The Cast of ‘The Wedding Banquet’: Queering the House and More

by Heesun Park

In collaboration with James Schamus, a co-writer of the original iconic 1993 queer romcom by Ang Lee, Director Andrew Ahn boldly and dynamically reimagines The Wedding Banquet for a 2025 audience.

While the original film centers around a simple, albeit trope-y, plot of a Taiwanese man who must marry a woman to appease his traditional parents despite being in a happy gay relationship, Ahn makes the daring decision to widen the scope of the story by doubling the stakes and doubling the relationships. In the 2025 film, Min (Han Gi-Chan), in need of a green card to quell his grandmother (Youn Yuh-Jung), the matriarch of a multinational corporate empire, pops the big question to his commitment-phobic boyfriend, Chris (Bowen Yang), only to be rejected. Desperate for a solution, Min turns to the pair’s closest friends and lesbian counterparts, Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone), and offers to fund Lee’s IVF journey in exchange for Angela’s hand. Following in turn is a chaotic and imperfectly perfect story about queer and cultural identity, found and chosen family, and the idea of seizing the opportunity for happiness even when it requires us to be at our most vulnerable.

In today’s ever-regressing landscape, Andrew Ahn’s 2025 multi-layered reimagining of The Wedding Banquet is sure to become a fruitful place for vivid responses and discourse. At a roundtable discussion alongside other vibrant AAPI journalists, 0613focus had the opportunity to hear directly from the cast of The Wedding Banquet prior to its official theatrical release on the experiences and themes embedded within their performances.

[The Wedding Banquet] touches upon important issues in terms of what the definition of coming out and not coming out is for Asian cultures and communities. How do you personally interpret this idea of coming out or not coming out in terms of the film and how does this film cut through this supposed taboo of being gay in conservative Asian culture? (Erin Chew, AsAm News)

BOWEN YANG: I think what the movie portrays in different sort of iterations is this idea that coming out is a separation process. That it sort of excises you from your family. Min feels like he can't come out to his family because it would cut him off from something that he feels rooted to. Angela had a pre-tumultuous coming out that ended up boomeranging back into, like, overcorrected acceptance and therefore she still feels alienated even though it feels like it's this thing that's being embraced about her now. I feel like the movie does a really amazing job of mending those wounds as the story progresses. 

So, as to how it relates to Asian culture, I feel like we're still kind of collectively figuring out how to move into those spaces of acceptance that feel kind of uncomplicated and don't have an asterisk put on them, because I feel like  [The Wedding Banquet] does kind of feel a little relatable—and there's a power in that. 

KELLY MARIE TRAN: Yeah, I agree. I also think [Min’s] coming out and the idea that Chris takes care of them in this process is also such a beautiful depiction of what a coming out can be if you have a family that doesn't accept you, but then you have a queer elder taking care of them and becoming their guardian.

HAN GI-CHAN: I can't say a lot of things because I'm still learning about [coming out], but I also want to echo Bowen. I still think that not only Korea but also Asia have a little kind of in-closet moment for all of those people and I really want this movie to be changing the point of view for them. 

LILY GLADSTONE: I can't speak a ton to this, but I think the counterbalance that we found in our film is obviously the humor—like the de-queering of the house essentially is tucking yourself back in the closet. (Yang, Han, and Tran laugh). You know “straightening up”—and, from my perception, also dismantles some of the stereotypes about Asian representation and Asian families. Particularly like the tiger mom sort of a thing. You know, we do have it completely set up [that Ja-Young is the tiger mom character]. But then it's clarified that this is coming from [her husband,] the grandfather. That this is coming from something that represents a patriarchy that manifests itself different ways worldwide, but we all live in a capitalist society—(Gladstone sighs)—so, anyways, no thesis, no queer theory. It takes fun out of everything. (Yang, Han, and Tran laugh)

YANG: I’m having a blast!

GLADSTONE: But I love the other counterbalance that you just see—even though we have this scene that's very humorous and fun of tucking all of ourselves back in the closet—as soon as Halmeoni shows up, as soon as Grandma shows up, she just sees right through it because she knows her grandson. I love that it's a matriarch who cuts through that so sharply and just calls it out, deals with it, goes on her own journey with it, and lands in loving her grandson. I just love the way the film approaches all of it.

