Not long after fellow co-star Simu Liu (set to star in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) voices out his complaints regarding the Canadian sitcom, Jean Yoon decides to step up and follow suit.
Liu’s on-screen mom Jean Yoon, who also portrayed Umma in the original play, responded to a judgmental article about Simu’s statements regarding the show’s ending, framing him as bitter, ungrateful and tried to pit him against Ins Choi who wrote the original play. Yoon not only spoke in defence of her co-star but made it clear that she agreed with him, while revealing some of her own uncomfortable and painful experiences on the set of Kim’s Convenience.
“As an Asian Canadian woman, a Korean-Canadian woman [with] more experience and knowledge of the world of my characters, the lack of Asian female, especially Korean writers in the writers’ room of Kim’s made my life VERY DIFFICULT & the experience of working on the show painful,” she said on Twitter.
She also revealed that Kevin White was the showrunner, a fact that was concealed from the cast and caused the show to suffer. Yoon also added that season five was somewhat saved when Choi resumed control of the show.
“The cast received drafts of all (season 5) scripts in advance of shooting BECAUSE of Covid-19 [sic], at which time we discovered storylines that were OVERTLY RACIST, and so extremely culturally inaccurate that the cast came together and expressed concerns collectively. Under Mr Choi’s leadership, (season 5) restored many of the core values of the original show, and most offensive ‘jokes’ were removed.”
Like Liu, she also confirmed that no writers involved truly knew or understood Korean culture, not even the food. The writers did not proactively attempt to educate themselves about the culture despite working on a TV series about a Korean family.
*Cover image via Thunderbirds Films