Actor Kae Alexander talks The Asian Experience, coping with lockdown, and the need for safer rehearsal spaces.

“It goes up and down. I’m used to it and then I’m done with it and then back. I’m also feeling quite anxious about going back. Do I remember what it’s like to be in the rat-race? Do I still like it, do I want to go back? I don’t know, it’s all sort of shit.”

After several months of lockdown and social distancing actor, Kae Alexander is still trying to come to terms with what it might mean for her and her chosen profession.

“I’m still in some work but if I wasn’t that would be a different experience. I was in rehearsals for a play when this thing happened. I was speaking to my agent and he said I should talk to more actors about it, but I don’t know. I’m more interested in the human experience.”

Alexander graduated from The Guildhall School of Music and Drama and in 2011 and in 2017 she won the Evening Standard Rising Star Award. Her credits include hit TV shows like Fleabag and Game of Thrones, as well as leading roles at The Royal Court and The National Theatre.

“I became an actor because to me there was no other route into the industry. It was acting or nothing, I’m of that generation. I don’t think I’ve ever been very good at sitting still. I have a lot of energy, I like people. I’m a huge people person, I like getting lost in a massive crowd. I love being on set and on stage.”

The token Asian Experience 

Since moving from Japan to the UK at age ten, Alexander has always been proud of her identity as an East Asian woman. Much of her focus during lockdown has been on creating a stronger sense of community within the industry. 

“I was in this TV show with Katie Leung (The Foreigner, The Nest) a couple of years ago where we played lovers and we became really close. That was the start of my journey of eradicating being the token Asian female experience. Katy and I used to always go up for the same parts and that seemed to be the reality. It didn’t seem like there was any way of us being collaborators, friends, and colleagues, because of our experience of being the minority.”

Shooting Strangers (ITV) with Leung made Alexander rethink her way of working and she was eager to keep the conversation going.

“Later, I did The White Pearl at the Royal Court and it was an all Asian female cast. I believe there’s a lot to unravel about our female experience. Vicky Featherstone (Artistic director of The Royal Court) actively works hard to champion women, she’s very empathetic. She nurtured our experience in terms of our ethnicity and our different backgrounds and created an incredible environment. Her wisdom, experience, confidence, and courage within the industry are admirable. At the moment I think I’m learning a lot about the importance of mentorship and how we need to look after each other. We need to be nurturing each other in order to create an industry for women, never mind East Asian women. So I have been studying a lot. I think we’ve all been practicing, it’s incredible.”

«There’s a lack of inclusion isn’t there? If you’re a minority, you feel like the only Asian at the party …»

She continues: 

“After finishing The White Pearl we were talking a lot, just sharing our experience from anything like sex to politics and unloading lots of shit. We don’t have to do this anymore, we don’t have to think we’re all the same, we don’t have to compete with each other! It was an overwhelming experience, it was quite extreme. There was a lot of growth for me as a woman.”

As they talked the need for a shared space for East Asian women became apparent. A What’s App group was soon created, in the hopes of gathering as many female-identifying professionals as possible. 

“Katy (Leung) and I thought it would be a great idea to arrange a picnic for everyone, to gather East Asian women across the industry. Then COVID-19 and lockdown happened and we couldn’t do it. We thought: ‘You know what, let’s test it out, let’s start a group’. We were completely overwhelmed. By the second day, we had reached 100 people. I think the importance of community is to be reminded that we are not alone and that we feel very similar things.”

The only Asian in the room 

In her essay collection Minor feeling: An Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong talks about the self-hatred that Asian-Americans experience: “It becomes a comfort to peck yourself to death. You don’t like how you look, how you sound. You think your Asian features are undefined like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you. You hate that there are so many Asians in the room. Who let in all the Asians? you rant in your head.”

“There’s a lack of inclusion isn’t there? If you’re a minority, you feel like the only Asian at the party and suddenly there’s another one and you’re like: ‘Oh, that’s never happened before’. It’s so unfortunate that there are so few. That’s why when we gather as a mass we can get rid of that sort of awkwardness and we can be unapologetically there. You’re no longer stuck in this weird kind of anxiety, thinking: ‘But who are we?’. You’re no longer the only one. It’s a kind of imposter syndrome: ‘Oh fuck, the other girl is also experiencing the same thing’”.

Kae hesitates.

“I quite like being me, I’ve never wanted to be white or any other race. I just finished reading Ali Wong’s book (Dear Girls) where she talks about her experience. America is different because it’s so filled with immigrants, there are big pockets of people and you can grow up in communities where the majority is Asian, I wonder what that’s like.”

Alexander believes that one could come a long way by eradicating a narrative where minorities always have to compete with each other. 

“I’ve had very interesting conversations with people who are mixed race and people who have white parents. The thing is, yes my boyfriend is white but he has the opposite thing of being too normal or too bland. You know, there’s always some kind of thing. I got a lot of advice from my friends who are Black male actors. They said the most important thing was sharing our experiences, unique experiences that only someone who looks like us can understand.”

Implementing change 

‘’Asians lack presence. Asians take up apologetic space. We don’t have enough presence to be considered real minorities. We’re not racial enough to be token. We’re so post-racial we’re silicon. (…) I am frantically paddling my feet underwater, always overcompensating to hide my devouring feeling of inadequacy.’’, Cathy Park Hong writes in her book. 

