Elizabeth Yu: “All these parts of who I am are revealed to me every day”
The actor on sanctuaries, the language with no words and healing
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I’m speaking to actor Elizabeth Yu, who is of mixed Korean and white heritage. I first saw Elizabeth in May December, the Oscar-nominated story of a woman (portrayed by Julianne Moore) infamous for her 23-year relationship with her husband (played by Charles Melton), who she met when he was 13. What felt rare is the fact that the rest of their family was cast as mixed – enter, Elizabeth. I was eager to hear how that experience impacted Elizabeth, as well as her story of connecting with her Korean heritage. Now appearing in Avatar: The Last Airbender, read Elizabeth’s story below.
How do you define your background?
I’m half-Korean, half-white. My mom is some mishmash of Irish and German, a little Polish as well. My dad came to Jersey in the US from Korea when he was in his early teens. He became a doctor, where he met my mom who was a secretary.
What terminology do you use to refer to yourself? I see you have ‘Wasian’ in your Instagram bio!
Really, anything works! I like reclaiming the word ‘hapa,’ I love being called that. But ‘biracial,’ ‘mixed’ I connect with.
Growing up, how did you connect with your Korean culture?
My grandma used to cook a lot for us when we were little, so at Thanksgiving we’d have duck and little dishes of kimchi, rice, bean sprouts and pickled radish to add flavour to the main meal. Food was my introduction towards Asian culture. My mom and my grandma used to make a lot of cabbage as well – I remember sauerkraut with summer sausage.
Food is a way to connect for a lot of people. It’s a language that has no words. I didn’t grow up speaking Korean, which is something I shake my fist at the sky for! My siblings started learning Korean so now I’m like damn, I look bad. Maybe that's maybe that's a new activity I have to take on.
Has your sense of self shifted over time?
Yeah, I grew up in a very, very white conservative town. I was one of three Asian people in my whole school district – and one of the other two was my sibling. It was hard growing up in that environment and being mixed because I’m kind of fitting in with everybody else, but I'm also not.
Since I booked Avatar: The Last Airbender and worked on May December, it’s been a whole 180°. I've never even really been in a room with more than 10 Asian people before, so these projects are so awesome and now I know so much more about what it’s like to be Asian than I did in the first 20 years of my life. I'm still figuring it out too, there are so many new elements to the experience that are being presented to me every single day.
Working with Charles Melton, Piper Curda and Gabriel Chung on May December, we’re all actually half-Korean. Piper and Charles are half-Korean, half-white, Gabriel’s half-Brazilian. It healed a lot of wounds I didn't know I had. We’d tell each other stories, because we all grew up with a lot of white people and them not understanding where we're coming from and our experience of life. It’s just a safe space, there’s a profound understanding that you don’t have to put any work into. That feeling of sanctuary is amazing.
If I think of people being mad at me, I might have thought I’d had a bad attitude that day or whatever, but when I talked to [the cast] about these experiences I realised it might have been connected to me being Asian. All of these parts of my life that had so much to do with who I am were constantly being revealed to me every day.
Charles [Melton] gifted me Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner for our wrap gift and it was revolutionary. Within the first ten words I started crying. That idea that when your ethnic parent dies, that ethnic part of you dies with them is crazy.
My grandma passed away this past year and that was a huge moment for me on my journey of being mixed. She’s the only Asian woman I have to look up to, aside from my aunt. I never got to talk to her because of the language barrier, so I would only talk to her in one word sentences. It made me reminisce about my childhood and growing up with her, my time with her was surrounded by Korean culture.
What’s your experience been like as a mixed-Asian actor?
I get a lot of auditions, but it’s so rare to find one that’s actually me, that is actually half-white. Not only are there so few Asian stories being told, there's only so many Korean stories being told, then only so many half-white half-Korean stories being told.
When I do get to tell those stories, I feel so much more connected to the material. There’s not so much performance happening. It's so much more powerful, and so much easier.
Often, East and South East Asian actors are seen as interchangeable, despite their specific backgrounds – how do you decide what roles you will and won’t play?
I think about this a lot. I don’t ever want to play a character that has an Asian accent, because I don’t understand the struggle of having to learn a second language. I think that having an accent is a very beautiful thing that has been made to be ‘funny.’ I would play a character like a British accent or a German accent.
A lot of my story specifically has a lot to do with being Korean. I have auditioned for Chinese and Japanese roles. When you start out, beggars can't be choosers, and you hope to god that if they book it they’ll change it to Korean and you won’t be cancelled.
Did you ever have a conversation with your family about being mixed?
I talked about it with my mom a little bit, but mainly it was with my siblings. My parents are divorced, and I have two younger siblings on my dad's side and a younger sibling on my mom's side, then my older sibling. We spoke a lot especially because we went to the same high school, we both live in New York now and we have the same experiences.
When you find people that have those same stories, you kind of latch on to them. There’s this kindredness that nobody else could understand.
What’s the best thing about being mixed?
It’s so much fun. I'm 21 and I have this whole other side of me that I'm just now exploring, that’s so beautiful. This journey of being mixed for me is so new. I feel like a baby. You have to do it on your own terms. Nobody else can take you on that journey except for you.
Can you sum up your mixed experience in one word?
Healing, in a lot of elements. It’s spiritually healing, it heals your heart, it’s healing as a human being. I recently took a bunch of my friends to Korean barbecue for the first time and that was so healing, I knew all the names of all the foods and it was a whole side of me they hadn’t seen before.
Catch Elizabeth in May December and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Next week, I’ll be speaking to Waterloo Road actor Tillie Amartey. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday.
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Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.