‘Wedding Banquet’ Star Lily Gladstone Was ‘So Excited to Do Something Loving and Lighthearted’ After ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
Director Andrew Ahn was just 8 years old when he first watched Ang Lee’s 1993 “The Wedding Banquet,” and the queer romantic comedy about a gay Taiwanese American man who marries a Chinese woman to placate his parents and get her a green card had a profound effect on the budding young filmmaker.
“My mother saw the VHS at a video rental store and was like, ‘This is the Asian film that white people are watching. We should see what it’s about,'” Ahn recalled at the Variety Studio presented by Audible. “We rented it not knowing it was a gay film. As a nascent gay boy, it was mind-blowing. That was the first time I saw a gay character on screen. And it was a gay Asian character. It really set up my life in many ways.”
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For all those reasons, Ahn didn’t feel the film necessarily merited a remake. “It’s so meaningful to me and so many people.”
Yet he fell in love with the idea after realizing he could update the story to reflect societal progress (and shortcomings) in the quarter-century since Lee’s original film. The modern retelling of the comedy of manners, starring Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Youn Yuh-jung, Joan Chen and Han Gi-chan, premieres at Sundance Film Festival on Monday. James Schamus, who co-wrote the original with Lee and Neil Peng, also penned this updated take with Ahn.
Set in Seattle, the film follows Angela (Tran) and her girlfriend, Lee (Gladstone), who are trying to have a baby through IVF but can’t afford to pay for another round of fertility treatment. Meanwhile their friend Min (Han), a closeted scion of a wealthy businessman, has a student visa that’s about to expire. When his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris (Yang) rejects his marriage proposal, he pops the question to Angela, instead. From there, a wedding plot is hatched: a green card marriage in exchange for funding Lee’s IVF. But their plans to quietly elope are upended when Min’s grandmother (Yun) flies in from Korea and insists on an all-out wedding extravaganza.
“It really took a lot of thinking about how times have changed since 1993 for queer people,” Ahn said. “There was a new version of the story we could tell. We can get married. Now that we can get married, should we? Do we want to? As a millennial, there’s this burden of choice. It shifts the generational focus, and it’s looking toward the future.”
It’s a heavy subject, but one that the film approaches with lots of laughs. Yang, who first worked with Ahn on Searchlight’s gay rom-com “Fire Island” in 2022, shares there were plenty of opportunities to ad-lib on set.
“We all did a lot of improv,” the “Saturday Night Live” star said. “And a lot of it made it [in the film]. It’s a true collaboration.”
Gladstone, a recent Oscar nominee for Martin Scorsese’s dark historical epic “Killers of the Flower Moon,” was eager to jump into material that’s more comedic in tone. “I was excited to do something loving and lighthearted,” Gladstone said. “It felt like such an easy yes. It was a quality of life project.”
Tran, best known for playing Rose Tico in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy, described a “kismet” experience when she read the script. “I was like, ‘This character is me.’ There were all these specific things of what it was like for her to come out and how her family reacted, that I completely related to,” said Tran, who came out as queer while making the film.
“The Wedding Banquet” also felt like destiny for Chen, who recalled meeting with Lee in the ’90s. They were going to work together on a project, though their collaboration didn’t pan out.
“So this is great closure for me,” Chen said, adding, “We had a great time [making the movie], all these kids.”
“I’m not a kid,” quipped Youn, 77.
The Oscar winner for Sundance breakout “Minari” revealed that she was initially cast to play Min’s mother. But when the 26-year-old Han got the lead part, she told Ahn that she’d portray the grandmother instead. “He was much younger than I expected,” Youn said. “So I sacrificed for him. I know my age.”
Planning a wedding, even a fictional one, brought up some powerful feelings for the actors. “I found myself tearing up,” Gladstone said. “It’s a moving thing to be part of this Korean wedding. There’s symbolism in everything.”
Ahn recalled breaking down in tears when he first saw his cast in traditional Korean wedding attire. “Weddings bring people together. As a gay person, I wondered if I’d ever have that,” he said. “In making this movie, I selfishly threw my own Korean wedding. The first day we shot, I lost it. I started weeping.”
Youn also experienced intense emotions on set, but for different reasons. She felt her director was asking her to shoot the same scene too many times.
“I was exhausted. In real life, we do the ceremony once,” she said. “[Andrew] does so many takes. Over and over. Maybe 30 times or more. I was going to kill him. I’m not young anymore.”
Ahn didn’t deny the (affectionate) accusations that, as a director, he’s not exactly a one-take wonder. But, he conceded with a laugh, “I’ve learned.”
At least one cast member appreciated the repetition of doing the same sequence over and over and over again.
“Neither my friends nor me knew how weddings actually worked,” Han said. “But because of Andrew’s many takes, I mastered it. I know how it goes.”
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