B.D. Wong:

• father

• actor

• Asian-American

• gay

(not necessarily in that order)

by Blase DiStefano

Photograph by Anna Thomson

You probably know B.D. Wong as the chaplain on HBO’s prison drama Oz, which only recently ended its five-year run. Or maybe you’ve seen him as the forensic psychologist on the currently airing NBC series Law and Order: SVU. Or maybe you have spotted him in one of the more than 20 feature films he has worked on, which include Father of the Bride I and II, Jurassic Park, and Seven Years in Tibet. You might recall his co-starring role as a member of television’s first Asian-American family in All-American Girl, starring Margaret Cho. Wong also guest-starred on X-Files, Sesame Street, and Chicago Hope and appeared in HBO’s film version of Randy Shilts’s book And the Band Played On.

Now he’s coming out ... in more ways than one.

In his first book, Following Foo (the electronic adventures of the Chestnut Man), Wong writes, “Once upon a time, my partner and I found ourselves expecting [a baby] with the help of a surrogate mother, modern medical science, and lots of good luck and prayers. To add to our blessing, she was carrying twins! Things were pretty swell . . . until the twins arrived almost three months early. For those of you who don’t know, babies that come almost three months early are pretty little, and boy are they scary looking. Especially when you’re their dad...”

So, not only is Wong coming out with his first book, he’s coming out of the closet, because in order to tell his touching tale of the birth of his son Jackson Foo Wong, he has to mention his agent Richie Jackson, who also happens to be his partner of 15 years.

In Following Foo (HarperCollins), Wong recounts the loss of one of the babies and the other boy’s three-month stay in intensive care, a true story told in an unconventional style. We are privy to real-time e-mails from his family, friends, even strangers, in this fearless account of a fearful time. Ultimately, it’s an uplifting story, and a parallel to the way he lives his own life.

OutSmart: Since this is our June issue and Father’s Day is June 15, my first question is “How is your son?”

B.D. Wong: Oh, he’s very well. I don’t want to go into much more detail than the fact that he’s very well and that we’re all very happy.

How old he is now?

He’s two and three quarters.

The terrible twos?

Which aren’t so terrible really. To some people I think they are.

Is the reason you don’t want to go into it a little more because you want him to have a private life?

I want him to have a private life, and I also want people to read the book with not as full an understanding of everything. The book does have a happy resolution, but I do want them to get the answer, I don’t want to just share too much of that.

It has a lot to do with the privacy issue too because, Blase, this is all so new to me. I don’t know how else to say it except that I’m not particularly a real forthcoming person in general. I’m not struggling, but I do constantly have to think, Gee, when do you cross the line between not being fully out and being out? What exactly are you giving away? What are you doing besides that? Is it your obligation to tell everything is what I’m saying.

I guess you just have to reach some kind of compromise or balance.

Yes, and I think that what happens is that you feel an obligation to give more and more and more away. I think we just assume that celebrities’ lives are kind of an open slate for the general public, and of course they’re not. So I have to constantly temper my feeling of responsibility.

And it’s gonna get a little more difficult with the book coming out.

It is. I’m comfortable with everything that’s in the book. I feel like the book and the experiences that are described in the book happened to me for a reason. And one of the reasons is because of the book—and that I had to do that. I had to write the book. I didn’t know earlier on when I was a young man that this was going to happen to me, but now it seems like it makes so much sense that there is this book.

Did it allow you to process all that grief and all that joy?

Absolutely. It absolutely did. And I was grateful for the experience, and I was grateful for the arrows all pointing towards this book. And this book’s coming out is a tremendous life-changing experience for me on so many different planes.

Did you feel that working on Oz was a good experience?

Oh, absolutely. I will miss it. It was a great experience for me. It was a role that carried a little more depth than the roles that I’ve had on television. And I enjoyed that immensely. That was a really refreshing thing for somebody like me who likes to work more deeply. That was a great sense of pride for me to be on that show because the part was written for me.

I interviewed Rita Moreno a couple of years ago and she was just fantastic [“Rita Reigns,” Feb. 2001]. Did you have a chance to spend any time with her?

