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Talent: Kelly Marie Tran @kellymarietran
Photos: Henry Wu @hello.henry
Fashion: Lisa Hoang @lisanhoang
Makeup: Hinako @hinako_makeup
Hair: Eddie Cook @eddie_cook
As the first Asian lead in a Star Wars movie and the first Southeast Asian Disney Princess, Kelly Marie Tran is no stranger to impactful roles. In her most recent project, Tran takes on the role of Angela in The Wedding Banquet remake.
Back in college, my friends and I made it a point to expand our knowledge of queer cinema, and one of the films we watched was Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. The 1993 queer romcom carved a unique space in LGBTQ+ film history, and watching it a decade and a half or so after its release made us appreciate the impact it had during its time as well as the progress in industry representation since.
Now, another fifteen years later, director Andrew Ahn reimagines the story, shifting its focus: instead of a gay couple and a straight woman, this new take gives us a team up between a gay couple, Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-chan), and a lesbian couple, Angela and Lee (Lily Gladstone). Angela and Lee need funds for IVF while Min needs a green card without his rich conservative Korean grandparents discovering his sexuality. Their solution? Angela and Min will get married, with Min footing the bill for the IVF treatments. But their plan is complicated by the unexpected arrival of Min’s grandmother to plan their wedding banquet.
Tran, who came out as queer in an interview with Vanity Fair about the film in November 2024, sat down with Timid ahead of the film’s release to discuss her character, how this remake reflects a step forward in queer representation, and what she hopes for the film’s legacy.
Kelly Marie Tran: [Lily’s] character wasn't written with a specific ethnicity in mind, and she wanted to make sure that she was specific about this character being Duwamish. The character's name was originally Liz, and she decided to talk to Andrew about changing that name to Angeline, which then would be Lee, for short. Angeline is the daughter of Chief Seattle, [where the movie] takes place. Then we realized a third of the way through filming that Ang Lee was our ship name, which is very, very funny, but that was not done on purpose.
KMT: When we're comparing this reimagining to the original film, something that I'm really excited about is that Andrew and James [Schamus], who co-wrote the script, really widened the representation of queerness. We have a gay couple, we have a lesbian couple, we have a nonbinary character. I hope if there's any legacy at all that we leave, it's the idea that chosen family is still family. [...] Family was defined to me in a very stringent way when I was a child. It was very much a man and a woman and 2.5 kids and a picket fence and this very specific idea about what a family should be. I hope that our film widens the definition of what family is and reiterates the idea that no matter what your family looks like, if it's right for you, then that's right and that's valid.
KMT: Andrew and James did a really good job of capturing a lot of the humor and the overarching themes of the original film. You had a character who was afraid to share his queerness because he knew that that would bring tension with his family. That also exists in our version with Min’s character. But we also have Angela, whose mom is the opposite of that, who is a very avid activist, yet their relationship is still complicated because at the time that Angela came out, her mother did not accept her identity and didn't speak to her for years. So we could pay homage to the original but also highlight different experiences that a queer person might have in their coming out and the tension that comes from that event in one's life.
KMT: She absolutely identifies as a queer person. She's had experiences with different types of people. [...] This is something that I want to do in my life as well, to not question the why or what label I should be touting but recognizing that you can be a queer person and you can love the people that you love, and it doesn't have to mean that you have to have this identity crisis about which label you should tout. [...]
KMT: Matthew Simonelli, our costume designer, is so talented. I was telling him at the premiere that half of Angela's character is her outfits. She's wearing these huge oversized sweaters, huge pants. I kind of see her as this little kid—she's very much emotionally stunted in ways, and she's unable to address things, at least in the beginning of the film. Like you said, a lot of her style sort of is analogous to that.
That moment where she puts on a dress and puts on makeup in order to try and fool Youn Yuh-jung’s character [Min’s grandma] into believing that she's straight and marrying Min—it’s one of my favorite moments in the film and also such a commentary on what it is to be a queer person and how much we have to fight against these stereotypical ideals about what a person is supposed to wear and how they're supposed to present themselves.
The idea of being queer at all to me is that you can be exactly as you are. You don't have to put yourself in boxes. You don't have to listen to what traditional society has required of certain types of people. That's the most beautiful thing, to see a character like Angela who's so comfortable with herself. She wants to wear what she wants to wear, and the only time you see her uncomfortable is when she's forced to adhere to these conventional ideals of what her gender expression needs to be. And done with such humor—it's a genius way to address that without even any words.
KMT: The relationship between Angela and May [her mother] in the film is one of my favorites. Their journey throughout the film is so Asian to me, because Angela finally confronts her mom, and when she does…. She doesn't want to hold back the tears. And then after that, they don't talk about it. They don't ever acknowledge that they had this huge [confrontation]. That, to me, is so Asian that you would have this big emotional moment, and then just sort of skirt around it, and then May starts showing up for Angela in a different way, which is really beautiful.
