Stephen Park
speaker
139 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Stephen Park’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Well, I think they were excited, but it wasn't, you know, I think they were excited by the attention I was getting and people were like, wow, he's very successful. But I think, especially for my dad, it was more, there was no solidity. There was no constancy. So my parents also have been with me through long periods of unemployment, you know, struggling with money.
So, you know, over the long arc of my career, they've seen how difficult it's been, but I think they appreciate that.
the fact that I've had the success that I've had but I mean to be honest they don't really understand maybe what I do or they don't understand the work so much I don't know like I don't know if they've seen Fargo you know it's like and I meet a lot of actors like that whose parents like have no clue like what they do or it seems so alien to them and that's kind of been my experiences
I mean, so they've been supportive, but it's always been like, they have no idea what I do.
Same. That was a little bit more shocking because it's like a regular audition. It started in a casting office. And by that point I had, I don't know, 15 minutes set. I didn't really, I was still beginning as a comedian, you know, and I wasn't really, um, like, it took me a while to realize that standup comedy was not my thing, but I kind of had enough to do an audition.
And then when I got called back, um, it was like, Oh, the callback is at the laugh factory. And it was in front of an audience that didn't know that these were auditions happening.
And there was like, I want to say like 15 or 20 of us. I mean, I remember Margaret Cho was one of us. One of them or one of the people auditioning.
Like, do you remember what your... Yeah, I did like, I was doing like a spoof on Asian stereotypes. I then did this bit where I was, I had a boom box. I had them doing it over the PA system where I was doing that bad Kung Fu lip syncing.
And then, um, yeah, in my, my memory, my act was very, it's very, um, it's dissipated, but I just remember it ended with, um, I, I created this, uh, this duo between Bruce Lee and Rambo. And I had, um, Bruce Lee saying that line from, uh,
from enter the dragon you all offended my family you have offended my my what is it my school you have offended my family and then then rambo has his rifle and then i had about five minutes of machine gun fire
to the extreme yes and then and then bruce lee says the line again you have offended my my school you have offended so that was the end of that particular it was so silly and then when they called us back again for another call back again at the laugh factory it was like down to i think five of us or something um then i had to like scrounge for material and i was doing the the
jokes that i was doing like in elementary like i was just coming up with the dumbest jokes and i remember one of them was um all right i'm going to do an impression of um two worms having sex this is my impression of two worms having sex i did that joke at the laugh factory and got on a living color Is that the dumbest joke? I mean, it's so stupid.
I was still figuring it out and I had such a huge opportunity when I was on Living Color to go on the road as a comedian, but I didn't have an act. I had just what I did at the audition and truth be told, I was just, you know, it took me a while to just realize that I didn't have the DNA. Like I didn't, I couldn't live that life.
I couldn't, I couldn't either. It's just, um, like I look at like people that I know, like Bobby Lee or even, you know, Margaret Cho, like, it's like, they were born to do it. You know, they're, they're something, I mean, you know, a lot of standups, they come from some difficult background or some kind of challenging childhood or drug abuse or whatever. So somehow that fuels that career somehow.
And, and also when I was starting to, there weren't a lot of Asian comedians. So also I was extremely like hypersensitive. So I was constantly on the receiving end and a lot of racist jokes when I would sit in the audience. And so it was, I mean, my girlfriend at the time was like saying I shouldn't be doing this just because I would get so depressed.
I would be so angry that I was forcing myself to go into this environment and try to be funny. And it was just I was just not emotionally equipped to to deal with things at that time as a stand up comedian. I couldn't. So it wasn't in me.
I mean, I remember they did a spoof on Do the Right Thing, I remember, which I was like, oh my God, that's crazy. And I never imagined I would be on the show. I mean, when the audition came up and I knew they were looking for Asian-American, they were looking for Latino actors, comedians. And so it was just an opportunity that was an amazing opportunity that just popped out of nowhere.
It was kind of a lot of things. I had kind of a challenging experience just because, I mean, it was fun. I mean, the, the amount of like just table reads where the Wayans would be falling out of their chairs or, you know, it was like, the funniest people in the world altogether in the same room kind of vibe, you know? So it was like, so, so intimidating.
And, um, you know, also being thrown in, it's like being thrown into a situation where everybody's already a family. So you're the, you're, you're the adoptee.
So that was also very challenging. And, um, and then also how I was not on the show anymore also was really challenging because it was not fully explained to me. And I had different explanations. So it was like 90. Yeah. So when I was not asked back, that was the year of the riots in LA.
Showing 21–40 of 139 · page 2 of 7
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