# Any Detectives of Asian ancestry PLAYED by actors of Asian ancestry? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 24, 2015, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348 "2015-06-24T12:50:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/261 "2015-10-30T01:22:33Z")
And, just to keep the discussion of all things DA VINCI’S INQUEST going a bit longer: Mylène Dinh-Robic, who happens to be half-Vietnamese, made her screen debut on the show – which doesn’t _count,_ since she wasn’t playing a detective, but she soon became a regular on 19-2 – as a police officer, which _also_ doesn’t count. But she’s danged plausible as gun-toting law-enforcement in general, is the thing – which is why she was Detective Sergeant Claudette Mackenzie on THE BORDER in particular. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/262 "2015-10-31T01:51:05Z")
As I write this, Grace Park is of course appearing in an episode of HAWAII FIVE-O as Kono Kalakua, which (a) she’s done a hundred times before; and which (b) first got mentioned hundreds of posts ago. But what was she doing _before_ that? …well, she was Boomer on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, of course. But in _between,_ she had a twelve-episode run as Special Agent Liz Carver on THE BORDER: forever finding a body, or tracking a killer – or preemptively investigating a would-be assassin, in hopes that folks thus won’t need to find a body or track a killer – and et cetera. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/263 "2015-11-01T01:52:09Z")
Also, she was in dozens of episodes of THE CLEANER, with Benjamin Bratt as a recovering addict who now helps other addicts turn their lives around – with help from his crew of operatives, each of whom he helped beat _their_ addictions. There’s a _he’s-a-vigilante-but-cops-turn-a-blind-eye-and-ask-him-for-favors_ angle, but never mind that; the point is, Grace Park was Akani Cuesta, who often fielded cases that called for undercover work. Because, hey, what’s the first step in keeping someone away from drug dealers? Why, sending in someone to investigate the drug dealers – say, by convincingly pretending to look to score some drugs! She did plenty of other amateur-sleuth stuff in that one – tracking folks down when their whereabouts are unknown, and conducting surveillance when their whereabouts _are_ known, and spotting folks who are ineptly trying to surveil _her,_ and successfully searching for contraband, and successfully swiping the occasional in-plain-sight item to test for evidence, and successfully swapping out the occasional bottle of pills for a bottle of placebos for to unwittingly wean an addict off the stuff – and even handling the occasional interrogation, easy as passing herself off as law enforcement. (Because, well, why _wouldn’t_ she? She’s danged plausible in the role!) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2015, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/264 "2015-11-02T00:55:15Z")
She was also in WEST 32ND, as Lila Lee – who _wasn’t_ a detective in that one, but was the defendant’s big sister and so plays interpreter for the Asian-American attorney who doesn’t speak a word of Korean – and so cue a top-billed John Cho in that role, investigating his client’s alleged crime in [del]Chinatown[/del] Koreatown. And over the course of the movie, danged if he doesn’t uncover the truth from a key witness before getting the guy who ordered the hit to incriminate himself – but I figure reasonable people can disagree as to whether that profession disqualifies him, so I’ll mention how, amidst all the protagonist’s defense-lawyer sleuthing, Chil Kong ably caught a crook in a lie as Detective Park. (That’s before he played a cop on PRIVATE PRACTICE, but after he played a cop on PENSACOLA: WINGS OF GOLD.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2015, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/265 "2015-11-03T02:40:32Z")
In _Metro,_ Eddie Murphy played the SFPD’s top negotiator – by which I mean the film opens when he shows up at the scene in his sportscar and Detective Eiko Kimura, as played by Kim Miyori, brings him up to speed on who the suspect is and what his demeanor is like and when he entered the bank and why the alarm was set off and how many hostages are in there and whether any of them have been shot and so on. (You may be wondering: _is there a cable-car chase in this movie?_ The answer: _yup._) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/266 "2015-11-04T00:31:47Z")
