Ke Huy Quan, his voice trembling with emotion, accepted his best supporting actor award from the Screen Actors Guild on Feb. 26 with a moving speech. "When I stepped away from acting, it was because there were so few opportunities," he said. "And now, tonight, here we are, celebrating James Hong, Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Hong Chau, Harry Shum Jr. ... The landscape looks so different now than before."
Quan, who is Vietnamese American, won for his performance in "Everything Everywhere All at Once," the trippy metaverse dramedy that led both the total Oscar nominations this year (with 11 total) and a wave of nominations for film artists of Asian descent. Four of the year's 20 acting nominees are of Asian descent, the most ever: Yeoh, Quan and Hsu for "Everything Everywhere," Chau for "The Whale." Asian representation in other categories included "Everything Everywhere" co-director Daniel Kwan (with Daniel Scheinert), nominated for directing, screenplay and best picture; novelist/screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro nominated for adapted screenplay (for "Living"); and filmmaker Domee Shi, a previous winner in the best animated short category, receiving her first nomination for best animated feature, for "Turning Red."
It's something of a shift for the Academy, which has in the past honored relatively few Asian film artists — particularly in the acting categories. Yeoh, for example, is only the second woman of South Asian descent to ever be nominated in the lead actress category. (The first woman to do so, Merle Oberon in 1935, concealed her South Asian and Maori heritage during her lifetime.) The lead actor category did not see an Asian American nominee until 2021 (Steven Yeun, for "Minari").
