‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’ Star Lana Condor on How Playing the Girl-Next-Door Is a Big Step for Asian Representation in Hollywood
Adopted from Vietnam at four months old, actress Lana Condor had a kind of unconventional way of growing up, quickly recognizing her adoption as a blessing. From Vietnam to Chicago to Washington to New York and finally to Los Angeles, Condor grew up as a performer and quickly immersed herself in the arts. What began as a passion for dancing soon translated to a passion for acting as well. "I moved to LA for my sophomore year of high school, and that's kind of when I got into acting. I just joined the drama club and fell in love with it. I love making people laugh and entertaining people! And being in LA, everyone's an actor, so I figured why couldn't I be one?" And that's exactly what she did. Condor’s nextstep was to get an agent, which took quite a while as she was new to the industry and didn’t have much experience. That certainly didn’t stop her. How did she respond? She trained and trained, investing time into acting classes and intensives, and finally landed an agent during her senior year of high school. Since then, she has only begun to soar as an actress, with her perseverance and dedication allowing her to become a rising star in the entertainment industry. Booking “Jubilee” in X-Men: Apocalypse after only her third audition in Hollywood, playing “Li” in Patriot's Day, and recently starring in Netflix's To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Condor proves that she is unstoppable.
Based on Jenny Han's bestselling book, Condor stars as protagonist “Lara Jean Song Covey” in To All the Boys I've Loved Before, playing a high school junior who lives in her own fantasy world. Your typical high school girl who wants to fit in, Lara Jean does her best to be invisible. Her only friends are her family and rebellious, spunky Chris. Lara Jean is quirky, loyal to her family, and prefers being an onlooker rather than the center of attention, shown by her habit of writing love letters. Whenever she has a crush, she writes him an intense love letter and hides it in a box, intending on never sending the letters. Using them as a way to finalize the end of her crush on these boys and move on, Lara Jean keeps these letters a secret. When her five secret love letters somehow get mailed out, Lara Jean finds her quiet high school existence turned upside down. This leads to Lara Jean and former crush from the fifth grade Peter Kavinsky, played by Noah Centineo, to embark on a fake-but-maybe-real romance in order for Lara Jean to avoid her feelings for the ex-boyfriend of her sister Margot. "She has a lot of walls up to protect herself because of many reasons, with one of them being that she lost her mom at an early age. Her letters get sent out, all chaos ensues, and all of a sudden she finds guys who she never even knew that she loved, and they all know all at once! At the end of the day, the learning to let down her walls and open herself up to others, to be herself, and how to love is pretty much what [the film] is all about, and it's really beautiful." An awkward series of the firsts of high school alongside a sweet family dynamic and a unique love triangle, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before proves to be both a perfect book and a must watch movie. The movie is not only a high school romantic comedy but also features important topics such as growing up, relationships, feeling alone, and so much more, making it a relatable story for anyone, regardless of age or gender.
As her first romantic comedy role as well as her first time being a lead, Condor had several connections to Lara Jean and her story, seeing herself in Lara Jean’s shoes when she first read the book series. Describing how she bonded with Lara Jean, “There’s so much, I think, in talking in kind of the coming-of-age category. I think what resonated with me there is that sense of isolation because I think everyone at a certain point in their childhood and their teenage years can definitely relate to feeling isolated or being afraid to be yourself around your peers. And that to me, I identify with that so much.” Connecting to Lara Jean’s fear of being rejected by others, Condor felt the same way during her high school years. While conquering this fear is no easy task, Condor advises to young viewers of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, “Every day I’m working on confidence. Everyone is self-conscious or has fears, but if you can’t tell yourself you’re beautiful, then turn to your friends and your family. And the way that your loved ones see you through their eyes is the way that you have to see yourself.” Well said, Condor.
“I think there are roles for Asian Americans in Hollywood. the difference is: I don’t think there are as many dynamic, non-stereotypical asian characters in Hollywood.”