A little. I did know her from working on the show pretty closely with her, and I haven’t really socialized with her that much outside of the show, but she’s just a wonderful, vibrant, and important person.

At one point, she was the only female performer to win the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy. Which reminds me, at this particular time, you’re the only actor to have won five awards [Outer Critics Circle, Theatre World, Drama Desk, Clarence Derwent, and Tony] for one role in a Broadway play [M. Butterfly]. So why in the hell didn’t you get the role in the film?

Oh well, I’m not the person to ask. The person who doesn’t get the role in anything is never the person to ask. I do know that if you’ve seen the movie, the movie is considerably different from the play and in my opinion not necessarily to an advantage as to who would benefit from it. That would tend to indicate that the director had very different ideas about what it was going to be. And so that would probably indicate why he might not choose me.

That makes sense. I also interviewed Margaret Cho, and she, too, was wonderful [“The Non-Wicked Witch of the East,” July 1999]. Did you have any idea of what was going on behind the scenes while you were working on All-American Girl?

Oh yes, because I was close to Margaret. There were a bunch of us on this ride together, and we certainly didn’t know everything, but I generally had an understanding of where all the tension and misfires were coming from. It was very interesting. It had some great people doing it, and it was a great learning experience for the future of what a television show can or can’t be and what makes one successful.

Do you find that you’re discriminated against more for being gay or for being Asian American?

I haven’t been out until this book came out. I haven’t been in really. There are a lot of shades of gray. This is what we’re going to find out. This is what I mean when I’m telling you that the book chose me.

I guess things will be a lot different when the book comes out.

In some ways, I’m sure it will be, and in other ways, hopefully I’ve established what it is that I do as an actor and that maybe that can be fully appreciated. Although there will always be people that aren’t able to get outside of it or whatever.

Sure, but that’s...

...the nature of the business for all different kinds of people.

Do you still feel discrimination as an Asian American?

Oh yeah. That doesn’t go away. That’s probably never going to go away.

Is it rather obvious to you? Do they make it obvious or...

Sometimes they make it very obvious. Sometimes they don’t even know it. And it’s hard to explain. It’s like discrimination is a very mercurial thing, so it can’t often be identified when it’s happening. Sometimes it can be identified in retrospect. And very seldom is it admitted. I think there will be a time when people will try to find another way to, but it’s like the kind of uncomfortableness of rejection, as human beings have a terrible time rejecting one another. Because they know how it feels to be rejected, they often temper their rejection with subterfuge. An actor’s rejection is often filled with the smokescreen.

Like I’ve told you, I’m not the person to ask about why I didn’t get the part in M. Butterfly the movie. You might talk to the person and give them a truth serum, and they might say, “Well you know what, he didn’t shower that day.” And you wouldn’t ever know this. So because of that, I think people temper their rejection with a lot of things which are sometimes completely irrelevant. I think that that’s what happens with racial rejection, and yet at the same time, there are obvious things that happen to you that will show you quite clearly that in fact that’s what’s happening. I’ve been at it long enough to know the pattern of it and to be able to identify it, to be pretty sure about it, although you can never be 100 percent sure about it.

Unless they say, I’m not hiring you because you’re Asian American, which they would never do.

Yeah, they would never do that. So you have to read between the lines, and more often than not, I can tell you when it’s happened to me and when it hasn’t. It’s just one of those things that if you can’t accept it, then you really can’t be an actor. I accept it to a certain point. I do try to make it better. I do what I can.

At least it doesn’t stop you from moving on.

I hope not. Two parts on the latest jobs that I’ve had, Oz and Law and Order: SVU, were devoid of any kind of racial discrimination or stereotyping or any of that. That’s refreshing to me. And yet they’re all pretty small parts. You have to say, “Well, look, this is a big step for Asian Americans in one way, because it’s dignified work and it’s definitely...” I fish for a lot for words, forgive me. “It’s dignified and there’s nothing to be ashamed of.” There’s nothing for me to worry about as far as people who see it—do they think I’ve set my people back 10 years or not. Yet at the same time, there aren’t a lot of opportunities, and there certainly aren’t the same opportunities that my Caucasian counterparts have. That’s something that I have to accept and do whatever I can to overcome.

