James Hong and Animal share billboard space in Muppets Mayhem while also referencing Hong's movie The Golden Child
James Hong (b. 1929) is a prolific character actor whose career has spanned over six decades. Born in Minnesota to Chinese immigrants, his more than 400 credits stretched from early Asian stereotyped roles to key parts in 80s action movies (including Blade Runner and Big Trouble in Little China). In 2022, Hong was in the Academy Award-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once. The following year, he guest starred on The Muppets Mayhem, playing Chef Dan in "Exile on Main Street."
Hong's performance background included US Army Special Services shows from 1952 to 1953. Out of the service, he made his TV debut as a contestant on You Bet Your Life, doing impressions including one of host Groucho Marx. Uncredited movie parts followed, playing Cold War-era stereotypes like Korean soldiers and Chinese Communists. He dubbed multiple parts in the original US release of Godzilla and was a regular on The New Adventures of Charlie Chan as Number One Son (opposite a Caucasian actor as Chan, as was still common). He had a sizable part on an episode of Zorro as a kidnapped prince, but the credits only identified him as "Chinese Boy."
Hong continued to work and make the most of the stock roles available, playing cook Hop Sing's cousin in two episodes of Bonanza and a headwaiter in the film of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song. The last started a string of roles as Chinese restaurant owners or waiters, gradually rising from clichés to more condescending, dignified, or aloof characterizations (as in a later Seinfeld episode, as the maître d' who repeatedly fails to seat the gang).
In 1965, Hong was part of the group who established the Los Angeles theatre group East West Players, offering roles and opportunities to Asian-American actors outside of stereotypes and caricatures. In his own career, while still playing roles like Vietnamese soldiers or a pimp in The Sand Pebbles (with Richard Attenborough), more doctors and scientists began to dot his resume. He was a frequent guest on Kung Fu in multiple roles and played butler Kahn in the 1974 film Chinatown (reprising it in the 1990 sequel The Two Jakes). TV work continued, appearing on All in the Family (as both a sarcastic Chinese restaurant owner and a doctor), The Rockford Files (forensics expert), and The Bionic Woman (scientist). On Wonder Woman, he played a Japanese embassy official, and consulates and government representatives would become another sub-specialty.
In the 1980s, while his bit as a Japanese general who commits hari kari in Airplane! returned to stereotypes, better movie roles followed, as private detective Shin in Black Widow, the coroner in True Confessions (with Robert De Niro), and eye maker Chew in Blade Runner. In 1986, he played contrasting mystical characters, a benevolent expert helping Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child and villainous sorcerer Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China. 1980s TV, aside from sitcoms and St. Elsewhere, was similarly action oriented: The A-Team, T.J. Hooker, Miami Vice, Beauty and the Beast, and War of the Worlds. Increasingly familiar now from his ubiquitous presence, he played an initially outraged father in Wayne's World 2, an opium dealer in The Shadow, and continued steadily guest starring on The X-Files, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Murphy Brown, and later, The West Wing (twice as the Chinese ambassador), Malcolm in the Middle, The King of Queens, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Big Bang Theory, and Key & Peele.
Returning to voice work in the 1990s, after his earlier dubbing days, Hong was heard as humorless Chi-Fu in Mulan, Mr. Ping in the Kung Fu Panda franchise, and parts in Scooby-Doo and Star Wars spinoffs.