of all stripes file in.

GOOD: Leah Lewis as Ellie Chu in 'The Half of It'

Writer-director Alice Wu, who took on closeted Chinese American lesbian love and immigrant mother-daughter culture clashes in her first feature “Saving Faces (2004),” places the Cyrano de Bergerac story in a high-school setting in the Netflix original “The Half of It.”

Leah Lewis stars as Ellie Chu, the well-read and articulate Cyrano of the film, who discovers her attraction to popular girl Aster as she helps bumbling boy Paul try to win her affections through love letters. The film would have been refreshing enough just for featuring a Chinese American lead at the center of an otherwise recognizable coming-of-age drama, but questions of LGBTQ identity, race and religion twist the film into a less conventional mix. Particularly touching is Chu’s relationship with her widowed immigrant father, who watches old black-and-white films at night to learn English, and her unlikely but charming friendship with Paul, which transcends the politics of the town and classroom hallways around them.

GOOD: George Takei and John Cho as Sulu in 'Star Trek'

The sight of Japanese American actor George Takei in his most iconic role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise, was an inspiration when “Star Trek: The Original Series” first debuted in 1966. At a time of rising racial tensions, creator Gene Roddenberry imagined a world set in a post-race utopian future, where it would be unremarkable for an Asian character like Sulu to command both a ship and equal screen time as his caucasian counterparts.

Since 2009, Korean American John Cho has played Sulu in subsequent “Star Trek” films, with the character coming out as gay in “Star Trek Beyond.” Although Takei has said he disapproves of the choice because he feels it “twists” Roddenbery’s original intentions for the character, Cho said he hoped seeing Sulu unremarkably appearing alongside his husband and child would be revelatory for some viewers.

“Seeing George Takei on television was very meaningful to me, and I hope there’s a similar effect for gay kids watching,” he said in 2016 while promoting the film.

GOOD: Sung Kang as Han Lue in 'Better Luck Tomorrow' and 'Fast & Furious' Franchise

Han Lue has crossed genres and defied death to become one of the first and still few cool male Asian American film characters. First depicted in the fictional world of Taiwanese American director Justin Lin’s low-budget indie “Better Luck Tomorrow,” he has gone on to anchor a multi-billion-dollar tentpole franchise that has been one of the biggest, and perhaps arguably the best, Hollywood vehicles for Asian American representation.

Played by Sung Kang, Han first appeared in Lin’s groundbreaking 2002 Sundance hit “Better Luck Tomorrow,” a landmark film that centered nuanced and imperfect Asian American characters in a way no movie had really done before through its story of bored suburban high school over-achievers who slide into petty crime and chaotic delinquency.

Lin later transposed Sung’s character directly into “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.” Han became a fan favorite, reappearing in four more films in the series despite his apparent death at the end of his first.

Under Lin’s watch, the two-dimensional Asian villains, cliche Chinatown settings and Confucius statues of the early movies disappeared, replaced with lead roles with equal weight for AAPI characters like Han and Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), as well as a rare interracial on-screen romance between Han and Gisele (Gal Gadot) that culminates in a high octane kiss.

BAD: Luise Rainer and Paul Muni as O-Lan and Wang Lung in 'The Good Earth'

Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star, wanted to play the main character O-Lan in the 1937 film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s novel “The Good Earth.” Instead, MGM passed her over for German actress Luise Rainer, telling Wong to test instead for the role of a scheming courtesan.

Wong understandably bristled. “You’re asking me, with Chinese blood, to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture, featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters,” she reportedly said. She eventually turned her back on Hollywood in favor of Europe, where she felt less likely to be typecast.

Meanwhile, Rainer went on to win a best actress Oscar for her performance, acting opposite Paul Muni, also in yellow face.

Yellow face continued in later adaptations of Buck’s works, notably in the 1944 war drama “Dragon Seed,” which starred Katherine Hepburn as “Jade,” a strong-willed Chinese villager.

BAD: Gedde Watanabe as Long Duk Dong in 'Sixteen Candles'

There are few Asian American movie characters as cringe-worthy yet cemented in our cultural consciousness as Long Duk Dong, portrayed by Gedde Watanabe in the 1984 John Hughes film “Sixteen Candles.”

From his first on-screen moment, Dong’s Asian identity is caricatured and played up for laughs, with everything from his name and nerdy middle part to his sexual ineptitude contributing to the joke. Watching today, it seems unbelievable that a literal gong sound plays every time he appears or has a revelation.

The “Chinaman,” as his American host family calls him, is painted as lustful but also sexually unappealing, and is contrasted against his towering love interest, Marlene the “Lumberjack,” in ways that make him appear weak and emasculated. When it seems like he may be dead lying face-down in their front yard, his host family’s biggest concern is that if so, they won’t make it to their social event.

Looking back years later, Watanabe said that although he still finds Dong funny, he was perhaps “naive” about the character’s portrayal. “I was making people laugh. I didn’t realize how it was going to affect people,” he said.

BAD: Emma Stone as Allison Ng in 'Aloha'

At the 2019 Golden Globe Awards, co-host Sandra Oh famously quipped that “Crazy Rich Asians” was “the first film with an Asian American lead since ‘Ghost in the Shell’ and ‘Aloha’” — causing the latter’s star Emma Stone to yell out “I’m sorry!” from her seat in the audience.

Stone was chastened by the blowback to her casting as rom-com lead Allison Ng — a quarter-Hawaiian, quarter-Chinese character proud of her ethnic heritage — in what Variety’s review dubbed “unquestionably Cameron Crowe’s worst film.”

“As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud quarter Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one,” based on a real-life red-headed local, Crowe wrote after criticism grew too prominent to be ignored. He offered a “heartfelt apology” in response to “all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice.”

Stone told the press that the experience taught her “on a macro level about the insane history of whitewashing in Hollywood.” She added: “I’ve become the butt of many jokes.”

BAD: Ashley Park as Mindy in 'Emily in Paris'

The Emmy-nominated Netflix show “Emily in Paris” has been criticized — particularly by the French — for its stereotypes of French people, but less has been said of its Asian characters.

The character Mindy was clearly added to series to give it a much-needed diversity bump and provide a foil for Lily Collins’ titular neophyte, the whitest of white girls. But while actor Ashley Park proves her chops as Mindy, there’s little she can do to make her character feel more authentic in the way the role is written.

Although Korean American Park is supposed to play a mainland Chinese character, every gesture she makes and sentence she utters is clearly that of an Asian American, not someone who spent their formative years in China. And sure, it’s not yellow face, but it’s hard to celebrate any supposed representation when Park is made to speak garbled, incomprehensible Chinese and her friends are portrayed as “Crazy Rich Asian” and “Bling Empire” caricatures.

While some form of Asian representation may be better than none, the lack of cultural specificity informing the Mindy character makes her seem like an invented American concoction of a person rather than a flesh-and-blood, believable human being, playing into the idea that all Asians are the same.

More From Our Brands

The 14 best smartphone accessories for making better tiktok videos, martin short just bought a secluded l.a. home, ncaa names nil registry partner after five-year process, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, bridgerton designer explains how color theory aided penelope and colin’s season 3 glow-ups, verify it's you, please log in.

In Paramount takeover effort, Silicon Valley and Hollywood worlds collide

• Medium Text

Sign up here.

Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Richard Chang

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. New Tab , opens new tab

Business Chevron

BOJ keeps ultra-low rates, projects inflation near 2% for years

The Bank of Japan kept interest rates around zero on Friday and issued fresh estimates projecting inflation to stay near its 2% target in the next three years, signalling its readiness to hike borrowing costs later this year.