Kim's Convenience's Jean Yoon recalls "overtly racist" storylines, "painful" experiences on show

The Hollywood Reporter

Yoon, who plays the matriarch of the Korean Canadian comedy, backed her TV son Simu Liu, who contended in a Facebook post last week that the show lacked diversity and Asian representation behind the scenes. That prompted Toronto Globe & Mail TV critic to push back, saying that Kim’s Convenience employed 13 female writers and that co-creator Ins Choi, who wrote the play the show is based on, should get more credit for scripting all 65 episodes and the play on which the series is based. On Sunday, Kim's Convenience's Twitter account shared screenshots of a post from Anita Kapila, who worked on the comedy’s first season, who wrote that "I want to publicly acknowledge the women and BIPOC I was honoured to work alongside." Yoon responded to Doyle's tweet with a Twitter thread detailing her experiences, including an accusation that the cast was given storylines that were "overtly racist." "Dear sir, as an Asian Canadian woman, a Korean-Canadian woman w more experience and knowledge of the world of my characters, the lack of Asian female, especially Korean writers in the writers room of Kims made my life VERY DIFFICULT & the experience of working on the show painful. Your attack on my cast mate @SimuLiu, in the defense of my fellow Korean artist Ins Choi is neither helpful nor merited. Mr. Choi wrote the play, I was in in. He created the TV show, but his co-creator Mr. Kevin White was the showrunner, and clearly set the parameters. This is a FACT that was concealed from us as a cast. It was evident from Mr. Choi's diminished presence on set, or in response to script questions. Between S4 and S5, this FACT became a crisis, and in S5 we were told Mr. Choi was resuming control of the show. The cast received drafts of all S5 scripts in advance of shooting BECAUSE of Covid, at which time we discovered storylines that were OVERTLY RACIST, and so extremely culturally inaccurate that the cast came together and expressed concerns collectively."