新闻周刊:电影《摘金奇缘》如何改变亚裔美国人在好莱坞的游戏规则(4)（在线收听）

It’s personal for the 36-year-old Wu, too. Her own family’s journey began when her parents emigrated from Taiwan to the U.S., where her father found a job teaching biology and genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University. She started acting at 12, playing the mole in a community theater production of The Wind in the Willows, and studied acting at the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College of the State University of New York. After graduating, she struggled to find work in theater, nearly quitting acting to study linguistics at Columbia.

这也是36岁的吴恬敏的个人选择。父亲在美国弗吉尼亚联邦大学找到一份教授生物和遗传学的工作，当父母从台湾移民到美国时，她的家庭之旅就开始了，她12岁开始演戏，在社区剧院演出的《柳林风声》中扮演鼹鼠，并在纽约州立大学帕切斯学院戏剧艺术系学习表演。毕业后，她努力在剧院找工作，差点放弃表演，去哥伦比亚大学学习语言学。

What saved her career, in 2010, was getting dumped. “I never planned to do TV or film,” says Wu. “But because I was brokenhearted over a New York guy, I had to get the hell out of Dodge.” The good news in Los Angeles: She was getting auditions, thanks to Hollywood diversity quotas. But Wu soon wearied of the token roles offered to minorities: the best friends, the funny assistants. “I don’t think I had a single TV audition that was for the No. 1 role.”

2010年拯救她事业的，是被甩。“我从来没有打算参演电视或电影，”吴恬敏说。“但是因为我和一个纽约人分手了，我得赶紧逃离这个鬼地方。” 洛杉矶传来了好消息：由于好莱坞的多元化配额，她得到了试镜机会。但是她很快就厌倦了少数民族象征性的角色：最好的朋友、有趣的助手。“我想我还没有参加过选女主角的电视剧试镜。”

Landing Fresh Off the Boat in 2015 was its own mixed blessing. “Even on that I’m not No. 1—that’s Randall [Park, who plays Wu’s husband]. I love him, and I’m glad he’s in that position, but Asian-American women so rarely get to center our stories. We’re always to the side or objectified.”

2015年参演《初来乍到》是喜忧参半的。“即使在这部剧中我也不是主角，主角是兰道尔·朴（在剧中饰演吴恬敏饰演角色的丈夫）。” 我爱他，我很高兴他处在这样的位置，但亚裔美国女性很少成为故事中心。我们总是站在一边或者客观化。

Wu was always Chu’s top choice for Rachel. The director, whose credits include the film Now You See Me 2 and the upcoming adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights, was impressed by Wu’s Twitter. “It woke me up. The articles she shares, and the interviews she does about Asian-American representation had a big influence on me when I was deciding what movies to make.” (Wu was among Time ’s 100 most influential people for speaking out against sexism in Hollywood in 2017.) The two had a great first meeting, but when her Fresh Off the Boat schedule conflicted with the film’s start time, they reluctantly parted ways.

朱浩伟对于瑞秋这个角色的选择的首选一直是吴恬敏。朱浩伟曾执导过《惊天魔盗团2》还有即将上映的林-曼努尔·米兰达创作的音乐剧《身在高地》的改编版，这位导演对吴恬敏的推特印象深刻。“发人深省。在我决定拍什么电影的时候，她分享的文章和对亚裔美国人代表的采访对我产生了很大的影响。”（吴恬敏因在2017年公开反对好莱坞性别歧视，跻身《时代》杂志评选的100位最具影响力人物之列。）两人第一次见面非常愉快。但吴恬敏当时正在拍摄《初来乍到》，时间和电影的开拍时间冲突，所以不得不依依不舍地分开。