KMT: I have no idea. [laughs] We have to make a second film now so that we can address this specific question.
That scene was actually scripted. There were lines. Then Andrew decided, “Hey, let's try a silent version of this.” He was guiding us through it, and the thoughts that were running through my head were the circumstances of the scene, which are: Lee has left. Lee is not responding to Angela's texts, and there's a really good chance that even after nine, ten years of this couple being together, they might not be together anymore. So the first moment is this shock that Lee has returned, and Lee's in the garden where she always is. [...] There's nothing to me that is more emotionally moving than the relief of having a person be there when you thought they would never be there. The reality of that is so heavy.
The moment in the garden where Lee turns around and gets up, you're not really sure what she's gonna say or what she's gonna do, and then she looks up at Angela and gives her this little shrug and this smile. It's permission for Angela to be no longer in this fight or flight state where she feels like, “Are you gonna stay? Are you gonna be here?” That moment for me, was almost her saying, “I still love you.” And so it was so emotional. What a reconciliation.
KMT: I think the first to crack under sleep deprivation is Chris. He is a wonderful, lovable mess. Min probably tells the best bedtime stories. He has such a warm, wholesome nature about him. He's very childlike in the way that he sees the world. It's almost like you can see these little hearts in his eyes everywhere he looks at the world. And Lee is such a grounding figure to the rest of these messy millennials in the film. She would probably be the best at any sort of diaper changing, making sure that we get these kids to appointments, and making sure that we're doing the things that parents are supposed to do.
There's that moment in the film where Min and Chris are joking and Chris is like, “You're giving me poop? I have to do the diapers?” I could see little arguments about diaper changing happening. But I would hope that by the end of the film, Angela has grown so much that she can really accept what motherhood is about and accept that she's gonna mess up, but that she's gonna show up and try instead of avoiding things. So maybe we give her poop.
KMT: I'm so grateful for these parts of my identities—for being an Asian person, a child of immigrants, a queer person. I've learned so much about what it means to be all of these identities walking through the world. To have come from a place where I was taught to be ashamed of these identities, and now to be in a place where I'm making art about those things, is the most healing thing that I don't think I could have ever wished for or even foreseen.
This past year, I got to work with four Asian writer-directors. It's a dream, and I hope to continue to make art about these parts of myself and to recognize the internalized racism, misogyny, and homophobia that exists in me and in our society today. As a straight person, I don't think that you can understand internalized homophobia. As a white person, I don't think you understand internalized racism, and as a man, I don't think that you can really understand internalized misogyny. These are things that you don't have within you unless you have to live with that identity. You may understand what people are saying about those identities, but if you are not that, to hold that, and to have been taught that, and to have this internalized shame, and learning to overcome that, is a really difficult thing. So I am really proud that not only am I in a place where I can select the things that I do and work with people who are celebrating these identities, but also I'm really proud of the therapy work I've done and every support group that I've been in.
I really believe that I will not take a job unless I'm mentally healthy enough to do so, and it's because I need this time in between to recognize the things in myself that I want to change. We all grew up in the same world, and we all recognize the things that are hard about existing here. It's really hard to be alive sometimes and recognize that there are so many injustices that are constantly happening in the world today. How do you go on a press tour and celebrate being in a movie like this when you also are recognizing that queer people are being persecuted? How do you hold those two things at one time?
[...] My career has not been that long, and I've had to hold all those things at this end. It makes me think a lot about the world that we were promised as children. When we grew up, we were told that this country is the land of the free, home of the brave. Everyone here gets to pursue their own happiness. I don't think that's true, right? And I'm still trying to reckon with that, and trying to figure out ways in which I can help to get this world towards what we were promised versus what is, and the ways that I can work on myself.
I had these ideas about what I could and could not do because I was a woman, because I was Asian, because I grew up as the child of immigrants. It took me so long to even open my mind to the idea that I could pursue acting because I came from a family that did not believe that was for me or for us. That's a very common experience in the Asian American diaspora, that art is for a very specific type of person, and we were never given space there. The work of reexamining those false narratives and how damaging they can be is the only way that I've gotten myself to where I am today, and I hope that future generations don't have to do all that work because it's exhausting, expensive, and so many people don't have the privilege of therapy or support groups. The hope is to continue to make art about these different identities and these experiences, and hopefully down the line, young people will not have to do as much work to recognize their self-worth despite society telling them otherwise.
Disclaimer: This interview was edited for length and clarity.
The Wedding Banquet was released on April 18, 2025.
