Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 495 - Is The British-Vietnamese Creative Scene About To Explode? - Tuyen Do

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495 - Is The British-Vietnamese Creative Scene About To Explode? - Tuyen Do · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: We just hit record with Twin Dough.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Twin Dough, yes.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Twin Dough.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: Fun fact, my Vietnamese name is Twin, but I never use it.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is the first time I publicly have ever said that.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Nobody calls me that.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just, I'm gonna call you Twin from now on.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: Women doing, oh, he's the same name, right?
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: One is, one is Yosak one is Yogi.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think my mother named me after Tanduin.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: And doing the singer.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think she loved her.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's cool.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's a cool fun fact.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: Welcome to the podcast.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're here.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to be here.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like super happy to be here.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, why tell me why you're happy to be here.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want to hear it.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want him happy to be here.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, first of all, like, I like you a lot.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: As in, I like your energy.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think everything you're doing for the community is amazing.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's bringing people together.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just like, yeah, I just, I just want to have a chat with you to be honest.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I appreciate that.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: I wasn't expecting that.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: I was expecting something else in my head.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, okay, what are you ready to talk about, right?
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like in my mind?
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: I wasn't ready for that.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: So it's what you get to stick with me to ask you, like, oh, why are you?
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: I didn't expect it to come out the way.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: But thank you.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's, um, I really appreciate that.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I'm, I'm going to receive that.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're very welcome.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: So how did you end up in England?
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: How did I end up in England?
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the story is my eldest brother on a boat by himself, post 75, and I'm the youngest of seven.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: five siblings because I hadn't been conceived at that point and he luckily ended up being picked up by British tanker.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then taken to Hong Kong and ended up in a safe the children orphanage in England when he was.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: How old was he?
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was 12, 13 at the
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he was here in England, along with many other children who had like, who had made the journey without their parents.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: For about five years by himself.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm like, okay, we need to.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're here to talk about you, but I think this is going to take a quick detour for your brother.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: He is very, he has to be,
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: either very amazing or super traumatized where he can't do anything in his life.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: I can't imagine being 12 and going on this journey by like what can you describe a little bit about about him?
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean he's very he's very he and that he's very funny he has like a very very like
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, very fun sense of humor.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He did the, I mean, to be honest, because he's 15 years older than me.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I only know him as an, and all I know is that he likes to drink, and he used to drink and smoke, he likes that, and he used to like, and he was very funny.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: He made jokes a lot.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in our house, actually, that's how we,
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: we function, literally they're always taking the piss out of each other all the time.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: And does it, does it ever talk about like that, that harrowing five years of being by himself?
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know, no, no, I did interview him, but he did speak about the racism.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: that he suffered whilst he was at school here and he a lot of the, I think he actually, because there was a network of Vietnamese kids around about his age, they were very close, and and I think,
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: the letters he wrote a lot of letters to my mother and my mother said that he was always writing letters to him telling him to stay on track.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know all of that sort of stuff being good and he did his like A-levels here.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what it is in the US but he was one of the first, yeah he graduated with a first which is like the top grade in mathematics at university
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how he did it, but he is, of course, I think he is traumatized, but he doesn't talk about it.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I have a theory about these, uh, these people who are 1.5.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's the 1.5 generation or no, actually he's first generation.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, if we really get technical, but when you come that early, you had a taste of like, how really bad it was in the early days in the 70s, grew up in that.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then you come here or you come to England and you have this opportunity and you oblivious to what is really going on in society.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: All you know is you have like all these people depending on you and so you become this person who really does what they have to do and then they really kick some butt.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I wanna know how
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: you are affected.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: Or if at all, you looked at what he did in his life and did that inform any of the decisions that you made when you were coming up?
