So your family is rich?

We're comfortable.

That is exactly what a super rich person would say.

I was wondering if there is any bit of sort of like

culturally specific stuff in this movie

that you are really excited about kind of getting to the mainstream.

Making food with a family around the table.

The dumpling scene which the three of us were all in.

We did together, yeah. - Together, yeah.

The dumpling making lessons is, yeah,

Cause everyone loves food.

Right.

And there's something about

the tactile experience of making it with your hands when you're making a movie.

Dumplings, because the American people

don't know what those are.

That's true.

You know?

Like dim sum's like a character in the movie.

Yeah, like what is "dim sum", right?

Yeah, it really is,

yeah, I vote dim sum for me too.

Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah.

A lot of sort of Asian culture

is around the act of providing, so something like food.

And it's almost a conduit to expressing your love.

You have that beautiful quote that you love so much.

The worst crab meat...?

- Oh, the worst quality crab, best quality heart.

From the last Asian-American movie 25 years ago,

Joy Luck Club.

So, it was really, I was focused on Rachel,

Rachel Chu's journey going to,

an Asian-American going to Asia for the first time

and tracking what it feels like

to go to this exotic place but finding

not that it's sort of an alien thing,

but it's actually really warm and there's families

and there's food and there's things that you desire,

not sort of are curious about.

So I really love that idea of it.

- You know, Singapore, being such a diverse, amazing country

and seeing Singlish being spoken for the first time

and that's the local potois where it sort of

sounds like English, it is English, but they speak

with flaws and alamaks and things like that.

It'll be nice to see that local flavor

in a movie of this caliber.

I learned a lot about Singapore

and it's an incredibly, culturally diverse country

with a Chinese population

and they speak Hokkien, they speak Mandarin, and they speak English

and they speak, you know.

And so it was just a culmination of all that

and I had no idea that it was like that down there.

So I learned a lot.

- What I like that's really brought out in this

was Michelle Yeo's character as Eleanor,

just the conflict between her and Rachel.

Cause it's like really looking down on Rachel

because she has the freedom to choose

and follow her passions, as if that,

and that's a laughable thing in her eyes.

That there's like the naivete of youth

and that's I relate to,

cause I think with Asian-American culture and I grew up,

my parents are Korean, and there is that obligation

as a first-born son to be a doctor,

which I was, and then follow my heart to be an actor,

so it's, you know, to go against that grain,

I related to that a lot.

And it's told in a very different way

than just like what we were talking about, the trope of the Asian doctor.

- It's not over-done.

- It's not over-done.

- And I think you can very easily overdo

a tiger mom in an Asian movie and in an Asian-American narrative.

- It is not done in that way.

- And it's not like that,

and everything is kind of unexplained, right?

- Yes, yes.

- And that's how it should be.

- And the food. - And the food.

That's what everybody said the food.

- The amazing street food.