Randall Park is an actor, writer, director, and comedian from Los Angeles. He may be most known for his role as Jimmy Woo in Disney’s WandaVision, and as Louis Huang in Fresh Off The Boat. However, Park has had an extremely varied career with over 170 credits in his portfolio. He is a great comedic actor and in recent years has shot to the forefront and become a leading man.
Park has lived an eclectic life in Hollywood and his talents don’t begin or end with acting. He is a multi-talented creative mind and is also a respected songwriter. He stands firm in his stance on creating equal opportunities within the TV and film industry and continues to help actors from different backgrounds break into Hollywood. Here’s six things you didn’t know about Randall Park.
1. Randall Park Has A Background In Creative Writing
For actors trying to come up in Hollywood, it can be a smart move to write your way in by creating your own opportunities. Randall Park is a writer turned actor, boasting an undergraduate degree in English and Creative Writing. He has also written his own feature film, Always Be My Maybe, alongside Ali Wong and Michael Golamco, and has written for various TV shows like This Is Not Happening and animated comedy At Your Convenience.
2. Park Is The Founder of The Asian American Theater at UCLA
Park was born in Los Angeles to Korean parents. He graduated from UCLA and later was awarded a Master’s Degree in Asian American Studies. This boded well for him later down the line when he co-founded LCC – The Asian American Theater at UCLA. Park and co-founders Derek Mateo and David Lee started ‘Lapu, the Coyote that Cares Theatre Company’ in 1995 with the aim of providing an Asian-American voice in an industry that was massively lacking in diversity.
The LLC prides itself on its creative expression and strives to maintain its commitment to providing students a venue to write, direct, and act in their own creative endeavors.
3. Randall Park Was Once A Member Of Hip Hop Band, Ill Again
Randall Park’s creative skills don’t end on the screen or at the keys of his typewriter. He was once in a Hip Hop group called Ill Again. Ill Again were a fusion band with a multitude of genres ranging from hip hop, to rock, all the way to jazz. They operated out of the San Francisco and Park was the frontman of the group. The band have since broken up but served as massive inspiration to Park’s character’s band in Always Be My Maybe in 2019. After the breakup of Ill Again, Park and another member formed a new band called Novelists where Park went by his stage name “Randruff.” The band released their first and only album, Bookends, in 2008.
4. Randall Park Had A Collaboration With Eminem
On July 3, 2015, the wacky music video for Eminem’s hit song Phenomenal was released. The music video had a huge cinematic scope and gave Eminem the chance to show off his acting ability again since the 2002 drama, 8 Mile. The video showed Eminem playing a character with a superhuman set of powers who wakes up in a hospital with memory loss but possesses the skill to fight. After taking out some security guards, he comes out onto the street where he bumps into a stranger (played by John Malkovich) before commandeering another stranger’s car. Park played the car owner and had an absolute blast filming with the famed rapper.
5. Randall Park Learned Sleight of Hand For His Role in the MCU
Park was thrust into a new realm of fame when he entered the MCU in 2021’s WandaVision. Park played FBI Agent Jimmy Woo in the Disney+ Mini Series that perfectly blended the style of sitcoms into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Woo may not have had the powers that the other characters had, but he had his own little tricks to show off. When speaking with Polygone about his role, Park had this to say about the impressive card trick displayed in the show:
“Oh, no, that was not movie magic. That was me. I learned it. It took a couple of days, I believe. But I learned how to do it, and I think I mastered it at the time. I don’t think I botched too many takes. Maybe a couple, maybe a couple here and there, but for the most part, I think I nailed it.”
6. Randall Park Completely Forgot He Was In An Episode of The Office
Randall Park has been a working actor for a long time, starring in a variety of small roles in popular TV shows and sitcoms like Curb Your Enthusiasm, House M.D., and one he completely forgot about, The Office. After talking about the power of social media with Conan O’Brien on TBS, Park expressed how he deleted social media apps such as TikTok and Instagram due to the dangers he thought they held. However, upon learning that he was becoming a TikTok star due to clips of his Jimmy Woo character going viral, Park gave social media another thought.
Park later learned that it wasn’t just his new material going viral, older clips were resurfacing too, including his role as Asian Jim in The Office. He told Conan that:
“I was in and out [of filming] in an hour, and I thought “that was really fun” – and then I just kind of completely forgot about it. And then several years later, I’m like, walking down the street and this car drives by and a guy yells ‘Asian Jim.'”
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