Your role is good, but it’s still not the star.

Yes, and to a certain extent, self-empowerment and self-generation are what many artists like myself enjoy. That is what the book is partially for me. This is how I choose to represent myself creatively, because I’m not representing myself creatively on these two TV shows as much as someone might think. It’s dignified and a fantastic living, but aside from those two things, I don’t wish it to be mistaken as a representation of my creative self. I’m really working for other people.

This book is the first time that I’ve ever been able to express myself to the fullest spectrum of my creative ability, right down to the cover art and the inside design of the book, with very little intervention from anyone else and very little control from a corporation, which is what always happens on TV.

That’s a good feeling, isn’t it?

Oh, it’s wonderful. Maybe this isn’t good for the Asian-American actors, but it makes me put less pressure on trying to squeeze blood out of a network for a skinny little part in a one-hour drama, because it’s been very hard for Asian-American actors at all levels of accomplishment, including myself.

It’s just mind-boggling.

It is mind-boggling, because Asian people buy things. There is a high percentage of Asian Americans in this country, and yet it doesn’t add up for the networks to put it together from a marketing perspective. That is the bottom line.

The gay community representation on television is similarly afflicted, although as a gay person, it doesn’t affect me as much, because I don’t get offered those kinds of parts. I get offered neither the gay stereotypical parts nor the Asian stereotypical parts at this stage of my career. That’s in some way a positive thing, but they’re still out there.

It seems to take a lot for people to understand that gay people and Asian people are in real life, are effortlessly and seamlessly integrated into our culture. Our interaction with your average Asian or gay person is completely effortless. In a drama, it doesn’t require any extra to say, “Oh, gee, a gay person waited on me today.” You don’t have to capitalize the letters or underline or italicize it. You just have to say it, you just have to live life with an assumption that it’s an extremely and wonderfully diverse country that we live in, and part of our everyday life is the experience of that diversity.

Television is somehow not able to effortlessly do that. They can’t put a kind of minimally effeminate gay character in a show without creating a whole gay scenario. The justification mars any kind of true depiction of real life. We don’t justify it in real life, so as soon as we justify something on television, whether that person be Asian or Hispanic or Native American or gay, we’re already doing a discredit to the storytelling. And TV is supposed to be all about storytelling, and that’s too bad.

I imagine that with theater people, there must be a feeling of inclusiveness.

There is, and there is still homophobia in casting. People are all very hung up on what it means to be straight acting, what it means to be out.

Are you at home right now? I think I hear Jackson in the background.

Yeah, can you hold on a second?

Wong to Jackson: Hi. What do you want to say? Do you want to come here and say hello? Did you finish your lunch? You did? Pasta, what was on top of the pasta? Tomatoes? Was there anything else on top of the pasta? Was there cheese? Cheese, yep. Well, are you ready for a nap? Could you go night night, or play with cars for 20 minutes, all right? All right. You want to give me a kiss? Can I have a kiss?

Wong to OutSmart: Excuse me, sorry about that.

Oh, that’s OK.

Wong to Jackson: Well, where are you going? Don’t hit your head, OK?

Jackson to OutSmart: Hi.

Hi.

Wong to Jackson: You’re very happy, now that you had some pasta, right? You were a little cranky before that. Bye bye.

Wong to OutSmart: OK.

So we were talking about homophobia in the theater.

There just is, but not that I feel a victim of it necessarily. But I think that there is generally some. And I shouldn’t shoot down what you’re saying. There is definitely less in theater. If it weren’t for gay people, there would be no musical theater. There would be no Broadway musical, and no one to go see a Broadway musical. And that’s fantastic. We can’t deny that, but as far as the casting process is concerned, I find it to be a general male-mindedness, which is not exclusive to racism. It’s a certain narrow-mindedness that keeps you from getting a part because you’re tall/you’re not tall. That’s the kind of narrow-mindedness that would include homophobia—it’s just general narrow-mindedness in casting. The theater is supposed to be a wonderful open and highly creative place, and in some places, it is. Broadway has become very commercial, so there are still challenges, but it’s certainly better than it was when I started out. And I’m not giving up on it.