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, we're actually funny because we will we book and the seven years.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he's the out is from the youngest.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think we are quite close spiritually as in, I don't know, we don't talk very much, but I feel that there's a quite a strong connection between two of us.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was always very aware of his sacrifice, is what my mother would say.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: She would always tell us to,
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: be kind to your brother because he's, you know, because of everything he's been through.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that was all the way through my childhood.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was easy because he was actually, he was very very nice, he was a very nice big brother.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I unconsciously, you know, a lot of my decisions
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: that I probably wasn't artist underneath, but I did everything that I thought was expected of me until about my late 20s.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that was when I changed my direction into being confident enough to pursue a career in the art.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: But up until that point, I did everything my mother expected of me, so I went to, you know, I did all my schoolwork, I went to university, I began causing computer science, because she was convinced that that was where all the money was, and he had done computer science.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So my brother said it was done computer science, but I was terrible at it, so I did finance.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But to be honest, all through university, I slept my way through.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just, I didn't go to any lectures.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think I was kind of quite depressed, but I didn't know, because I wasn't, I didn't know how to function in life really, because I was because I was even though I'm the youngers of seven, I'm quite different.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like this quite big gap between me and the next one.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: and everyone else.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a difference I came when I was four and my next sister closest to me came when she was eight and you know the difference between four and eight is huge in a child to come to a country.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think I don't have any memories of Vietnam.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: like none at all.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: All I have are stories and what I feel like you know what I grew up with.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I suppose it's affected us in different ways.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Me and my big brother.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have the memories but I do, I somehow have absorbed a lot of it all of the trauma.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: just by watching because I was a watcher.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: And yeah, I'm not really answering your question, but you did though in a very perfect roundabout way.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because I'm not really here to know about your brother.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm here to know about how you perceive the world through how you're going to describe your brother.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think you did a perfect job of explaining it.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so funny because the play I wrote about this Vietnamese family, the first, the first you know wrote was inspired actually by a Vietnam War vet who came over, who had become a monk and he'd come over and in my acting teacher had done it had like organized this weekend
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Within this meditation, he was talking about people who had PTSD, the soldiers who had PTSD and how they would walk in a square, like sleepwalk and walk in a square, because that was the space they had while they were imprisoned, and because my father was also in a reeducation camp
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: for five years.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I, whilst I was growing up, I knew that there was like, he had nightmares and things like that.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I had, that was the scene that I wrote.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: The first scene was about this, the, the daughter coming home and discovering her father, sleepwalking.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, and then the play grew, but actually over, but I'd never, I'd never, I'd never, I'd never, I'd
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had trouble turning it into a whole story so you can get lots of scenes but when you're writing a play you need to puzzle it out so that you have a narrative right and for ages I do know how to do it and then I don't know why I hadn't
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: really thought about this before.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just suddenly thought to myself, I'm going to have to write it on time.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I wrote the scene of my mother putting my brother on a boat.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, and that was the yet, that kind of, yeah, somehow I just sort of, you know, the whole play itself took seven years, but I think I was just like,
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: doing this and like, you know, trying to make sense of stuff.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Really?
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I want to ask you, um, when you are coming from this purgatory of computer science and you're in your 20s, you're early 20s, and you're thinking of yourself like, I have something inside of me,
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I guess I'm asking for myself, but I'm asking for like audiences who want to step into more creative endeavors and expression.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then even just for people who are fans of yours that where do you
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: I guess my question is like, where do you find that launch that energy to really propel you to say, you know what?
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: I know that this is like murky waters, the next few years is going to be weird, but I need to like do this.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like what point in your life do you say, I kind of step off to legend do this?
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it reveals itself to you.
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think there is a point that the reason like it's going to be different for everybody.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one step at a time.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think one of the things that I'm very thankful for in terms of my own personalities that I don't think too much into the future.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did think in terms of I need some sort of stability
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: like some sort of financial stability, which is why I ran the restaurant with my sister for a while.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I went to I did finance and then I did six months of training to be an accountant and was again terrible at it and then my sister asked me if I was interested in running a restaurant with them and I said,
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: okay because I'd grown up in the restaurants business and I thought I knew that if it was successful I could you know and some money and become independent which I was desperate for I was so desperate become independent from from because I was living it with my parents at time and I just really wanted to be able to go out and do my own thing.
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so it was during that I was working at the restaurant.
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: There were a lot of actors and writers that used to come in and direct us.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I would chat to them and be like, you know, all my funds.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then one day someone said to me, if you're interested, you should just go and try it.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think I was 26 at the time.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So then I just, I just enrolled without really thinking I'm gonna make a career of this.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and I just enrolled in a adult education.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I suppose you would say community college.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't, like an adult drama class.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: At that point, I'd never ever done any drama or anything like that in my life.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: um, but I knew I wanted to.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I knew that I wanted to learn how to speak because, like, I was very, very nervous, speaking in public, so nervous, even when I was doing my kind of presentation to my tutorial group,
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: at university.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't do it.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I started to cry and shake.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was that bad.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there was only six people in the room.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it was actually like I have a lot of, you know, yes.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: But some what I know now about myself is that I'm very sensitive.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I suppose a lot of what I suffered for met university was overwhelming and going, growing up, I was just overwhelmed by things.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not necessarily that I was scared.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was just that, it like somehow emotionally, I just shot down.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I knew that I needed something to open myself up.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Good, hopefully.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: To get over it.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that was it, really.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was really, really trying hard to get over
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: really like a hurdle which was like this internal hurdle of not being able to speak and I don't know where that came from because it could have come from the first four years of my life it could have just come from being the youngest or seven it could be come from being you know Vietnamese in a different country who knows where it came from it was there if you know me.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think I've done a really good job, I think I wouldn't say conquer it because I'm still very nervous.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, for for all the people that are listening who don't know what you do, I mean, you're an actress and to go from not being comfortable at all and crying in class or before class and being unable to present to the point.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: where you're putting out all of this oppressive work in your industry, in the entertainment industry, is a huge jump, and I can't imagine the strength that it takes to really cross over and perform like that, because when I think about having to grow like that, like when you're like performing in your life,
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: you have to remember lines and I think like your nerves tick over and you forget and so you know I question like where are you today with if you're nervous and how do you control all of that?