Found family is such a core theme in this film. Can you talk a little bit about what that means to you and how you feel that the film explores that? (Mai Nguyen, Asia Blooming)

HAN GI-CHAN: For Min especially, Min is still in the closet in this film and because of his family reputation and Korean traditional culture, it puts a hard pressure on Min. And that's why he feels so free when he's with Chris and his friends. He really wants to be a family with all of these friends but when Grandma shows up and it's like a total mess—I feel that this is kind of a thing where you always take an adventure when you do something for love. Choosing your own family, like finding your own family, is a brave thing. 

GLADSTONE: I was really happy having the opportunity to indigenize my character, who was not written with any ethnic specificity or cultural background in mind. So I got to suggest—because we were shooting in Seattle, because we chose that our home would be in a neighborhood called Ballard—to make my character Duwamish. In metropolitan areas, there are natives from all different tribes, but I felt there was something important here to ground it exactly in place. And part of just my own being a Blackfeet, Nez Perce native person, I have my own sort of perspective that's shared kind of widely through Indian country. We're not a homogenized society, but there are some things that are kind of common. 

And one of those is this concept of chosen family. We keep really tight record orally—and for [the] last couple hundred years, for government purposes, on paper—of our family lineage. Where I grew up, there were two things that were just kind of imparted to me, either through direct teachings or just things that you realize are part of your culture when you leave it. [One of those is that] adoption is as good as blood. When you're coming of age and you're starting to date around, your family lets you know who you're related to and who you're not so you don't cross those lines because they're very strict [about that]. Even if it's removed by five or six generations, if you’re family, you're family. Our sense of time and our sense of family is much tighter than a lot of Eurocentric ways of thinking and systems. 

There's a whole family tree where I come from that we're related to three or four generations back through an adoption, not a biological relationship. But that whole branch is off limits for marriage too because adoption is as good as blood. 

When I was hitting middle school age, when you're developing a sense of sexuality or noticing it in other people—I remember it was a few years after Ellen DeGeneres came out publicly, so there were suddenly conversations about queerness that were propping up. This was when I was still largely living on my reservation. One of my mom's good friends, who was a language keeper—I had asked her what the Blackfeet worldview was about it. She was like, “Well, I don't know if there is a worldview really, but I just know that in society one of the revered roles of queer people was taking care of children who were orphaned.” So in this significant period of time where there's starvation, where there's colonization happening, and a kid is orphaned, the two-spirit, non-binary, queer community members will be the ones that would adopt and raise and take care of the kids. So all of that just kind of felt really foundational to a worldview. When I was building Lee, I spoke to a lot of modern urban Indians who are working in progressive organizations. One of the big things we talked about is decolonization and it felt like this film and the structure of it was just an act of decolonial love so old it's new.

YANG: Hearing Lily talk about chosen family basically converging into, quote unquote, fixed or real or biological—however you wanted to define it—family, I think it just reminds me of how the film converges those concepts too. It's like this chosen family that lives together ends up, by the end of the film, becoming bound together by their children and then, between Angela and Min, they choose their biological family to bring them into the fold after years of being alienated by them. [Angela] brings in [May], [Min] brings in Halmeoni. They become chosen family by the end too. So it feels like there's a convergence. 

This question is mainly for Han Gi-Chan and Kelly, but it's also for everyone else if you would like to chip in. I'm really intrigued by the way in which you guys respond so strongly to different interviews about how you worked with the film. Like Kelly coming out in a different interview for The Wedding Banquet and Han Gi-Chan working with American cinema. So I'm interested to hear your opinions and your reflections on how your personal identities come to fore with The Wedding Banquet and how this film affected you in its filmmaking? (Grace Han, Asian Movie Pulse)

TRAN: Great question. I think as an actor—I think most actors do this—I think that whenever you're given the privilege of playing a part where you can use your own personal experience and sort of melt these two beings together—yourself and your character—by the end of it, it's almost like “Oh, I don't even know the difference.” The lines are watery and I feel like that's when you know you kind of did the job. You're like “Okay, I don't know where these lines are anymore.”

And like you said, I did not mean to come out during that Vanity Fair interview. 

GRACE HAN: Congratulations!

TRAN: We were filming the Korean wedding scene that day and it was such a busy day and then there was a lot of overwhelming excitement and all these different emotions. David Canfield—who came to set to just ask us about the film and how it was going—his first question to me was, “What are you most excited about?” And I said, “I'm just excited to tell a queer story as a queer person,” and then I was like “Oh no!” 