You recently starred with Charles Busch in Shanghai Moon. How was that?

It was really a dream come true. He’s just a singularly talented and brilliant individual. And it was a great experience for me; it was a terrific part. A very, very funny play. It was a terrific match of Charles Busch and the company that I’m a member of called Drama Department. They often do revivals of older plays, but this was a new play that Charles had written. Charles always writes in a kind of retro cinematic style, makes fun of old films. His performances are always an homage to the great ladies of the cinema. So this was a good match as far as the style of the play and the company’s kind of mission.

Did you happen to see the Advocate review?

I heard about the Advocate review, but I don’t read reviews. I tell people not to tell me what they say, especially when I’m doing the play. I just remember that I was told that the Advocate review was a good review.

Yes, would you mind if I just read one sentence?

I get so Oh, gee about it, because I don’t want to know. And I want to be consistent about this, because professional criticism really boggles my mind. I don’t necessarily understand its value. I understand people who are not into theater who read and want to know what something is, but when somebody gets in their whole opinion about something, that’s one person’s opinion, and it baffles me. Therefore, I don’t read them, and even though I would love to hear what you were going to say, I will say let’s be above board about it and don’t tell me. But I did hear that it was a good review—of course, that’s always good for the show. [From the Advocate: “Busch is surrounded by some very good actors, most notably B.D. Wong as Gong Fei, hilarious whenever he turns out to the audience to intone any Chinese name (and breathtaking when he strips to the waist).”]

I had a wonderful chemistry with Charles in the play, and it was a great experience for me because it was a real leading man’s part that I would not have gotten under other circumstances. It was the perfect part for me. I dare say there wasn’t anybody else that could do the part the way that I could, not because I’m the most talented person in the world, but because it was a really good match of everything that I like to do and everything that I think that I am. I enjoyed it tremendously, and Charles and I had a great time together and I didn’t know him prior to this very well at all. Have you seen any pictures of what the show looked like or anything?

Just the photo from the Advocate.

Is it Charles?

It’s you and Charles.

Oh, I see. It was great fun. It was gorgeously designed on a minimal budget, and it was a huge hit. It was great fun and highly creative.

How is it working on Law and Order?

Law and Order is my day job in some ways. It’s every week, and it’s always one of the top-rated shows of the week. It’s got a tremendous audience, which is something that is good for me as an actor, but as far as the work is concerned, it’s not particularly interesting. It’s just kind of what it is. I am grateful for it and I love it, but I got to do a play like Shanghai Moon and I got to go Wow, I’m my creative self all of a sudden. The book was the same thing—Here I am, this is what my creative potential is. My contract with Law and Order is so great, because it allows me to do other things. I don’t really want a job like Chris Meloni [the star of Law and Order] has, because he works every single day, 16 hours a day. I’m grateful that I was able to do Shanghai Moon while I was doing SVU—I was going back and forth, leaving the set and rushing to the theater at night, and that felt so romantic and fantastic.

I know our time is up, but I’ve only got one more question. Are you adapting Following Foo for the screen?

I am. What I really hope for is to use some of the same creative energy that went into the book, because in some ways we reinvented the book, the form of the book. It wasn’t a conventionally written book, and I am trying to implement some of that same unexpectedness in the screenplay. It will not be like a TV movie about this dramatic thing that happened. There will be lots of images and different funny things that happen that all add up to this one thing. Kind of like the way the book is.

I hope that works for you. The process is usually what’s more important anyway.

That’s certainly what worked for me in the book. And now at this point it’s like who knows if anybody will buy the book or read the book, but at the same point in time, in the same way, I have the book for Jackson to read, and that is really my one thing that I care about. I actually have copies that have just come back from the printer, and they’re gorgeous. And so there is that for him now. And so it doesn’t matter what happens. We’re leaving it all up to God now.

If you have any comments about this article, please email them to letters@outsmartmagazine.com.