During seasons one and two and three and four of COLD CASE, Susan Chuang played Medical Examiner Frannie Ching – and while their _whole schtick_ is studying evidence until they can draw conclusions that can be offered as expert opinions when deciding whodunit, I’ve been kinda reluctant to figure that Medical Examiners count. But I figure Ching deserves a pass, for two reasons: one, her typical role on the show was analyzing bodies that have been dead for _years,_ which for my money puts the emphasis less on ‘medical’ and more on ‘examiner’; and, two, she eventually got an episode where she opened a case on her own initiative instead of just reactively playing expert on someone else’s say-so. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2015, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/267 "2015-11-05T02:53:07Z")
Back in 2012, Robert Wu was the guy with both a duck named James Franco and an unfortunate knack for getting attacked by Sam Jones in full-on DEATH TO MING mode in _TED_. (Oh, and he was also Detective Marcus, in _Unstable_.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/268 "2015-11-06T02:55:49Z")
A couple of months ago, I mentioned how **Innocent Blood** gave the lead role to an actor of Asian ancestry: _“James Park, a retired undercover detective, faces his worst nightmare … The cop-turned-professor will have to revert to his old ways when his young son is kidnapped by a mystery man with revenge on his unhinged mind”_. Alexandra Bokyun Chun was in that one, but not as one of the detectives. But she _was_ Detective Hsu in **Where’s Marlowe?** – the one with Miguel Ferrer and Mos Def in a documentary-style movie about filmmakers who think it’d be interesting as hell to do a day-in-the-life piece about a private detective who doesn’t investigate murders or anything but mainly just handles cheating-spouse cases. Spoiler alert: it isn’t. Spoiler alert: _BUT THEN IT IS!_ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/269 "2015-11-07T01:42:37Z")
And back in June, I mentioned how Sung Kang played Detective Taylor Kwon (billed second, opposite Sylvester Stallone as the top-billed crook in **Bullet To The Head** ); what I _didn’t_ mention then (because I didn’t _know_ it, because IMDB only lists his role as “Tae Kim”) is that Kang _also_ counts for his work on **Gang Related** , as the undercover FBI Agent working side-by-side with LAPD Detective Ryan Lopez. The opening credits are [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2EVffXAgf8); that’s him in them, and in every episode. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2015, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/270 "2015-11-08T00:56:31Z")
James Lew was a DEA Agent on the big screen before he was Detective Peter Yang on the small screen – specifically, on ROBBERY HOMICIDE DIVISION. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/271 "2015-11-09T01:17:43Z")
At first, Brian Tee seems to count as bounty hunter Akira Kimura on GRIMM – except we soon see he gladly delegates some of the detective work, because, well, he has a white private investigator on the payroll to surreptitiously (a) track down one of the thieves who was involved in a heist, and (b) conduct surveillance to identify yet other guys who could probably provide a lead on the whereabouts of the loot, and so on. Except, as we _also_ soon see, while Kimura is happy to hire a guy to point him in the right direction, he’s an expert interrogator who excels at taking it from there. (You maybe saw Tee earlier this year in JURASSIC WORLD as Katashi Hamada, the InGen Security Division commander – and go-to guy for tracking skills – who makes swift and accurate deductions regarding the dinosaur du jour?) (C’mon, that’s not a spoiler; you _knew_ there was going to be a guy like that in it. There can’t _not_ be a guy like that. The whole _point_ is that a dinosaur will do stuff that causes a perceptive company man to deliver as-he-figures-it-out exposition.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/272 "2015-11-10T01:42:26Z")
Born in Taiwan as the son of Bao-Mei Smith, Peter James Smith has gotten work on episodes of **Castle** when the plot is bigger than usual and so calls for an FBI Agent to handle the legwork – conducting surveillance, tracing a phone, reviewing a variety of records, creating a feature vector descriptor to run facial recognition – before ably deducing the location of key evidence when our heroes are stymied. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/273 "2015-11-11T02:06:51Z")
On CROSSING LINES, Detective Sergeant Anne-Marie San – the criminal analyst and human trafficking specialist with an eidetic memory – was played by Moon Dailly, an actress of French ancestry on one side and Cambodian ancestry on the other, who’d held down the role of Police Lieutenant Lucy Tran on COMMISSAIRE MAGELLAN. ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/274 "2015-11-11T17:58:01Z")