“I think we’re a little bit more behind in the Asian community, in terms of support and solidarity. The way we get racially abused is different from a Black experience and we haven’t quite worked out how to articulate it, to make it make sense. I don’t think it’s paranoia, I just think we haven’t learned to express it. It feels like a personal experience and it can be quite traumatic. I really struggled, I remember thinking: ‘Omg, I don’t know what to say, I’ve never had this conversation before’. But that’s why we need these groups. All sorts happen in your head, you wonder if you’re overreacting and you don’t want to victimize yourself. I think it’s completely fine to accept the stereotypes and the paranoia because it’s there, it’s not us!”

In 2019 Britain East Asian actors accounted for just 1.7 percent of cast appearances on primetime TV. According to a report made by The Asian American Performers Action Coalition, only one Asian American actor appeared in a Broadway play in 2016. Within the entire industry, Asians accounted for just four percent of all roles.

“Theatre is especially hard to get into. I think it’s the hardest one because it’s not really about what you look like. Whereas for screen it kind of is what you look like, that way a lot of people have a chance you know? Theatre’s very close-knit, it requires you to have gone to a certain drama school, to have certain relationships with certain people. It feels like a very special class, like a very prestigious membership. It’s so obvious, just because you’re turning down your posh voice doesn’t mean you’re any different. Even all the playwrights, where did they go? They went to Yale and Cambridge and they have no experience of ‘’normal people’’, so it’s all from a very heightened and educated perspective. The material is not very varied at all.”

Maintaining mental health in the industry 

In addition to film and TV, Alexander has also done a lot of challenging stage-work. She is quick to point out the need for clear boundaries and respect for personal limits within the industry. 

“Being an actor requires a lot of self-knowledge, a lot of self-awareness. When I did The Great Wave at The National Theatre in 2018, I was very triggered by the topic. Some topics are so dark and it can be hard, but we’re storytellers, right? You can’t just say: ’No I’m not gonna go there’. We use our imagination and we do our job. So yes, I’ve struggled.”

The Great Wave, written by Francis Turnly is a play set in Japan and North Korea. It tells the story of two teenage sisters who get caught up in a storm. One sister survives while the other is lost at sea. Alexander portrayed the character Reiko, who spends the rest of the play desperately searching for the truth about what happened to her sister.

“It was the first time I had that sort of full East Asian-experience on that sort of platform. It was very overwhelming in terms of expectations, in addition to the topic itself. What do you do if your sister goes missing? I can’t even imagine. We’re so vulnerable, doing what we do isn’t for everyone. Nobody needs to be an actor, so you choose whether or not you want to do it. I haven’t really talked about it, but I’ve struggled to do certain scenes in plays where it feels very dark and very close. It’s difficult to have that boundary and to work on it as an actor.”

«Why do we always have to be exceptional?»

As a result of lockdown, people from all over the industry have expressed feelings of loss of identity or purpose. Alexander thinks some of it might stem from society’s constant pressure to feel validated and successful. 

“I’ve come to enjoy this community aspect of the arts because it feels like something that I can leave behind. That feeling off: ‘What can I do that actually will make a difference?’. You have this need to measure things and you can’t do that in the acting industry. We act because it’s fun. You get a lot of weird people who start believing that their value is their credit. They become a bit strange and you’re like: ‘Stop that’. But then I can also understand why they’ve done it because it’s something to hold on to. It’s a weird profession. It shouldn’t be a profession. It’s a lifestyle, I feel like.”

She shakes her head before adding: 

“It’s ok to change too. I have a friend from drama school who went into musical theatre, became a Broadway performer and now she works for Google. It’s so admirable when people go: ‘Yes, I topped that, now next’. It’s very powerful to just go: ‘Yeah, ok I’m changing.”

 The model minority myth 

“There’s a line which I love where someone says something along the lines of ‘Why do we always have to be exceptional?’ I think there’s an expectation for us to be exceptional. Look around, look at the majority, they don’t have to live up to that exceptional expectation. Because an expectation on that kind of level stops the community from contributing. We’re canceling each other out constantly and I find that very sad. We’re completely looking at it the wrong way.”

The model minority myth is the perception that Asian American or British Asian people achieve a higher degree of success than the population average. It stereotypes Asians as polite, quiet, and law-abiding citizens.

“We need more varied reviewers, it’s the writing, it’s the marketing, but there are people implementing change. We’re all linked and that’s great. Lots of people with their arms crossed being very angry is ok, but it’s not very fun. I get it, it’s been very hard for us, I’m not being insensitive, but I also think it’s time to acknowledge that people are doing great things”.

In addition to addressing the need for better representation, the actors union Equity has also made a call for safer rehearsal spaces. 

“I think a good rehearsal room is about us being willing to open up, letting ourselves be seen. It’s 50/50 where we need to be ready to do our homework and everyone needs to be ready to listen. There’s no such thing as ‘casual sexism’ or ‘casual racism’.”

Alexander points out the importance of daring to call people out, to not accept hurtful comments, but also to be willing to accept fault and embracing difficult conversations. 

“I’m getting better at not letting those little comments ruin the whole day. A couple of minutes maybe, but let’s move on. I think it’s what Oprah was talking about, knowing your objective and the objective of the meeting. Reminding myself and the whole group so we can stay active and forward-thinking. Only through experience can you get better at handling yourself in the workspace and for me, I think that’s been the most beneficial thing. I found that at the beginning I would not be myself at all and every time I work I’m a little bit more myself. Just be unapologetically you.”