But David as well as Joe Pirro—who's one of our producers—were both so kind to me. I know this is not normal, so I feel like I want to acknowledge that they both gave me the space and the time to consider if I wanted that information out in the world. That was so loving and that was not something that they were required to do. But I think that says a lot more about the community that we had making this film. We were so supportive of each other and able to recognize each other's emotional experiences and what it meant to be making a movie honoring this part of our identity that historically—and also right now, unfortunately—it's complicated to share that part of you when you're recognizing that society as a whole in America is persecuting that community. What does that mean? 

So it was a complicated experience but I am so grateful that I had the community around me that I did and that this film celebrates that community that I am so happy to be a part of.  

HAN GI-CHAN: Period. (All laughs)

For my experience, I have a kind of simple answer for that. It was fascinating all the time working with all this English cast for the first time and being in a Hollywood film for the first time. That's like a total dream and an adventure I had gone through. I think I'm still dreaming, you know?

HAN: You are. (All laughs)

HAN GI-CHAN: I don't want to wake up! I want to be trapped in this dream the whole day. 

And for the personal question of myself relating to this film, I have a similar answer to Kelly’s also. When I portray another character, I used to think that, between me and that character, we have a different history and background. So I always use a part of myself as an actor. Also, for this film, I really shared a lot of characteristics with Min because Andrew had such a good script on Korean traditional culture and what family expectations we have in Korea. And I have an experience shared with Min because Min has familial expectations from his grandmother and grandfather. And, for me, as to my family—my mother and father—they had also expectations of me. But I kind of threw that away to become an actor. It turned out pretty good. I used a lot of myself in this film and this all came together with this incredible God's luck to make this adventure, so I feel extremely lucky. 

This is a film written by James Schamus, who also wrote the original film. He understands the concept of what Ang Lee did. So what does his involvement in this film mean to you guys? (Nobuhiro Hosiki, Cinema Daily US) 

YANG: It's the perfect connecting thread to the original. They are very different textures of films and they take place in very different times, obviously. I feel like having James there, who has been this close collaborator with Ang, kind of blessed it. It’s been so meaningful. I learned this week that he added the scene of Joan and Youn Yuh-Jung, where they, the matriarchs, have the actual only wedding banquet.

He wrote that after the first couple drafts. It was his idea to just have the two of them have a little get together. So I feel like he just has that guiding hand that I think Andrew obviously appreciated and that we definitely appreciate. [He has] such a wonderful mind. I can hear him talk about a film all day.

GLADSTONE: He preserved the original and everything that was so charming about the original, but kept it so flexible enough that it was adaptable. I remember when the announcement came out, everybody close to me was like, “So which character are you playing?” And it’s just like, well, you know, there's proxies. We’re proxies for all three characters. It's just split between everybody and then it adds these new circumstances that kind of update it for a more modern conversation. It was just really clever. The whole adaptation while preserving the heart of it. 

We're all just thrilled because he's continuing the life of The Wedding Banquet through this iteration with these four characters by turning it into a libretto, an opera for the Metropolitan Opera of New York. It will be premiering in the next few years.

One of the most exciting aspects of the film is how it normalizes love and queerness not through grand declarations, but through beautifully intimated domestic moments. Like Lee tenderly caring for her plants or Min creating art pieces, or Chris’ bird seeing. These quiet acts of love and creativity reflect joy and connection in a very profound, human way. So how important do you think it is for love stories or especially LGBTQ+ stories, and especially those centered around Asian characters, to be told through these kinds of everyday authentic moments? (Aayush Sharma, Coastal House Media) 

YANG: It's important in any kind of love story for these moments to really impact—I think for me personally and for my friends who watch the movie—they always point out the scene of Youn Yuh-jung seeing her hanbok for the first time, the hanbok that Min has sewed for her. Just a wordless scene. A scene of no dialogue, just scoring and beautiful cinematography and beautiful acting. I've had multiple friends burst into tears and that's not even the midpoint of the film. It's like, “Oh my gosh, we already earned this emotional punch this early on?” 

They point that out and they point out the scene between Kelly and Lily at the end where, again, no dialogue. Just small gestures and some subtextual communication. That's kind of as small of a gesture as can be, right? There is literally no declaration beyond what is being communicated through body and through just pure emotion. I think hopefully, this movie is just as much of a testament to those being just as, if not more, impactful than any sort of fun tropey rom-com thing—which I love just as much—but, I mean, I love that we get a sort of alternative programming in this.