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well you see as a big jump because we're talking about it but it's not it's like it's literally
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, so the first, you know, you're so like, like, just slow, it's, it's almost, it's the say I suppose when you have a phobia, and what do they call it?
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, when you phobia, or fear of something.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, like a, they call it, what do they call it when you're slowly introduced is something slowly, a little bit by a little bit, and then you get, you, you sort of start to overcome your phobia.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a, I said,
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like I guess I see it a bit like that where you're especially with drama.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: This way I think drama is such a good tool for young kids or like it's really great tool for learning how to communicate and just yeah it's slowly like it's a slow process and through the craft helps you build tools in order to
• 19:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: focus outside of yourself rather than inside of yourself.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the nervousness comes when the energy the focus is on on yourself and my whole journey especially with the acting is that is to focus outside of myself and nothing is about me.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not about me.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: The set makes sense so like obviously none of the experiences are about me.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nothing I write is about me.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not about me.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's all coming from outside, but ironically everything is about.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know, I've runically, but you know, but you know what I'm talking about, in order to cope with it, does that make, yeah, you know, it makes sense, it makes sense.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: With that level of anxiety, that's what I've had to, I've learnt how to do.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I started off dancing as in like when I was like,
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I was six, my sister, because as one of the someone had said to my mum, oh, you know, you should take her to dance class.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so my elder sister took me to dance class at the age of six once.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I really loved it.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then she didn't take me again.
• 20:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So no one took me.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: until I was like, and then when I turned 11, I went to secondary school, I met a girl who went to that dance school, and I went, oh, can I follow you?
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I still started going by myself.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: By the time I was already enough, I went by myself, and because, you know, people were like helping refugee kids at the time, it was very cheap, you know?
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it was a pound of class for me,
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And my mom just let me go.
• 21:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just, I was like dancing eight hours a week and I was going by myself until we moved house and then I had to stop going.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think the acting like the dancing is like, it's physical memory.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're like, a lot of it is physical memory and focus.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's how I do it.
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: that this is perfect segue into my question.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: I have a huge question about the four hats that you see the headlines about you is actor, playwright, novelist, and director.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: But it sounds like you wear a lot more hats in your life, I'm sure.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: each of those titles, actors, novelist playwright, director, each has its own really professional track and each one has its own sort of like characteristics of becoming like really good and professional and proficient at it.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: But how can you wear all four and
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: be so well known for for being pretty good at all four like what is a similarity what what is a tissue that connects well first of all I don't I wouldn't call myself a director so you can take that one away in this three right and
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: they all stem from my, they all stem from acting, so, so much of, well, I've always wanted to write, I'm sure, as a child.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So writing is, comes quite, I suppose, is quite natural to me.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: concentrated on a lot because I really wanted to get very good at it, like I'm still working on it, like it's in a lifetime's pursuit.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things with the acting, the particular my teachers were very much, they were very much of the camp of you are independent artists, actors,
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: you learn how to write your own things, you learn how to make work yourself.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I found that very liberating and through the sort of knowing how to improvise, it was natural for me to then improvise means.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I just had to learn how to put them together to make a play, which took me a long time, that took a long time for me to learn.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then in terms of like the pros, that was just another thing I had to learn.
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had to, when someone approached me to turn the play into a novel, I, um, I was really scared.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I said yes.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I went and like read books on writing prose and writing novels that I read a bunch of novels and then I threw them all away and just tried to get to the end of the book that I was writing.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think they all come from the same place which is a real fascination with what motivates people, real fascination of like stories
• 25:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't say stories because I'm just really fascinated with human behavior.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: Why did somebody come to you to ask you to adopt it from a play to a novel?
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was doing COVID and really I had no.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really didn't think that I would maybe I did actually.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: but it was during COVID and a young editor at a publishing house just contacted me out the blue and said that they'd read my script, they'd read my play and thought it would make a great novel would I be interested?
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I said, well, I'm not an English major.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually really not, yeah.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I even said, I don't even read that much.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I said, I read scripts, but I don't read many books.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I used to, but not so much anymore.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I said, but I'll give it a go.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she said, just try turning the prologue into prose.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: they really liked it.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So then they commissioned me to write the whole book.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the thing was about the book.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It gave me the opportunity to do what I didn't do with the play, which it was always about the mother.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was always the mother's story.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in the book I go back to Vietnam and there's a whole thread in Vietnam and then I did lessons in her and her experiences which then
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, affects the relationship with her daughter.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is in the book.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: It sounds like they can do it.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: They can do it from a plate or novel and how it's screenplayed.