This may have been mentioned, but there is a new detective series out in Canada on the Omni network, called Blood and Water. Stars Steph Song as the lead investigator for the initial case, and also hosts several other actors of Chinese descent in multiple roles. English and Cantonese are spoken in the show, with both English and Chinese subtitles. I’ve seen the first two episodes, it’s pretty decent so far! [http://www.omnitv.ca/bc/yue-can/shows/blood-and-water/](http://www.omnitv.ca/bc/yue-can/shows/blood-and-water/) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/275 "2015-11-11T18:17:45Z")
Mentioned it a page ago, but IIRC back then it was still in post-production and hadn’t yet aired, so it seems worth mentioning. (That said, I see from a quick look at IMDB that it’s also got Russell Yuen in the supporting role of Lieutenant David Chu – and I _also_ see it’s got a supporting role for Osric Chau, who also has a supporting role in a small movie that just came out: BEYOND REDEMPTION, with Brian Ho in the leading role as an undercover cop struggling to _“maintain his cover while trying to save the daughter of a notorious Triad Boss from becoming collateral damage in a sting operation gone wrong.”_) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2015, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/276 "2015-11-13T00:59:24Z")
Huh. According to IMDB, Sandrine Holt was top-billed in ONCE A THIEF, which – here, I’ll quote [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com): _“Mac Ramsey (Ivan Sergei) and Li Ann Tsei (Sandrine Holt) are lovers and professional thieves who are separated while fleeing the powerful Hong Kong underworld crime lord (Robert Ito) who raised and trained them. After being imprisoned in Hong Kong, Mac is recruited into an international crime-fighting unit by a hard-nosed, menacing Director (Jennifer Dale). There he is teamed with Li Ann, who had believed he was dead, and her new fiancé Victor Mansfield (Nicholas Lea), and assigned to an investigation surrounding illicit business transactions.”_ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2015, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/277 "2015-11-14T01:45:04Z")
Back in 2011 and 2012 and 2013 and 2014, Brian Yang got work on HAWAII FIVE-O as forensic scientist Charlie Fong, doing his thing both at the scene of the crime and back at the lab – right up until a desperate crook straight-up _stabbed_ Fong in hopes of preventing him from giving evidence linking said crook to a string of murders. (Spoiler alert: Fong lived; the crook died.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2015, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/278 "2015-11-14T23:58:52Z")
Reggie Lee’s already been mentioned for being on his fifth season as police sergeant Drew Wu on GRIMM, but I don’t see where anyone’s yet mentioned (a) his time as Bill Kim of the Secret Service on PRISON BREAK – which is admittedly _arguable,_ since he really just spent a lot of time bossing around Paul Kellerman, who’d handle legwork and report back to Kim – but Kim was shown making the occasional deduction and personally handling the occasional interrogation, which maybe counts. But maybe it _doesn’t,_ so just to make sure I’ll add mention of (b) how he’s got a big role as Detective Kenny Park in SUNFLOWER; to quote IMDB: _“After the author George Boulangé disappears from his sailboat one night, Detective Kenny Park must try to ascertain what happened by interviewing his wife, girlfriend and captain.”_ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/279 "2015-11-16T00:55:51Z")
Christina Chong is in the upcoming STAR WARS movie, which presumably doesn’t count; and she made her screen debut as Mei-Ling in CHEMICAL WEDDING, which likewise doesn’t count; but in _between,_ see, she played Detective Sergeant Nicola Rogerson on LINE OF DUTY after playing a Detective Constable on CASE SENSITIVE. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348/280 "2015-11-17T00:44:56Z")
On TEKWAR, the lead character was, admittedly, a white guy named Jake – but it also had _“Lexa Doig as Cowgirl, a hacker who frequently assists Jake on cases”_. I mention this not because it counts, but because she soon followed up as one of the main characters on the crime drama CI5: THE NEW PROFESSIONALS – as, well, the team’s computer expert. (And if _that’s_ not enough, IMDB notes that she then played someone with the bona fide rank of “Detective” – but, c’mon, that’s overkill.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-detectives-of-asian-ancestry-played-by-actors-of-asian-ancestry/723348.md?page=15)