KoreAm Journal Oct/Nov 2014 Cover Story: John Cho

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In the new ABC rom-com Selfie, John Cho goes where no Asian American actor has gone before.

story by ADA TSENG

John Cho can’t stop raving about how he got to ride a horse for his new TV show Selfie.

“About a month ago, [creator] Emily [Kapnek] came to me and said, ‘We’re writing a storyline where you’re riding a horse. Can you ride a horse?’” remembers Cho. “And I said, ‘I can’t, but you have to keep that in. I’ll learn.’”

Turns out he only needed one lesson to gallantly ride a horse for a scene that’s a play on the familiar knight-inshining- armor trope.

“Apparently, I’m a natural,” he jokes. Why hasn’t anyone asked him to ride a horse before? “That’s a good question!” he says. “Now I get to put it on the resume as a special skill.”

Cho plays Henry to Karen Gillan’s Eliza in ABC’s new half-hour comedy Selfie, which premiered on September 30. The show borrows the premise of the 1964 musical My Fair Lady, based on the 1916 play Pygmalion, transplanting the characters from early-1900s’ status-obsessed England to 2014’s Internet-obsessed America. Selfie’s pilot introduces Eliza Dooley (a nod to Eliza Doolittle) as a social media star with millions of virtual friends but no actual friends. One day, after she is publicly humiliated by a boyfriend whom she didn’t realize was married, she sees a presentation by her co-worker Henry Higgs (shortened from Higgins), who is a talented marketing expert at their pharmaceutical company. He also happens to hate everything about the wired millennial generation. Convinced she needs to be rebranded, Eliza begs Henry to help her change her image.

See more: http://iamkoream.com/john-cho-delights-in-rom-com-role-in-abcs-selfie/

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