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's the hope, but I don't know.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if there's an appetite for that.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not because it's so, um, it's, it's, it's, what do you call it?
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It hasn't got a driving narrative, if you know what I mean?
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: Why is this stuff important for the British mainstream to consume?
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Is it important?
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think, well, yeah, I think it's extremely important.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's extremely important to have stories from all different backgrounds and to have them seen as universal.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So,
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for me, it's always about relationships.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is about a mother-and-daughter relationship, and anyone who reads it will be able to see that within themselves.
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's just, there is such an amazing, like strength that comes with,
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: just reading someone's experience from like across the world and some, and it speaks to you, like I remember reading a reading a novel about like a Russian, it was hilarious of like a Russian immigrants, and I just saw my own family.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not alone and it's very much the only time I feel feel connected to the world outside of myself very much is when either I'm acting or I'm reading or I'm consuming something that is somehow touching my soul, I don't know, like parts of me that are not intellectual
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: you can't intellectualize it, you just feel it.
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: With summer rolls, the first British play, Vietnamese British play.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was definitely the first that was that had a full run.
• 29:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: Did you feel the weight of that at the time?
• 29:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: Did you feel like the gravitas, the important to tell?
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: shitting myself.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are we allowed to swear on this stuff?
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: You are fucking anarchist.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, okay.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was literally like, I was so scared.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I was scared every reading.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was scared every time I wrote it, wrote things.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was scared all the time because because you don't do that, you don't, you don't talk about things.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, in fact, you don't talk about you family stuff.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hearing out our shit.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hearing out stuff and and and I'm sure I'm not the only one and my family's not the only one, but like living under secrets, you know, that sort of feeling I grew up with.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I hear I was through the power of drama, trying to tackles some of the things that I found hard when I was growing up, like, not just
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: things that didn't sit right with me, you know.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I put them all in this play.
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not all of them, but I did it with as much love and like through the characters, with as much honesty as I could because that is drama and that is representation being able to put yourself on the stage just
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: the majority, the majority of why actors, you know, going through shit, doing terrible things and then having to pay consequences or like anything like that, you know, doing, just being human, just being very, valuable human beings, but also like trying to survive under certain circumstances,
• 32:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: What was the difference between creating the play and then many years later, getting to the novel, like more freedom, more liberation to kind of express more?
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, what was the mindset difference between the two works?
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, with writing a novel, you'll buy yourself
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Whereas with the play, I had like, you know, you could take it somewhere and you could workshop it.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think with the novel, it was a very lonely road.
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And because a lot of writers would say this, it was like facing myself every single day.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like the
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, every time I sat down to write mostly because a lot of it was very emotional, you know, trying to put myself in this character's shoes and living through certain things.
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's for me, because I suppose because I'm an actor, I, I write from that very emotional place.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I put myself in that space and feel my way through.
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think, um,
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: but then also there was that freedom of being able to go anywhere you wanted like I could go back to Vietnam.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have to stay in the living room of the house.
• 33:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was very daunting because of that because you could go anywhere and it could be this epic.
• 33:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had to shut all of
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, all the comparisons, you know, you know, you know, that stuff, that stuff, but that's really, actually a really, really loud, um, when you're Vietnamese of the diaspora, maybe, maybe, but it was really loud in my head and I had to turn it um, a lot in order to write, write, because, um, I remember saying to my mum, because she had seen, she had seen the play.
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I remember saying to my mum, you know,
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Someone's asked me to write the novel and there she was like someone people could someone can ask you but whether you can do it or not is another matter Thanks for the part of confidence mom.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's all about confidence and And it did took me they gave me a year and it took me four.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh Wow At any moment did you think that you were not going to be able to do it or finish it?
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So many, and then it's scary.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was, I was one of those, you know, inspirational books and podcasts, like junkie, you know.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, you know, consume so much about procrastination and the creative process and all sorts of things.
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think I remember one saying, the hardest hurdle is when you'll need the finish.
• 35:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you're back, it's the bit that gets really, really difficult, and that was where I was, and then it got more painful, not to finish than to finish, so I finished.
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: When you look back on the whole process of like the play, the book, and then, you know,
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: I wonder about this all the time when an artist looks back and go, what kind of done differently, is there anything that we can do differently, or if right now you're given the same assignment, like you'd still be, like you'd still be roughing it through the same shit, that even if it's a different project, at this point knowing what you know, you'd still be dealing with the birth of the new baby, right?
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's still the same pain.
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's just a different child, right?
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I actually, you know, I have no idea how I write anything.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I sometimes go back and I read it and I'm like, did I write that?
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, and this is when I know that like, so I'm an actor writer.
• 36:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't write all the time, right?
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know writers write every single day.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: and it really works if you have that discipline because you don't know what's going to come out.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: You never know.
