Before he could serve as the logical first choice to star in THE MATRIX, Brandon Lee of course died filming THE CROW, which of course doesn’t count even though he of course spends the bulk of the movie tracking down criminals and bringing them to justice. But before that, he was Detective Johnny Murata in SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO.
Not to mention Chloe Bennett, whose real last name is Wang, as Skye.
Sandra Oh had a recurring role as Detective Shelly Tran on JUDGING AMY.
No, Khan! was the compromise that the exec s at ABC offered to Nicholas Meyer and Khigh Deigh when they decided that they weren’t going to take a chance on a Judge Dee series, with an all-Asian cast and a lot of money spent on historical props, sets, and costumes. They thought they could be just as successful if they updated Judge Dee to 20th century San Francisco and use the same actor (sans his Stan Winston-applied beard) in a business suit. Khigh Deigh played the titular Khan! – not Evan C. Kim – look it up on Wikipedia: Khan! (TV Series 1975– ) - IMDb . I know the imdb entry on the seriessays Kim was the star, but I saw the series – it was Khigh Deigh. Besides, Deigh’s entry on imdb says it was him: Khigh Dhiegh - IMDb )
They had to ditch all but one of Dee’;s – forgive me – Khan’s wives. And they used his kids in place of Dee’s assistants, Tai Gan, Ma Joong, and Chiao Tai (and Segeant Hoong).
They may have thought that Judge Dee fans would stick around, joining the new viewers. But people stayed away in droves. Khan! lasted all of four episodes.
*Is this the first instance – long before James T. Kirk was buried on the Genesis planet – of Khan being followed by an exclamation point?
Just wanted to add that, while she joined the cast as Inspector Chan in Season Three, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa spent Seasons One & Two as SFPD Lieutenant Shimamura, with the defining character trait of looking to quit this job and head back to Hawaii if he doesn’t get promoted to Captain real soon; three guesses how they wrote him off the show.
Sylvester Stallone was top-billed as hitman James Bonomo in BULLET TO THE HEAD, but Sung Kang of FAST AND FURIOUS fame was second-billed as Detective Taylor Kwon.
THE CRIMSON KIMONO was a film noir with James Shigeta as Detective Joe Kojaku, working to solve a murder in LA’s Little Tokyo district alongside Glenn Corbett as fellow Korean War veteran Detective Sgt Charlie Bancroft; love triangle ensues, and it’s Kojaku, not Bancroft, who gets the girl in the end. (And, yes, she’s a white girl.)
Archie Kao spent ten years as surveillance specialist Archie Johnson on CSI, putting in a hundred episodes as That Guy Who Can Install Cameras For A Stakeout, which I’m not counting. But he then joined the cast of CHICAGO PD as Detective Sheldon Jin, routinely doing his job while secretly spying on his superior for Internal Affairs.
Mel Prestidge was a Honolulu Police officer of Japanese ancestry who decided to move to LA and work in the Sheriff’s Department while trying to make it as an actor – and so naturally landed the role of Lieutenant Danny Quon on HAWAIIAN EYE, because that’s pretty much as qualified as anyone ever gets for anything. (Heck, he kept working at the Sheriff’s department during all four years on the show.)
Clyde “Hey It’s That Guy” Kusatsu was Detective Raymond Lau on HUNTER before he was Detective Gordon Katsumoto on MAGNUM PI before he was Detective Danny Cho on WALKER TEXAS RANGER – sure as his movie roles run the gamut from Detective Wong to Coroner Chung to FBI Agent Okura to Police Chief Wu.
(And a lot of judges. Man, has that dude played a lot of judges.)
I stand corrected.
Speaking of expanding on previous answers, KAM FONG AS CHIN HO got mentioned upthread, but I don’t see where Detective Ben Kokua or Detective Duke Lukela or Detective Frank Kamana got namechecked. (That show was on a long time.)
Yes! He was Agent Okura in In the Line of Fire, a great Secret Service action thriller starring Clint Eastwood. A favorite of mine.
Philistine that I am, I’ll declare my love for FACE/OFF.
(Complete with Margaret Cho in the thankless role of FBI Agent who keeps attempting to deliver exposition but over and over and over fails to actually say anything useful. Though she is the one who gets to drop Pollux Troy in hand-to-hand before hauling him away like a good arresting officer should, so she’s got that going for her, which is nice.)
A real Asian actor in a Carry On movie? Not Sid James or Charles Hawtrey squinting?
Heh. I will, though, note that after playing son Tommy Chan a whole bunch of times, Benson Fong fielded roles ranging from “Detective Joe Tsin” to “Inspector Akita”.
Moon Bloodgood, the daughter of a white American serviceman and a Korean mother, played Detective Maya Sunee up on the big screen before landing a recurring role as Detective Michelle Paxson on television.
Well, excluding 13th Century Russia and China…
For what it’s worth, Philip Ahn, who was Master Kan in KUNG FU’s pilot episode and kept at it in '72 and '73 and '74 and '75, was Police Chief Henry Nakamura on THE FBI.
???
While relevant to the thread, it seems pretty much of a non-sequitur to quote the previous two posts prior to writing this.