Brian Tee has been doing the work.

Ever since he took an acting class for non-majors at UC Berkeley with a friend, the SoCal native got hooked on the craft.

“I said, ‘Let’s just take this class… it’s gonna be it’s gonna be fun!'” Tee said. “In the first two weeks, it changed my life. It’s that bug that people talk about that just hit me like a ton of bricks. I literally found what I felt was my calling and that gave me the drive, perseverance and the dedication to apply myself.” That said, he went from a communications major to an aspiring actor.

I met with Tee three days into 2024, weeks before his upcoming limited series Expats would hit Prime Video. Hearing the start of his Hollywood journey may seem like any typical “I caught the acting bug” story, but it hits different.

After graduating, Tee returned home Hacienda Heights, which is outside of Los Angeles. When the family was worried about his grandmother living alone in Koreatown, Tee raised his hand and said he would move in and help take care of her. “I was 21 at the time and I would take care of my grandmother, taking a bunch of jobs and hustling as an actor,” he said. “What I thought would be like two or three years on the hustle, became the last 12 years of her life.”

From Shredder To the Drift King

As an actor, Tee has stayed booked and busy. Chances are, you have seen his work in a movie or TV show in the past two decades.

More recently, he starred as Dr. Ethan Choi for eight seasons of NBC’s hit drama Chicago Med, which is part of the massive Dick Wolf universe. He has also appeared on many TV shows, including Hawaii Five-0, Grimm, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Lucifer, and others.

Many people may not realize that Tee’s film career is on par with his TV roles. There aren’t many actors — specifically Asian American actors — who can tally four major box office film franchises. He appeared in 2013’s The Wolverine alongside Hugh Jackman and the revival of Jurassic World in 2015. He also had the opportunity to play the legendary villain Shredder in 2016’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. But if there is one character that people will always remember it’s The Drift King (a.k.a. DK) in 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. “I will never live that down!” laughs Tee when I bring up the role, insisting that it’s iconic.

Keep in mind, this was pre-Crazy Rich Asians Hollywood when there weren’t many roles for Asian American actors available, let alone non-stereotypical Asian American characters in film and TV. Granted, the needle has moved since the early to mid-’00s, giving more space for members of the AAPI community to become an actor and storyteller. It was more of an uphill struggle for Asian American actors. So much so that Tee just wanted to throw in the towel out of frustration.

“There was a moment when I told some of my acting peers, ‘I’m done’,” Tee admitted. “And I credit a buddy of mine — his name is Kenny Choi. He said, ‘You can’t’… I remember this distinctly. We were at his house and he said ‘It’s common to compromise. You just gotta keep going. You just can’t quit.'”

“I think this industry is hard period and I think being a person of color made it harder period — especially at that time,” Tee pointed out. “At the beginning of my career, as far as being Asian, I don’t think we were ever respected as artists, actors or even good. There’s certain casting directors said ‘Asians can’t act’ in publications.”

When someone makes a generalization like that, Tee said that he was naturally resentful of the industry (How could you not be?). Despite the tidal wave of ignorance, Tee’s love for the work kept him going.

**Fanboying over The Farewell and becoming an “expat”**

Tee said that after meeting with Lulu Wang for the role over Zoom with nine people in the room, he had to take a moment to fanboy over The Farewell. The movie became an awards season contender after it was released in 2019 and amplified Wang as an amazing storyteller and filmmaker. In the dramedy starring Awkwafina, a Chinese family finds out that their grandmother has only a short while to live but keeps it a secret from her so that they can plan a wedding to gather before she dies. For Tee, the movie meant a lot.

“I told her what The Farewell did for me because of my history with my grandmother,” he said. “It was like a cathartic feeling that I might have been repressing for a very long time because watching it made me cry buckets.”

The first two episodes of Wang’s Expats debuts on Prime Video on January 26 with new episodes released weekly — just like old-fashioned TV! The six-episode adaptation is based on Janice Y.K. Lee‘s novel The Expatriates, which follows three American women—Margaret (Nicole Kidman), Hilary (Sarayu Blue), and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo) living in the multicultural tapestry of Hong Kong. Their worlds are turned upside down when their lives intersect after a tragedy — specifically the lives of Margaret and her husband, Clark, played by Tee.

After eight seasons on Chicago Med, Tee felt like playing Clark Expats was the next step in his career. “It was something I was ready to do,” he stated. “I think at the same time that Expats came around, I told Chicago Med that I was leaving.. I was just, I was ready to explore other things and [Expats] was like, right in my lane.”

He described Wang’s storytelling in Expats as “next level” and was ready to step up to the plate. “Opportunities like this for Asian American men are so few and far between, if ever within a decade of generation — so there was no fear.” Tee was all in with Expats and said that his personal life helped prepare him for the tragic struggle Margaret and Clark face in the series.

The aforementioned tragedy that ties the three main characters is the disappearance of Margaret and Clark’s youngest son, Gus goes missing. The family goes on an emotional roller coaster of a journey and it impacts Margaret’s relationship with her good friend Hilary and Mercy, who she befriended at a fancy yacht party. It also puts a heavy strain on Margaret and Clark’s marriage.

“I have a child who is eight years old and just the thought of anything happening to them or my wife is devastating,” Tee said. “That literally flicked me into Margaret and Clark’s and his relationship with older children is amazing — I took that to heart.”

Loss and grief as well as the pain that goes along with it are themes interrogated and mined in Expats and the series dives deep into this with the disappearance of Gus — a part of the series that may be difficult for some parents to watch. Tee talks about how the series is an example of the journey of life, the struggles we go through and how life isn’t always going to be wrapped in a nice bow.

In fact, when it came to playing Clark, he approached it with the utmost care as he tries to grapple with this torturous time in his family lives. In the penultimate feature-length episode titled “Central”, which was screened last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, Clark turns to spirituality in quiet desperation. Tee also mapped certain episodes with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. “I knew I wanted to really kind of create a particular character that was going through the stages of grief, not just be kind of melancholy the whole time,” he explained. “You’ll see Clark grieving at certain times and angry with frustration or even feel guilty.”

“I think the major question is, ‘Do the circumstances in your life dictate who you are?’,’ he asked. “I think every person has and will go through situations that can either take them in the direction, with or without it, or transition above it.”

Tee’s journey from the smug villainy of DK from Tokyo Drift to the emotional intensity of Clark in Expats not only gives us an impressive scope of his acting career but also gives us the range of roles available for AAPI actors over the years. It makes Tee somewhat of a beacon who has worked through the changing landscape of diversity and Asian American representation in Hollywood.

“I think as far as Expats is concerned, everything I’ve done in my career brought me to this point — to hopefully level up,” he said, adding that he feels that there is a sense of responsibility for representation with playing Clark and he is open for the task. It is also what he feels is next in his acting career.

He talked about how he and co-star Sarayu Blue, another veteran Asian American working actor, have been grinding for years. “To be a part of a project such as this and to be granted to [act] at that particular level, is something that we’ve been waiting for such a long time.”

He added, “I feel like Expats finally gave us an opportunity and a platform to showcase the amount of talent that we’ve been working so hard to showcase.”