]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=30 Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:58:17 -0800 xml-rss2.php?itemid=29 Men in Trees fans: Buzz (John Amos) and Mai at the Hollywood Show 2012

]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=29 Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:50:22 -0800 xml-rss2.php?itemid=28

Lauren Tom as Ms Tran, Jensen Ackles as Dean, Jared Padalecki as Sam, and Osric Chau as Kevin — Credit: Liane Hentscher/The CW — © 2012 The CW Network.

Season premiere Wednesday, Oct 3 9/8c. More here.]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=28 Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:08:58 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=26 Supernatural' Lands 'Men in Trees' Actress for 'Intense' Role (Exclusive)
Lauren Tom will appear in an episode on the new season of the CW drama, debuting in October.

7/27/2012 by Philiana Ng
View original article here.

Supernatural is adding to the season eight cast.

Men in Trees actress and Futurama voice regular Lauren Tom has booked an episode on the CW drama's upcoming eighth season, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively.

Though details are sketchy, Tom's character -- which could be become recurring -- is described as an "intense" and "overbearing" mother to one of the characters on the show. Her introduction to the Supernatural world is said to be dramatic.

She is expected to begin filming in Vancouver in the next couple of days.

Repped by Gersh and Pop Art Management, Tom -- known primarily for her voice work -- recently wrapped season eight of Comedy Central's Futurama. Other credits include Fox's Napoleon Dynamite, King of the Hill and TNT's Hawthorne.

Supernatural moves to 9 p.m. Wednesdays beginning Oct. 3 following Arrow.



(Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=26 Sat, 28 Jul 2012 13:36:19 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=24
Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd June 2012

Friday and Saturday: 9am to 6pm
Sunday: 9am to 5pm

For more info, click here.]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=24 Thu, 31 May 2012 20:57:15 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=21
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=21 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:35:07 -0800 xml-rss2.php?itemid=20
I just returned from the London Comicon Expo!  We did a Futurama panel to a sold out crowd, it was so much fun. 

The questions the audience asked were quite different from the ones asked in San Diego. They wanted to hear what it would sound like if one of our characters from Futurama had a conversation with a character that we voiced in another show.  To which Phil Lamarr replied, "Dance, monkey, dance!" We tried our best to come up with off the cuff dialogue. I had Numbah 3 from Kids Next Door talk to Amy from Futurama, and then threw a little Minh from King of the Hill into the mix.
 
I was taken with the fact that almost all of the staff (nearly 100 people) working the Comicon, were volunteers.  What a heck of alot of work, and clearly a labor of love.  We were very well taken care of. One of the staff members, James, gave my boys some light sabers from Star Wars and they haven't stopped playing with them since.

And it was a blast to ride the Underground and check out Picadilly Circus.  We ate at a Chinese Restaurant called The Golden Dragon.  The little Cantonese I know was of no use when it came time to order since all the sentences I know involve cursing and some sort of punishment.  (I learned these from my parents, of course.) 

Pictured here  in this photo from left to right are Phil Proctor, (who happened to be in London with his lovely wife and was invited to sit on our panel--he's been in a million shows, Rugrats, etc.) me, Maurice Lamarche, Billy West, and Phil Lamarr.

Cheers!
Lauren






]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=20 Mon, 30 May 2011 22:46:00 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=18 Actress Dazzles With One-Woman Show
By Mary KATHRYN Burke, CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Published: Monday, November 18, 2002
The Harvard Crimson (original article can be viewed here.)

Actress Lauren Tom, best known as Lena in the film The Joy Luck Club and as Ross’ girlfriend Julie on the NBC series “Friends,” dazzled a Harvard crowd of about 100 on Saturday with excerpts from her new one-woman comedy show about her experience growing up as a Chinese-American.

Tom’s performance in Boylston Hall’s Fong Auditorium, coordinated by the Asian American Association (AAA), included portrayals of her parents, grandmother and former self drawn from her show 25 Psychics, and was followed by a question-and-answer session in which she advised a predominantly Asian American audience to be more active in the entertainment industry.

“We need to take a lead from the black community and be more vocal in show business,” Tom said.

Tom said her strategy for breaking into Hollywood was to never turn down a role because it was too stereotypically Asian—within reason.

“I’m not going to do something that says, ‘Oh yeah, we eat our dogs,’” she said. But she was ready to take on almost anything else, and soon reaped the benefits of her ethnicity.

“If I was blond and tall then I would have had 10 times the competition,” she said. “I auditioned steadily and performed for everyone who would hire me. Now I am in a position to pick and choose my roles.”

Now, Tom said, she receives offers to play parts originally written for white women.

Tom credited her family with supporting her in her career.

During a segment of her performance when she assumed the role of her old grandmother—a character she plays hunched over, with thick glasses and a heavy Chinese accent—she recalled a particular phrase that gave her confidence in her ethnic looks.

“Nothing to fix because nothing broken,” Tom said.

Tom said her struggle to find her niche as an Asian American in Hollywood started while she was growing up in a mostly white neighborhood in Illinois. She remembered feeling comfortable with her ethnicity, not realizing that she was different from other children.

“When kids would say ‘Ching Chong Chinaman,’ I thought they were talking to someone behind me,” Tom said. “I used to think I was a white Jewish girl named Rebecca or Rachel.”

When she discovered that she was a target of the teasing, she began to feel self-conscious of her “yellow skin.”

Tom said her worst experience with discrimination occurred in a Los Angeles parking lots, when a woman who she said “looked like a scarecrow on crack” angrily called her a “chink.”

She said that she wanted to yell back but feared her behavior would be “so unladylike, so un-Asian.”

Tom’s inner conflict between her American and Asian identities has driven her to seek spiritual guidance in almost every form—and has inspired the name of her show.

“I’ve been to 25 psychics so far,” Tom said with a laugh. “I’ve even gone to see a woman called ‘the mother’ who just hugs you.”

As she got older, Tom said she gained pride in her culture.

“What if everything I thought was wrong with me was actually right with me?” Tom said. “You have to have the courage to show who you are to the world.”

Tom held the attention throughout her performance, often having to pause to wait for the laughter to die down.

Jia Jia Liu ’05 said she expected a speech from Tom and was pleasantly surprised by her dramatic performance.

Candice Chiu ’04, co-vice president of AAA, praised Tom in her introduction for “developing an Asian American presence and voice” in the entertainment industry.

“We really wanted to bring someone here in pop culture and there are pretty few [Asian American] faces out there,” Chiu said after the performance.

In addition to AAA, the Ann Radcliffe Trust and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations also sponsored the event. ]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=18 Sun, 28 Nov 2010 18:01:26 -0800