Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros. Pictures(NEW YORK) — Crazy Rich Asians is ready to share its wealth with moviegoers nationwide, starting today.
The film, based on the novel by Kevin Kwan, follows Chinese-American NYU professor Rachel Chu who finds out her boyfriend Nick Young is, well, crazy rich. When they fly to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding, Rachel is thrown into his family’s world of opulence, and judgment.
“It’s just a really fun, heartwarming love story about culture and family and jealousy and all the stuff that often gets in the way of true love,” Constance Wu, who plays Rachel, tells ABC Radio. “But hopefully true love prevails!”
It’s a timeless romance, with handsome newcomer Henry Golding in the role of Nick. But the film is also making history as the first studio movie since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club to tell a contemporary story with an all-Asian cast. Wu says she hopes it makes Hollywood more receptive to expanding Asian and Asian-American representation on the big screen.
“Diversity is just putting somebody there so it looks like you checked off a box,” she explains. “Representation is actually centering the narrative in a person of color’s story so that you understand and explore what makes them different and special.”
There are two more books in Kwan’s series, so the movie franchise could conceivably continue to break barriers and stereotypes. Harry Shum Jr., who plays Charlie Wu, is looking forward to that.
“I make a cameo in hopes that the story continues ’cause my character definitely has an expansion,” he says. “But for me, I’m just happy to see these talented people be able to portray these characters beautifully.”
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