We sit down with Patty Lee to talk about her acting career leading up to her starring role in Moku Moku.

Can you tell us about your journey into acting and what inspired you to pursue this career?

My first show was the third-grade school play. I was cast as Alice in Alice in Wonderland. Everyone was in an uproar about a little Asian girl playing Alice when she was “supposed” to have blonde hair and blue eyes. Still, as soon as I got in front of an audience, I knew I had found my place in the world. After that, I started studying acting and fell in love with the craft. I had fantastic theater teachers, professors, and mentors from The Burt Wood School of Performing Arts, Middleboro High School, Bridgewater State University, and many community Theaters. I heard many times over that journey that if you can do anything else and be happy, you should because acting is a tricky business to pursue as a career. There was a moment after college when I moved to Maui and tried to live a “different life,” one that didn’t revolve around acting because they were right; it was HARD. But acting still found me! And as soon as I picked it back up, I knew I couldn’t do anything else with my life.

What kind of roles do you find most challenging and why?

The most difficult parts for me to play are the ones I look like but don’t relate to. When I lived in Boston, I was always cast as a stereotype of “Asian,” which was tough because I wasn’t raised by that side of my family, so I couldn’t relate to how the directors wanted me to behave. Nowadays, I get cast as “local.” It’s like being from New York and playing someone from Texas. Sure, you’ve heard Southern accents and observed people behaving in specific ways. Still, it would help if you learned the subtle differences between South Carolina and Arkansas Southern accents. You need to understand the customs that are a part of daily life. You observe it as an outsider but must consider behaviors, dialects, and mannerisms. It’s a challenge to represent a population you live amongst without truly being from that place and accurately describing it. It’s a big responsibility.

How do you prepare for a new role? Can you walk us through your process?

When I embark on a character, I start by reading the script. I find the character given circumstances: who they are, where they are from, their family, their friends, interests, the first time they skinned their knee, etc. I look for all the answers in the script and invent all the others based on what feels logical or exciting for the character. Then I look at how they live in their bodies, their physicality. What are people with similar circumstances like? What are their speech patterns, postures, and attitudes? In the next step, I look internally at myself and how I can relate to the character to bring that personal connection to the role. And if I get super nerdy, I get into beatings and verbs. What is the character’s objective in every scene, what are her obstacles, and what tactics does she employ to get where she wants to be. Then, I work on memorizing the lines, speech patterns, physicality, blocking, and delivery of comedic punchlines. And finally, when it’s time to deliver, I try to think like my character, listening and responding the way she would. That’s the basics.

Have you ever had to portray a character drastically different from your personality? How did you approach that?

In “Same Time Next Year,” I played a woman from the fifties who meets a man and has an affair once a year for the next 24 years. You see her roughly every five years; so much has changed for her. She is a wife, then she’s a mom, then a student, then a business professional, and she ages as well throughout the play. It was challenging on so many levels. Because it was a two-person play, I carried half of the show. But also because of so much of who she was and what she lived through, I have never experienced. But that’s what made the delving into the script, the period, and those experiences all the more fun. No, I was not a hippie in the 60s, but I know plenty of people who were, and many of them haven’t changed too much since then. All people, no matter the archetype, have an inner truth. I had to find Doris’s and bring that to each decade she was seen in.

Can you share a memorable on-set experience or anecdote that significantly impacted you as an actor?

Not one, but nearly every moment on set with Chino and Bronson has taught me so much as an actor about what it means to work as a team. Before getting in front of the camera, we always discuss what we will do. Rehearse it quietly amongst ourselves and then play with it over the takes, refining it as we go. It’s always playtime, but the idea is to perfect every take until the timing hits right or the reactions are spot on. And it works! Our directors have often told us, “We don’t even have to direct you. You guys create it yourselves.” We know and trust our characters and each other to play until it feels right, and that’s been both fun and super educational for me.

What do you believe is the most crucial quality or skill for a successful actor to possess?

Playfulness is the most essential quality. Being willing and able to do anything without inhibition, to play around. That’s where you discover the good stuff when you are just messing around.

How do you handle rejection in the competitive acting world, and what keeps you motivated?

I just put everything into each audition and forget about it the second I hit submit. The enjoyment is in the acting, not in the landing of roles. So, I got a chance to do what I love. The rest is no longer in my hands, so I don’t bother worrying about it.

Can you describe your collaboration with directors and fellow cast members? How do you build chemistry on set?

We’re all professionals in the same industry, so realizing that you all have the same goals and no one person is better than another takes some pressure off. It’s disarming to be relaxed in these situations, to crack jokes, to give advice- when requested- to accept feedback without getting defensive; it all lends to chemistry on set. That and a few inside jokes help…

Are there any actors or directors whose work has significantly influenced your own, and if so, in what way?

There are so many. Ugh, where to start? Toni Collette was in a show called “The United States of Tara,” where she played a woman with dissociative identity disorder. Her ability to completely transform through physicality, speech, and demeanor blew my mind when I watched it. She was a total chameleon!

Jennifer Connelly has always delivered such honest performances.

Claire Danes allowed herself to be so vulnerable.

If I’m honest (don’t cancel me), Kevin Spacey has always made interesting and unusual choices for me.

Then there were just these people who were so captivating every time they were on screen, like Robin Williams, Glenn Close, Kathy Bates, Angelica Houston, Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dustin Hoffman, Benicio Del Toro, the list goes on and on.

