Comic will reflect on life as a Korean-American

There’s a comedy clip on YouTube, probably more than one by now, in which a clueless Caucasian man strikes up a conversation with an Asian woman. It isn’t long before it’s clear he has assumed that since she’s Asian she must be an immigrant — certainly not an "American."

Nancy Lee — actor, stand-up comic, Korean-American — can relate.

"That’s what a lot of Asian women go through, expecially over here (in Los Angeles) when there are so many people who don’t know about Asian culture even though Koreatown is huge and there are many Asians," Lee said in a telephone interview. "They always look at us as some kind of object or a mysterious foreign thing, so they try to connect with us in embarrassing ways — ‘How do you speak English so well?’ — embarrassing for them. I think they’re idiots."

Lee will be talking about men, the L.A. dating scene and the experiences of a 30-something Korean-American woman in contemporary America when she headlines Jose Dynamite’s comedy showcase tonight downtown at O’Toole’s Celtic Room. All of Hono­lulu can see her later this month in film actor mode when Christine Yoo’s romantic comedy, "Wedding Palace," opens Sept. 27 at select theaters.

The film stars Brian Tee, best known for his role as D.K. in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift." His character in "Wedding Palace" is Jason Kim, a young Korean-American man doomed by an ancient curse to die if he is not married by his 30th birthday. Kang Hye-jung, who played the ingenue in the dark and violent 2003 Korean film "Oldboy," is the woman Jason hopes will save him. Lee has a major supporting role as Doctor Aunt, one of Jason’s eccentric overachieving relatives.

"He has a pretty large family, there are a bunch of uncles and one aunt, all Korean-American immigrants who came over at a later age so we all speak broken English with a typical Korean accent," Lee said. "I’m a physician, because he comes from a very educated well-to-do family, and we’re all on Team Jason to try to get him married. We want him to be happy, but more than that we don’t want him to die."

She added that the premise of the lethal family curse is a humorous take on the traditional Korean view that anyone who isn’t married by the age of 30 is "over the hill."

"In the Korean culture definitely, and I’m sure many cultures are like this, parents just feel like you’re over the hill and there’s no hope for you after you’ve turned 30 … They always encourage us to get married. That’s the way Korean families greet younger people who are about the marrying age, they ask us straight up in Korean, ‘When are you going to your mother-in-law’s house?’"

The Doctor Aunt character in "The Wedding Palace" is a caricature of Lee’s mother that Lee developed in a college acting class.

"People thought it was hilarious and I just thought ‘That’s my mom,’ and I realized my mom is pretty funny. People thought it was so funny, they said I should do it as stand-up. I never had any inkling to do stand-up until my acting teacher pushed me into it."

Lee’s parents and their experiences speaking English as a second language and adapting to American culture provided much of her material in her early years as a comedian. Ten years later, and with a string of credits in short films and made-for-TV movies, most of what Lee talks about these days comes out of her own experiences rather than her relationship with her parents.

"I grew up in the Bay Area so the norm for me is interracial marriages," she said. "Coming to L.A. was actually a culture shock for me because even though L.A. is a metropolitan city it is quite segregated. A lot of the land mass is segregated by race (so) when I came down it was a shock."

"Dating in L.A. is incredibly tough. It’s hard to find a guy who wants a meaningful relationship so you end up kissing a lot of frogs … I meet a lot of younger guys, but those guys are not interested in marriage."

Take note, guys, Lee is.