GLADSTONE: I seek [everyday authentic moments] in film. I love stories that make things feel very textured, very real, because 90 percent of our communication is nonverbal. Film is a medium that allows for that. 

For some reason, when you were asking the question, I was imagining, [from] 20 years ago, Michael Scott from The Office’s interpretation of queerness. He makes this flippant comment after being really homophobic toward Oscar in the office about, “No, no, no! I'm the least that way! If I were gay, I'd be at the front of the parade waving that rainbow flag!” That made me think of Joan Chen's character.

YANG (laughing): She’s the Michael Scott!

GLADSTONE: I think if you're loud and proud, it's celebrated. We love that. But for a long time it feels like that was the only space queer representation and queer love got. If it was very sexualized. If it was very in your face. If it was very commercialized, almost? I feel like any story that gives you the space to come into the house and recognize the smaller human moments that you may not even be aware of in your own life, but you feel like—I think actors, we get trained to really know those small gestures. I don't know if you're always checking in with that as a person in your own life unless you're seeing it represented. I don't know. I think just tender sweet feels like a normal slice of life not sensationalized but really grounded.

While watching the film, I felt as if Angela’s character carried a lot of the story’s emotional weight. From the very beginning, she was dealing with a strained relationship with her mother and a difficult IVF journey with her partner, Lee. The press notes mentioned how you and Lily built chemistry throughout filming, but I’d love to hear about where your chemistry with Joan Chen came from, as I feel like Angela’s strained relationship with her mother was so vivid from the very beginning to the end of the film. (Heesun Park, 0613focus)

TRAN: Honestly, much like with Lily, Joan and I didn't have a lot of time—well, any time actually—before we got to set. Before we were in the scene. Joan is such an incredible, incredible actor. She's so generous. She's so childlike in her ability to play when she's on set and I feel like she brought so much to that character that all I had to do was just listen and respond.

She’s spoken about this in interviews as well. She absolutely took her experience being a mother to this character that she created and I absolutely took my experience being a daughter and having a complicated relationship with my mother. It was very strangely therapeutic to have these emotional healing moments and I know Andrew has said this about this film for him being wish fulfillment. In many ways, I think, for me, it also feels the same way. 

My sisters came to see the movie yesterday and they were like, “Wow, we really dealt with some stuff.” So it means a lot to me that you recognized a specific dynamic in that relationship because I think both of us were able to have the privilege of using our own experience and our own pain in that relationship. 

Why is now the right time for this reboot? (Ella Wu, The Universal Asian) 

HAN GI-CHAN: First of all, I’d like to say that it's not always late to say the right things. When we were filming and now—I learned that it is not a safer time for the LGBTQ+ community to live our peaceful lives. While we didn't plan this timing to come out, since it is this timing, we just want them to feel that—when the audience watches this film—this movie could make the people of the LGBTQ+ communities brave and [able] to be themselves by this film. Also not only for those communities but also for, like, every humanity on earth could feel this. See this movie and feel what family means, what love means to them. It's not a story that’s specific for a good timing. It's a story for all times. We live with a family. We live with love.

GLADSTONE: We didn't know that it was going to become suddenly—we didn't make a political film. We made a film that had really solid bedrock with socio-economical, cultural comments without being explicitly about queerness, about culture, about gentrification. Those were all just the world that this family finds themselves in. I think that makes a film that represents people really authentically where they're at. 

The rest of the ship was just built so well that it can weather a lot of different seas. So I do feel like it does help this timeless element because it embraces and acknowledges the culture and the time that we find ourselves in. And each character's proximity to it makes space for widening the lens and the conversation about queerness globally and culturally. 

I think what drew us all to it in such a major way, and I know one thing that was absolutely of paramount importance to all of the creatives on set—our costumers, set design, everything—people wanted it to feel like this home was a welcoming, warm, vibrant, loving environment that you want to live in and you also really want to see a child raised in. I feel like we did create this big warm pocket of a film for people that we always intended to. We didn't know that we were making such good medicine for people who needed it.

YANG: And just like how you know they say hyper specificity ends up being universal, I feel like this kind of hyper specificity ends up being relevant and timeless. It's never not going to be important to touch on these things, just like how the original movie was relevant at the time and still is.

Watch The Wedding Banquet now in theaters.