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: I said it's like having a new baby basically.
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think that's that will be for every single thing.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, you don't remember.
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: You said you don't even remember writing it.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're like looking back and... Yeah, I'm like, how did I write that?
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's how it's going to be, like, you know, for everything I write.
• 37:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Moisturized.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: That is crazy.
• 37:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's like crazy.
• 37:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, we're not even the person.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're not even, yeah, you look back and you're like, who was that?
• 37:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, if you give enough space between things, I mean, surely you've written, if you've looked back on things that you've written, you're like, did I write that?
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Every one of my podcasts, every one of my, I do not remember.
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: I talk to other podcasters who have done hundreds like me, nobody remembers anything.
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't remember.
• 38:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
• 38:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, don't remember these conversations, there's so many of them.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, there's so many, there's just so many that it's hard to remember, you know, obviously I'll remember, you know, doing this from from from England, you know, she wrote somewhere else.
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: I remember those basic things, but the things that we got into maybe like,
• 38:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: talk about your brother at the beginning of the episode that I won't remember, you know, those things I won't remember until I look back at the episode are like, wow, because these are not scripted things, you know, obviously I have like 15 questions for you, but they're like very pillar kind of questions that really kind of guide the conversation, but then when it goes off script like your brother, you know, there's no formula to that.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, it's, yeah, so I mean, I don't see why that would be different with the conversation with the blank page because it really is like a conversation you're just doing it, you're just sort of having a conversation.
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: in our pre-interview, I think you had mentioned that you wanted to ask me some questions.
• 39:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I just want to let you know that, right?
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: You, you did mention something like that.
• 39:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: So at any time, this is a dialogue between both of us if you have any questions about me, feel free.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: You did ask, right?
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you that ask me that?
• 39:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: No, okay.
• 39:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, now you said, I'm like, I can't think of a question.
• 39:38
  [UNKNOWN]: No, no.
• 39:38
  [UNKNOWN]: No.
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to know about you, I want to know about my own life, you know, honest, I want to like spend an evening having dinner with you and you can tell me all the life, but yeah.
• 39:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: We have we have some time now, I mean, I could tell you about my whole life, but I also want to know about your life too as as a British Vietnamese person, you know, I'm happy to share my life too as a whatever questions you have, but
• 40:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, you have to know that people of Vietnamese Americans or Americans are very curious about British people.
• 40:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: I am at least.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did not realize how small a community we have in comparison to not even just the US.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: You'll like this.
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did a feature film recently, where this is the first feature in Germany, a German feature, where the lead car sold Vietnamese.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: You wrote it?
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I was in it.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I played one of the leading roles.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I played the mother.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: and it was really interesting because it was same same but different because in and it's it's so linked to the history, you know history of each country.
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in Germany because of East Germans linked to the Soviet and communist past they had you know a lot of Vietnamese
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: to Germany.
• 41:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so they have like, and who stayed after the war kept war came down.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they have, they have like five times more Vietnamese in Germany than they do in Britain.
• 41:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so they have more artists, because it's a lot of it is to do with numbers.
• 41:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Proportional.
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Proportional.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so they have more artists.
• 41:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was just really, for me, very exciting to be in a feature film, where the lead cast was Vietnamese.
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: The director was German Vietnamese.
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there were Vietnamese people behind the camera.
• 42:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wow, artists, the Vietnamese, and I'm talking Vietnamese German.
• 42:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: German Vietnamese people.
• 42:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, the British Vietnamese are very rare.
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: British Vietnamese artists are very rare because it's it's a proportional game.
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, and that's why the Vietnamese American entertainment industry is so powerful because there's so many of us.
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's so many.
• 42:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, here it's just really I was the first one.
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I, you know, it was the first one to like be to break out, to break out, to be on this national stage, you know, national, the national theatre stage.
• 42:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was the first Vietnamese person.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: First Vietnamese to like all on a lot of the stages in London.
• 43:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I really didn't think about it, you know what I mean?
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, for they, I looked up to them, I saw their immigrant stories and I was like, wow, you can do this.
• 43:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they, and so I had two, two mentors who really championed me and helped me along the way.
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I mean, I would be where I was without people believing me.
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: No one gets where they are by themselves.
• 43:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: How close is the British Vietnamese creative community?
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: How big is it?
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: How involved are the people and how intimate are these members of your community?
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think they want that many.
• 43:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's definitely growing.
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: The people are intimate in little groups
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: we are slowly coming together.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's like the film industry and then there's the theatre and then there's the visual arts and then there's the arts and then there's the pirates and we're kind of like scattered all over the place.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there isn't one, you know, there isn't a unifying thing yet.
• 44:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, because everyone, I think it's also because everyone is struggling to do their thing.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: That no one really has has the energy to bring it all together yet.