As for directors, I cannot say that any of these directors’ work has inspired me as an artist to be like them, but it has inspired me to see the potential in film as a medium and impressed me absolutely. I’m a big fan of Baz Luhrmann, Lars Von Trier, Martin Scorsese, Jim Henson, Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky, and Tim Burton, to name a few.

What do you enjoy most about live performance, and how does it compare to working in film or television?

I prefer Live performances to film and television, but it’s fleeting. I rarely meet someone who saw that one excellent performance I did on stage 3 years ago, but when you’re on film or television, people all over see it. They can watch and rewatch it, so that’s fun. But always live performances, for me, trump film or TV. I love how you rehearse a play until you are satisfied with your choices. It gives you time to discover all the hidden gems, fine-tune your timing, and know the dialogue inside and out so that no processing of what you’re saying or where you’re moving reads on your face like it’s memorized. Instead, it feels lived-in and natural. It gives you time to fall in love with your character and develop all her quirks. A few other things I love about live performances: the story usually happens for the characters in the same order it does for the audience. So, as an actor, you get to experience what the character is going through as it happens. In TV and film, it’s more disjointed and rarely filmed “in order.” And there is NOTHING like a live audience. Their reactions, gasps, laughs, and tears contribute to the performance. The nature of it being live adds this fun element of any moment you might have to improvise to fix a lighting cue miss. This prop didn’t make it on-stage or a wardrobe malfunction- I like that challenge.

Then again, with television, you grow with the characters and spend more time with them over multiple stories rather than just one. I love the ability to edit and create a totally different account. I love the ability to do multiple takes until the delivery is correct, and I love having a permanent finished product that can be watched repeatedly.

Can you share your experience with character development and how you make a role your own?

I shared some of this in my previous answer, but yeah. The biggest thing that makes a character “my own” is that it’s using the vessel of my body to tell their story. So, I embody my character’s physicality at all times. Does she have a limp from the time her leg got run over by a ride-on lawn mower? Does she have a blinking tic? Does her back hurt from lifting heavy boxes? How does her body ordinarily move, and how do the changes in her circumstances affect that? Then I dive into her entire back story of who she is, where she came from, and what she has experienced in their life. Then I add the lens of, “How would her story be altered if she were me?”- looked like me, talked like me- that kind of thing. The text tells so much, not only about the back story but also about the point of view. Is she always complaining? Is she optimistic? Does she swear a lot? These kinds of things shed a lot of light on the type of person she is and how she sees the world. Then I frame everything everyone says as, “How would this strike my character if she heard it for the first time?” and that’s what I try to deliver. These are just honest reactions and actions from a fleshed-out, genuine person.

How do you balance your personal life with the demands of an acting career, especially during intense shooting schedules?

I don’t see it any differently than a regular job. You have your work and free time, but the hours can sometimes get a little kooky when filming. And when you are also producing and/or directing, you skip the “personal life” part entirely… until filming is over.

Have you ever been asked to perform a particularly physically challenging stunt or emotionally demanding scene? How did you prepare for it?

Years ago, we did a One Night Only reading of the show Agnes of God. I played Agnes, a young nun who gives birth to a baby. The question is between a psychiatrist and the Mother Superior whether it was an immaculate conception and whether Agnes herself is blessed by God. It was meant to be a reading, so book in hand, just one rehearsal. But my character throughout the play was constantly singing all of these songs that I didn’t know, so I asked Bob Wills, who knew all about Catholic music, and he shared with me that each of these songs was part of a Catholic Church Service. So, of course, he taught them all to me and what each of them meant. That was hard because I didn’t realize this reading would require so much, but I wasn’t going to half-ass it. So, I recorded the songs and played them in my ear as I sang them. Oh, and Agnes is supposed to have the voice of an angel, so I wanted to sing them well. But that wasn’t even the hard part. The challenging part was that Agnes, in a hypnotic trance, re-enacts giving birth. So, I had the pleasure of acting out a woman, under hypnosis, thinking she was giving birth on stage in a truly traumatic way, as recalled from her own memories. I broke a sweat, but it was the best “reading” I have ever participated in.

What is your perspective on the evolution of diversity and representation in the entertainment industry, and how has it affected your career?

I’m loving it. Stories are being told from so many different perspectives that the roles are suddenly much more multi-faceted. It’s given me many more opportunities as a woman of mixed ethnicity.
There are now roles written for people that look like me. There are opportunities for people like me to take a lead in a film or television show instead of just playing tertiary characters. And because of it, we now have films like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which was just a story about parents and children through the generations but told through the lens of this one immigrant story. It’s brilliant and more representative of the actual population.

Looking back on your acting journey, what advice would you give aspiring actors starting in the field?

LEARN YOUR CRAFT. Take chances. Make interesting choices. Don’t upstage other actors. Don’t wait for someone to “discover” you. Be your own biggest marketer. Don’t take everything so personally. The reality is that this industry is super hard to break into. But if you love what you do, it doesn’t matter if it’s an audition, a table-read, a play, or a movie; anytime you get to act is a privilege. And one final thing, sometimes there’s someone more appropriate for the part. That does not reflect your value or talent; it’s just the reality of having a massive pool of talent and a tiny number of roles.

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