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]]> 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 xml-rss2.php?itemid=16

Photo courtesy of Comedy Central.]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=16 Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:21:00 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=12 FuturamaThursdays 10pm / 9cThe Voices of Futurama - Lauren Tom on Amywww.comedycentral.com

Futurama New Episodes

Roast of David Hasselhoff

Big Lake

]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=12 Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:56:00 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=11

Lauren will be at Comic-Con this year on Saturday, July 24th, 2010 to promote the return of FUTURAMA!

Come hear her speak along with Matt Groening, David X. Cohen and fellow cast members!

Time: 12:45PM - 1:30PM

FUTURAMA PANEL – Ballroom 20
San Diego Convention Center
comic-con.org/cci

She will also be signing autographs from 5:00PM to 7:00PM. The location of the autograph signing table is AA20. Billy West, John Dimaggio, Maurice Lamarche, and Phil Lamarr will be signing with Lauren too.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=11 Thu, 8 Jul 2010 11:56:00 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=10 ]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=10 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:44:00 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=9
Jun 9, 2009, 05:20 PM | by Michael Ausiello



Holy Bender Bending Rodríguez!

Six years after getting axed by Fox, Futurama is being resurrected on Comedy Central.

A spokesperson for 20th Century Fox Television confirms that the cable net has ordered 26 new episodes of Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's late, great animated series to air beginning in 2010. The studio cites Futurama's "blockbuster" performance on DVD and in reruns on Comedy Central as the reason for its rebirth.

Hmmm... sound familiar?

"When we brought back Family Guy several years ago, everyone said that it was a once in a lifetime thing -- that canceled series stay canceled and cannot be revived," 20th Century Fox TV Chairmen Gary Newman and Dana Walden said in a joint statement. "But Futurama was another series that fans simply demanded we bring back, and we couldn’t have been happier when Matt and David agreed that there were many more stories yet to tell."

Adds Groening: "We’re thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000."

I have a hunch Groening isn't the only one doing a happy dance. (That's your cue to start filling up the comments section.) ]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=9 Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:02:00 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=8
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=8 Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:13:00 -0700 xml-rss2.php?itemid=7 on sale on Amazon.com. Lauren plays the role of Amy Wong in this animated feature. Check out the trailer:

]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=7 Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:01:00 -0700