• 44:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's why what you what you what you what you're you're doing with this podcast is so amazing.
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: How it brings the equal together.
• 45:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: I wonder why more people don't do what I do.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: It breaks my heart to think about it.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: Look, it really, you're very big at thinking about doing a podcast.
• 45:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have to, how do I start?
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: You, I just, I have an idea, yeah, what?
• 45:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is how you do it.
• 45:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is how you do it.
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: You just turn the camera on and hit record.
• 45:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's all you do.
• 45:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: And you save the file,
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: You just put on the YouTube.
• 45:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: Put on YouTube and that's it.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's it's much easier than writing.
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's much easier than acting.
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's much easier than making money.
• 45:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's much easier than anything.
• 45:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Cookings.
• 45:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Conversations of people you want to use with.
• 45:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I've don't know why more people are not doing it.
• 45:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: It really pains me.
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: Here's why it pains me.
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's a selfish thing.
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want more lily pads to jump on in society.
• 45:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want to have a lily pad a few in Britain that I can jump on people's shows.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: Vietnamese British Vietnamese.
• 46:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want to go into your shows.
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want to be invited to Australian podcasts.
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Vietnamese Australian podcasts.
• 46:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want to be invited to all these podcasts shows.
• 46:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: And there's nothing.
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, I just need for me to be invited on.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: podcast and I'm going to invite you on the Kenneth.
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: Please, you know, and we can do we can call it doing and doing for the episode that are on.
• 46:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: Doing and doing.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're in the episode that we do together.
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: Doing and doing.
• 46:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I don't think you should waste another minute contemplating.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think you're a great conversationist.
• 46:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, anybody I invite on the podcast, I think is great conversationist.
• 46:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: Everybody, you know, have some, every Vietnamese artist has something to say.
• 46:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: These creatives and even business people and politicians.
• 46:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: Everybody has something to say.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think everybody should have a podcast.
• 46:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: I keep saying that year after year after year after year.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: And if anybody needs help with this, I will be there to like explain and consult.
• 47:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I won't take a penny off of, I just, I need a place to land too.
• 47:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want to be invited on to shows to talk about different things that I want to talk about.
• 47:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I saved my idea of my podcast.
• 47:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: My podcast, I need it.
• 47:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: Let me save it.
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, okay.
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, what do you think I want?
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, then I have to do it.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: In fact, you should be talking about why, tell me why, and what you would be talking about.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because then you have to do it.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, so yeah, no, absolutely, because I would like to talk.
• 47:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it was mostly, I'd like to talk to actors and creators of color and their journey.
• 47:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the things that they have had to overcome,
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to I want to be able to have conversations and people to sort of speak freely about things because um because so much of the time they they they can't because they they're scared it might damage their career or relationships or whatever it is but I want to be able to you know yeah to have these open conversations so that it brings people together okay I'm going to break down the way to do this so that everybody can hear it okay great
• 48:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: invite 20 of your friends in the business of creativity or whatever, whatever, just get 20 people, you might have to ask 30 people, 20 people will agree to it, put it in an Excel spreadsheet, put a date on when they have agreed to record, do that, set it up like the first person like maybe a month from now and then just line it all up.
• 48:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: One or two a week and just line it all up.
• 48:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Get Riverside FM, get a decent laptop camera for like a hundred bucks or whatever you're using right now works and get a plug in microphone into your computer and hit record and you are off to the races and out of the 20 or 30 that you record it take the best five and then start to upload those five until YouTube.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: And you got a podcast.
• 49:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: There you go.
• 49:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that simple?
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Is that simple?
• 49:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: And don't worry about growing anything, the numbers.
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: It will organically grow.
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, as you know, as an artist, as a veteran artist, you know that everything takes time to blossom and podcasts.
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: whether you want to hide it from the world and silence it, it won't, it won't.
• 49:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: Once you start to do it, it just starts to grow.
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: And every podcast where I know has done very well, and I'm not talking about money, but I'm talking about what it brings to your own personal life.
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's like, you get to read a book about somebody's life in an hour,
• 49:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: The byproduct of all this is creating communities and that is really the biggest beauty of podcasting to me.
• 50:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then the money does come.
• 50:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: I was just telling another content creator this morning that if you don't do it for the money and you do it for the love and it shows the money comes, you know, sponsorship comes.
• 50:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think brand deals start to come.
• 50:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: Lifestyle changes and decisions
• 50:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I think the anchor that needs to happen is that you are in love with people that you want to be telling the stories of people in your community.
• 50:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: My community happens to be Vietnamese people around the world, yours is creatives.
• 50:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: Gotta do it.
• 50:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bringing creatives together.
• 50:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Creatives of color together because it is.
• 50:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 50:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is tough.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's tough in here.
• 50:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's tough in UK.
• 50:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's tough everywhere.
• 50:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: But then it doesn't become tough after you have a group of community.
