Making progress toward Asian representation on screen

Jul. 25—In 1998, when Keiko Agena had just a few small credits on her resume, she was cast in the film "Hundred Percent, " which assembled an array of successful Asian actors—Dustin Nguyen ("21 Jump Street "), Garrett Wang ("Star Trek : Voyager ") and Tamlyn Tomita ("The Karate Kid Part 2 " and "The Joy Luck Club ") among them, plus an ascendant Lindsay Price ("Beverly Hills 90210 ").

She had high hopes and great pride in who she shared the bill with, but co-workers at her "day job "—data entry—brought her back down to Earth.

"I remember showing people the poster, " Agena said, "but I don't know that they necessarily knew everybody on that list, and so they didn't necessarily share my excitement as much as I was hoping they would. And that was a little bit of cold water too, is that you realize, 'Wow, we have such a far way to go.'"

So she was happy when the Jon M. Chu-directed film of Kevin Kwan's novel "Crazy Rich Asians " became a huge hit in 2018 and brought about some of the change she'd hoped "Hundred Percent " would bring 20 years earlier.

"That was a cultural ­phenomenon where ... at Halloween people were dressing up as (those characters ), " Agena said. "That was a different thing that Asian Americans had never had before, at least that I had experienced. That was wild."

Following "Crazy Rich Asians, " the Canadian sitcom "Kim's Convenience " took off in America and one of its stars—Simu Liu, whom Agena has worked with onstage in the variety show "Asian AF "—is about to become the first actor of Asian descent to headline a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings."

"It's an interesting time to be Asian American as an actress, " Agena said. "Of course, we (the Asian American actor community ) would love for things to move faster than it has, but I do think that it's going in the right direction."