In addition to the story itself, what makes To All the Boys I've Loved Before stand out from any other coming-of-age film is that it features an Asian American as the lead role. To All the Boys I've Loved Before follows Lara Jean, who is half-white and half-Korean, and her widowed father and two sisters. “Working on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before where the dad is white was actually very comforting to me because my dad's white in real life. So it wasn't hard for me to suspend my disbelief that that could actually be my family. So that was really beautiful. There's a couple of scenes in the movie where I'm having these deep conversations with my dad, and I just felt so at home because this is what I know.” While previous movies starring Asian Americans have put an emphasis on Asian culture, To All the Boys I've Loved Before shows that Asian American girls can fall in love and be the typical girl next door; "When I first started acting, I was talking to my agent and he said to me, ‘Our goal should be for you to be able to play just your average girl next door. Not a computer geek, not a nerd, nothing like that. Our goal should be for you to take roles where you can play just a girl next door because that is where we'll see change, when Asian Americans can just be your freaking average girl next door without having to make a joke like, She just got into Stanford early admission and she plays the violin.’"
Hinting at Lara Jean's Korean roots with mentions of Korean face masks and yogurt drinks, the movie is able to sneak in little references and allusions that Asian American teens can relate to. Joining the list of the very few movies that highlight Asian Americans as leads today, the movie not only feature a refreshing cast with Asian American representation but also creates a storyline that resonates with anyone. "I think that it’s so important for younger Asian girls to see that on-screen and recognize that seeing a young Asian American girl onscreen is not some weird concept. Jenny Han, the author of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, actually put it really perfectly. She said that Asian girls can fall in love too, and it’s not some crazy, like, ‘What? I’ve never thought about that before.” Anyone can fall in love, but it has yet to be common to see an Asian American teen falling in love on the big screen.
The fact that a character like Lara Jean is so unique stems back to the lack of Asian representation in Hollywood. There has always been a lack of Asian American representation on both the big and small screen for young people. The limited number of Asian Americans who were in the movies were mostly the characters you forgot about, the boring best friend or the nerd who had a few comedic one-liners. Condor reflects, “It’s funny because growing up, I wasn’t aware that I wasn’t being represented as a child, but as a teenager in high school, if I saw Asian Americans in leading roles, that would have meant a lot to me. It probably would have instilled more confidence in me when I was going into Hollywood, knowing there were lead roles for people like me. But now, as an adult, it’s really exciting to see the steps Hollywood has been taking towards representation.” Asian Americans were never the girl-next-door until now with To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
Early on in her career, Condor was aware of her responsibility as an Asian American actress working in Hollywood. “I do genuinely feel that Hollywood is making baby steps, and I think that’s the very start of change. I think that I’ve been very lucky in my career, that I haven’t had as much as I’m sure people before me had, but I will say, that being said, I think there are roles for Asian Americans in Hollywood. The difference is: I don’t think there are as many dynamic, non-stereotypical Asian characters in Hollywood.” Alongside To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, with this summer’s release of films such as Crazy Rich Asians and The Meg, is “hoping all of those movies will continue to further the change.”
Like her role as Lara Jean in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Condor is an amazingly humble and genuine person, cracking jokes during her photoshoot, candidly speaking her mind about representation in Hollywood, and even embracing the struggles of being your typical young adult. Her ability to be herself while portraying such diverse characters, from Lara Jean finding herself and path in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before to bold and colorful mutant Jubilee in X-Men, is a testament to her quick rise in Hollywood. The key to staying authentic to herself and her roots? Her family. “I spend time with my family, and I also think about this all the time, but I also think of where I easily could have been if I hadn’t been adopted. That’s actually a very real thing for me and in adoption; the parents will come and they’ll go to these orphanages, but there are hundreds of children. So it’s very easy not to meet them all. And I always think it would have been really easy for my parents to just have missed me. So I constantly remind myself that the life that I’m living right now is a blessed one. And that really humbled me, remembering where I came from and how it could have been in a second.”
From landing her lead role in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Condor has no plans of stopping! She’s set to star as “Lexi” in rom-com Summer Night, “Saya Kuroki” in Syfy’s TV series Deadly Class, and “Koyomi” in Robert Rodriguez’s science fiction film Alita: Battle Angel, which is based on the graphic novel series by Yukito Kishiro and is set for release at the end of this year. In Condor’s words, “I’m excited for everything!”
STORY JANICE KIM
PHOTOS ANNA ZHANG
HAIR & MAKEUP AMANDA WILSON
