Actor Yoson An takes us through his fascinating life in TV, including an anime crush, playing an 1800s hitman and his hidden passion for Love Island.
Yoson An describes 2001’s The Wedding Planner as a “core memory” from his childhood. “I grew up watching it,” he said of the Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey vehicle. “Rom-coms in general are just so fun, good light-hearted family comedies that you can watch with everyone”. For the next few years, the actor was headed towards a future in finance, and never could have imagined he’d one day be in a rom-com of his own.
Two decades later, An is one of the titular dates of Five Blind Dates, a new romantic comedy in which an entrepreneur must, at the behest of her family, find someone to settle down with before she can open her dream tea shop. Having previously starred in Mulan, The Meg and Mortal Engines, he enjoyed having more “lighthearted” material to play with. “I hope audiences have a laugh, but they also get all emotional,” he said.
“But at the same time, because the film is based around Asian culture, I hope they also learn something, and that Asian audiences feel resonance when they watch this.” Playing the role of “ex best friend” Richard, do all signs in the trailer point to An being the romantic lead? “That’s a really interesting observation,” he laughed mysteriously. “I just hope that everyone who watches it feel the love.”
While he may have dodged that particular question, An was more than happy to take us through his fascinating life in TV, including an early anime crush and his hidden passion for Love Island.
My earliest TV memory is… Probably Journey to the West, the Hong Kong TV show starring Dicky Cheung. I used to binge that as a kid. I still love Monkey King stories, it’s very much ingrained in Eastern stories from India, to Japan, to China, a very common story told to children. We see it now in Hollywood adaptations too like Forbidden Kingdom as well as the Disney show American Born Chinese. Same story, just packaged differently.
The show I used to rush home from school to watch was… Dragonball Z. What’s not to love? The more they fight, the stronger they get. To go Super Saiyan and your hair goes large? That’s the childhood dream of so many little kids.
My earliest TV crush was… Android 18 from Dragonball Z. She’s the half-human, half-android. She was so cold, and that was just so cool to me at the time.
The TV moment that haunts me is… I remember it really shocked me when Ned Stark died in Game of Thrones. I fully didn’t expect one of the main characters to be beheaded in the first season. That was a truly shocking moment.
My favourite New Zealand ad is… The drink driving ad where he goes “you know I can’t grab your ghost chips”. It’s hilarious, it’s so funny. You’re talking about a heavy subject but you’re making it memorable by putting comedy in it. Very clever.
My TV guilty pleasure is… I think my biggest one is Love Island. It’s just one of the things you put on and then you get invested into the drama and the relationships. I think my favourite season that I’ve seen is the one with Tommy Fury and Molly Mae. I didn’t expect for them to get together, and Tommy and Curtis’s bromance was so sweet, and then he had that big break-up with Amy and then she left the show. You can’t write that. Real life is better than fiction sometimes, reality TV really is just character study and people-watching.
My favourite TV moment of all time is… At the moment, I’d say it would be in The Last of Us, when Ellie escaped the cannibal. She comes out completely traumatised, Joel sees her and embraces her in this father-daughter moment. He finally says “it’s OK baby girl” for the first time since his daughter died 20 years ago. That moment really got to me.
My favourite TV character of all time is… Homelander played by Anthony Starr in The Boys. Every time he comes on screen he gives me the chills, he’s phenomenal.
The most stylish person on television is… Probably Jamie from Outlander. I really like that 1800s Scottish explorer kind of vibe.
My favourite screen project I’ve ever been involved in is… The most recent one was Creamerie with Roseanne Liang, Perlina Lau, JJ Fong and Ally Xue. Those girls are phenomenal. It was also very memorable to play a hitman for a Chinese camp in the 1800s in New Gold Mountain. The character was so complex – he wasn’t morally good, but he wasn’t evil either, it was hard to root for him.
My advice for anyone who wants to be involved in TV is… Train hard and work on your craft. Because opportunities for auditions always come, but the key is you have to be prepared. Luck is when opportunity meets preparation, I really believe that.
The TV show that defined my lockdown experience… Sweet Tooth, about a viral pandemic that makes the whole world go wild. I remember watching that and thinking it was pretty close to home.
The TV show I wish I had been involved in is… I would have really liked to have been in The Witcher being such a massive fan of the game. I think I just love that universe. I’m not too picky, I’d play anyone in The Witcher.
My most watched TV show of all time is… The anime One Piece. Netflix made it into a live action recently, but I’ve been watching the cartoon anime ever since I was a kid. It’s got over 1000 episodes, so that’s probably my most watched TV show of all time.
A TV show that I will never watch, no matter how many people say I should is… Anything that has over 10 seasons is a bit tough for me. My brain has been fried by social media, and I just don’t know if my attention span is that long.
The last thing I watched on television was… The last two shows I watched were both animated, and I highly recommend them. One of them is Blue Eye Samurai – phenomenal storytelling. The other one is Scavengers Reign, it’s about this cruise ship of people and they crash landed onto the strange alien planet and have to find their way back to the mothership. The whole show itself is so poetic, so philosophical and spiritual, it’s just stunning.
Five Blind Dates is available to watch now on Prime Video.