• 50:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: What I've noticed is once you got this power of community together,
• 51:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: nothing is tough because you can make phone calls to executives who are Vietnamese or executives who are in the crew you just start making phone calls and you're like wait a minute it used to feel like it was tough six years ago and then all of a sudden it's not tough anymore it's like cutting butter with the hot knife now you know for me does that mean yeah I was about to say can it is your is your life more like butter
• 51:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the tough part is now too many options.
• 51:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: too many options.
• 51:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 51:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: I remember wanting to be a producer for the longest time in my life, the film producer.
• 51:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: And now the opportunities are here and I'm just like, oh, I know.
• 51:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's podcasting.
• 51:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's my life, you know, but, but I look at the, the producing opportunities that have showed up as a result of doing the podcast work and just being around the film business for a long time, I'm not a real producer.
• 51:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, that's how it goes on in my mind, right?
• 52:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I don't know
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I know what I'm doing in podcasting.
• 52:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: But do you, like, is it something you want?
• 52:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to produce movies?
• 52:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: Not anymore.
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: Not like the way I used to want it.
• 52:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: I used to want it so bad.
• 52:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: But now, as a podcaster, I'm just like, so happy talking to friends and guests all day.
• 52:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your path has revealed itself to you.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think, so like, for me, you know,
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm still wondering, you know, I want to be, I've gone back to acting because I love it.
• 52:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I've gone back to really concentrating on that area of my life, of my career.
• 52:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the writing, I think, I feel like, like, I don't know, might be similar with you in the producing.
• 52:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I have a responsibility sometimes to write because they aren't enough writers.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: They aren't enough people writing the stories.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're not enough of us, you know.
• 53:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that really weighs on my shoulders.
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm still, I know people want me to write.
• 53:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, there are opportunities for me to write.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know if it's the path, man.
• 53:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: We are multi-hifinates, and I don't know if these answers are going to be concrete revealed in a very solid way.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love to write, I love to cook, I love to sing, and play music, I love piano, and guitar.
• 53:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, I do.
• 53:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love these things.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sitting here on a musician.
• 53:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love it all.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love anything that makes my spirit fly, right?
• 53:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love it.
• 53:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love drinking.
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love being around the campfire, sitting with a bunch of creatives, and I love telling stories around the campfire with my kids, and I love all of it, you know?
• 54:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: But all of it really when I think about,
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: And in my life, when I die, I think I want my tombstone just to write read podcasts, but then he's a podcaster.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's living in this life, it's amazing.
• 54:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 54:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Before I could actually leave.
• 54:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, thank you, thank you.
• 54:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's not even about the successes about it.
• 54:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, it's, it was, you found the thing that you love to do.
• 54:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 54:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 54:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not everyone, not everyone gets that, not everyone gets there.
• 54:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's a privilege and a real honor to hear stories around the world from British Vietnamese people like you and global Vietnamese citizens, you know, it's, and I know that there's all this, like,
• 55:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: political polarization, and there's all generational polarization, and there's so much factions that are worrying, but I think that's what makes it awesome, too.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's what makes it beautiful as well, because if there wasn't all that muck going on, I think it would be kind of boring.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think, yeah, I think the Vietnamese around the world share a real, I don't know, like,
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: yeah for sure like just a lot of death a lot of like yeah yeah what are we going to be expecting from you in the next few years in terms of books uh hang on my mom
• 56:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: That is the first time it ever happened.
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because you sound like you don't sound like you're doing any work.
• 56:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Get it.
• 56:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh my god.
• 56:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's crazy.
• 56:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh my god.
• 56:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is the first time it ever happened.
• 56:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because I usually...
• 56:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: this is great.
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: I've a cousin that their mother just died in my aunt and my mom's in law and she just died she's 85 and so he's coming over to take my mom out to lunch and do funeral stuff.
• 56:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
• 56:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so she's like, yeah, you're cousins.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is recording, by the way, this is so funny.
• 56:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, my studio is upstairs, and my mother lives with me.
• 56:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: And yeah, she knows I'm always recording, but yeah, this is funny.
• 56:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: I hope I don't even know if my editor's gonna cut this out or not, but that was hilarious.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: Why not, why not keep it?
• 56:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why, yeah, keep it, keep it.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love mothers.
• 57:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so what's next, what's next for you?
• 57:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, well, we have, I have, I just, like I said, I just shot this feature called the matriarch.
• 57:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, what a cool name.
• 57:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I play the matriarch.
• 57:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I cannot wait to watch this.
• 57:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: When is it going to be done, huh?
• 57:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: Congratulations.
• 57:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: When is it going to be done?
• 57:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's, um, very, very nearly done.
• 57:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's in post at the moment.
• 57:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's landed a world sales deal with someone, so they are going to be, which is going to be an ounce soon, and then they will be taking the reins in terms of its festivals and strategy.
