An exclusive group of Asian
American actresses, members
of a club called Joy Luck, set
the stage and opened the doors
for the growing number of Asian faces seen
in films and on television today. Lauren
Tom was one of them.
It has been 20 years since the novel
by Amy Tan was first published and more
than 15 years since the film version made
its debut, but Tom says the story’s themes
of family, friendship and following your
dreams still resonate with her.
“I’m still really proud of it. I think it’s
held up in that classic sense,” says Tom of
the landmark 1993 film. She still keeps in
touch with Tan, who was “on the set every
day.” And for last year’s 15th anniversary of
the movie, Tom, along with Tan, Ming-Na
and director Wayne Wang, celebrated at
the Asian Film Festival in San Francisco.
“It was so great to see them,” Tom enthuses.
Tom got the role of Lena St. Clair
after telling Wang that Lena was the
character she could identify with the
most. “I grew up in an all-white Jewish
neighborhood. We were the only Asian
family in the whole town. I felt like I
did not fit in at all, so I became more and
more invisible."
Tom can definitely relate to Lena’s
struggle of “finding her voice and being
seen and heard.” Although The Joy Luck
Club was a critical success, it wasn’t a huge
moneymaker. “I think that when things
were rolling for me, if I were white,
I would have been getting more offers,”
she shrugs. “But I think the Asian thing
still stopped us. Not just me, but everyone
from The Joy Luck Club."
The actress, now 48, also saw herself
in the character of Waverly. “My mom
and I were always competitive with one
another, so there was something familiar
about Waverly and June,” she says. “It’s
taken years for me to be OK with being
competitive and to really learn how to
become friends with women. And now I
have a slew of women friends that I don’t
think I could live my life without, so I’m
really glad I was able to transform that."
Given how rare good roles still are for
Asian American women, Tom often finds
herself going up against her former co-stars
like Rosalind Chao and Tamlyn Tamita
for a part, but their competition is hardly
cutthroat. “Every time we audition for the
same part, it’s like a big party where they
have to come and shush us,” she laughs.
“We’re in the lobby just catching up and
laughing and having a great time."
At one time, there was talk of a sequel to
the film, or maybe a TV series, but neither
came to pass. “I still think it would be an
interesting series,” says Tom, who replies,
“Oh, God, yeah!” when asked if she would
want to be part of such a project. “The
challenge that the Asian community has is
that sometimes the sponsors or the network
aren’t sure that enough people will be
able to relate to just an Asian story. That’s
why it has to be really universal. I had
so many people come up to me after the
film — white, Jewish, black, whatever — and
say, ‘That’s me and my mom!’ And that’s
because Amy wrote it so specifically. She
told me, ‘The more specific something is,
the more universal it becomes.'"
With Tan’s advice to "write what you
know," Tom penned several magazine essays
and is still contemplating turning them into a
book. But for now, her creative passion, apart
from acting, is painting. "I’ve been painting
my dogs and my sons and my husband, the
things and people I love,” she says. "You can
spend hours and it feels like its 10 minutes; I
love feeling so absorbed. My manager keeps
pushing me to get back to writing. But it’s
easier for me to draw something than figure
out what I want to write about."
The actress, whose award-winning one-
woman show was titled “25 Psychics,” doesn’t
necessarily believe in psychic ability, but
how else does one explain how she landed
her role as Ross’ girlfriend on Friends? “On
some level, I don’t know how, I manifested
that job,” she says. “I was watching Friends,
and I said to myself, ‘That guy’s so cute,’
meaning David Schwimmer, ‘I would love
to do that show and I’d love to play his
girlfriend.’ And I swear, the next week, my
agent called me with an offer for that.”
She’s amused that despite having studied
Shakespeare and done a lot of classical
theater pieces, “I’m most known for Friends
and cartoons!” She refers to her career as a
voiceover artist on Futuramaand the now-
canceled King of the Hill as her "bread and
butter," something that’s kept her going
through rough spots when her last series,
Men in Trees, was canceled.
Through the ups and downs, Tom says
her relationship with her mother has grown
strong and developed even though they
clashed early on as much as any of Tan’s
characters. "I have so much compassion for
my mom now,” she says. “My grandmother
was hilarious and colorful, but she was
really narcissistic, so my mother never
got to have her turn. She wanted to be an
Olympic ice skater and my grandmother
told her, ‘You’re a girl, you’re nothing,
forget it.’ So, even though my mother was
really, really supportive of me and drove
me to all my dance classes and paved the
way for me, it was really hard for her."
But Tom’s mother did get her chance,
all in good time. She started a center in
Chicago at Columbia, which encourages
Asian students to go into the arts. "My dad
died really young, and she was just trying
to find her way and she found it. So now,
she’s really making her mark. She brings
in all these directors and producers and
artists to tell the kids, ‘You can do it too
and you should do it and don’t listen to
your parents!'"
Mother and daughter also recently
collaborated on a children’s book, “The
Bubble Gum Machine.” “It’s about a
rainbow of colors of different gumballs,
representing different people. I wrote
the basic story when I was 17 years old,
and she dug it out, reworked it, got an
illustrator and made it into this book,”
she says. “It’s not exactly how I would
have done it, but it was nice to have that
connection with my mom.”
In fact, her mother, whom Tom
calls “the Asian mayor of Chicago,”
has no problem cold-calling people
and telling them, “‘You know Lauren
Tom? I’m her mother!’ Could I be any
more embarrassed?” laughs Tom, who
doesn’t seem the least bit embarrassed
just amused.
“She’s 75 now and we’ve come a
long way,” she says of her relationship
with her mother. Lena and Ying Ying
would be proud.