• 57:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so we're going to do this.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: So this is what we're going to do.
• 57:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: What are we going to do?
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're going to do this.
• 57:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: When it comes out, wherever it comes out, especially if it comes to America, the US,
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: We should get you back on the podcast and if you if it is its world tour or if it shows up at the Viet Film Festival wherever it shows up if I'm going definitely going to show up at the Viet Film Festival.
• 58:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: I will then yeah, yeah
• 58:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: Then you reach out, and then if you actually flighted the US to LA, Orange County, then we will schedule an in-person interview, and we will talk about the matriarch, because that sounds cool.
• 58:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: You are going to love it.
• 58:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I hope so.
• 58:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's cool.
• 58:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's cool.
• 58:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's cool.
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a genre film.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's cool.
• 58:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 58:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: A horror.
• 58:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thriller.
• 58:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: thriller.
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, can't wait.
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 58:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: So when it releases, um, let's get back on and then we can talk about the matrarch.
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then we can talk more about the podcast that you'd had already started at that point.
• 58:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 58:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's going to be a few months.
• 58:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
• 58:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's going to be great.
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Line up 20 people start recording them.
• 59:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have them in my head.
• 59:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just need them to say yes.
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, just reach out to them, and then so the next time we're going to talk, you'll have a podcast, and then we'll talk about your podcast and we'll talk about the new movie release.
• 59:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 59:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fantastic.
• 59:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: Can we do that?
• 59:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 59:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: When it was such a pleasure, I really can't wait to talk to you again very soon about the major arc.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dennis, I want to come to LA and like sit and like listen to you play the guitar around a campfire and tell stories and podcasts at the same time and produce your own show.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: All in one night.
• 59:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: only one night let's do it let's let's put that into the universe and let's do it and congratulations with all of the success and the release of some eros as a novel yes oh yes coming out we find it on the talk yeah maybe this year top of me
• 1:00:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, we try to do these interviews and talks, knowing that there's this product that's like flying in the background, but we try to be as coy and as like smooth as possible.
• 1:00:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: But we're here to promote some arose a novel, kind of out May 12, you know, that I think we've heard it did a pretty good job just kind of cruising along with the conversation.
• 1:00:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then hidden people at the end with the May 12th, it releases you.
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had, well, you know, I did not know that.
• 1:00:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It just came up.
• 1:00:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: You did not know one.
• 1:00:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know.
• 1:00:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: You did not.
• 1:00:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, we were promoting anything.
• 1:00:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought you just wanted to snap to me.
• 1:00:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: Really.
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, let me tell you about the person that hooked us up.
• 1:00:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, who hooked us up?
• 1:00:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hang.
• 1:00:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, hang.
• 1:00:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hang is one that pushed it a month ago.
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's all here.
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hang.
• 1:00:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm really bad because I'm, you know, how I feel about the, like,
• 1:01:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: How scared I am about the play and then how scared I was about the novel and the writing I am equally scared of sharing it What which is why I'm not very good at the whole promotion Whoa yeah, hang was like pushing this and then obviously you know I'm busy with helping me
• 1:01:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, and look, not to say that I did not know about what the work that you do because Bowen win, you know, told me about the work that you do.
• 1:01:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: So like, all these people are like, you got to get doing on and you have to talk to her about like all the work that she's done.
• 1:01:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: So obviously, there is a, from inside of me, internally.
• 1:01:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: But really, I mean, we have to talk about promoting and, you know, because...
• 1:01:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the things that the year of the fire halls, helping me, I am now, like I said to you, I think when we were having our first chat, I'm going to try and take over the world.
• 1:02:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, no, I was like, I was mostly talking about, I'm really trying hard to take my space, and really trying hard to hone my own mind,
• 1:02:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, talent really and know that I have it and that I can use it and share it and not be embarrassed, like I don't know why I'm embarrassed.
• 1:02:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I think that's a very human thing.
• 1:02:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not even a Vietnamese thing.
• 1:02:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not about British thing or Australian thing, tall poppy syndrome.
• 1:02:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's none of that.
• 1:02:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's just human nature.
• 1:02:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's a human nature.
• 1:02:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: It feels, I mean, unless you're narcissists, you're, you know.
• 1:02:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: And you're not in our senses, I'm not in our senses.
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: But we have to put our professional hats on because I think the British and American parts of us require that we are fully capable of promoting ourselves.
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think it's important.
• 1:02:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: And this is the time to do it with your new podcasts, with your new novel.
• 1:03:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: I will be here to make sure that you feel comfortable about getting the word out.
• 1:03:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: So may 12 everybody, summer rows, releases in the United States.
• 1:03:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:03:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: The like-wise, thank you.
• 1:03:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wyn.
• 1:03:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wyn, Catherine Wyn, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
• 1:03:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.