- Michelle Yeoh said at a film festival in Berlin that she “cannot presume to say I understand” the state of American politics.
- The Malaysian actress said it was “best not to talk about something I don’t know about.”
- Yeoh also said that working as a person of color in Hollywood “continues to be a struggle” despite some progress.
Michelle Yeoh doesn’t want to weigh in on American politics.
After a journalist asked her to comment on the U.S. political environment at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Everything Everywhere All at Once actress, who is Malaysian and lives in Switzerland, explained why she’d prefer not to discuss the topic.
“I don’t think I am in the position to really talk about the political situation in the U.S., and also I cannot presume to say I understand how it is,” Yeoh said at a press conference Friday. “So, best not to talk about something I don’t know about.”
The actress then attempted to redirect the conference’s focus to film. “I think I want to concentrate on what is important for us, which is cinema,” she said. “You hear, ‘Cinema is not going to survive because there are so many other things happening, the attention span is getting shorter,’ but I truly don’t believe that, because I believe when you go to the cinema, that is time for you.”
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty
She continued, “Cinema is a place where we all come together. We laugh, we cry, we celebrate. And it’s always important to keep that tradition alive. And I hope that’s what we are here to do.”
Elsewhere in the press conference, Yeoh said that working in Hollywood as a person of color “continues to be a struggle” despite the resounding success of many of her projects featuring predominantly Asian casts.
“I don’t think issues like that just go away overnight,” she said. “I’ve been very blessed to be a part of some of the movies that have brought to light how lacking roles are for minorities. [When] we did Crazy Rich Asians, that was 26 years since Joy Luck Club [was an] all-Asian-cast movie. At the time we presented the movie, everybody was going, ‘Oh my God, you ticked all the wrong boxes — all Asian cast, rom-com, this and that.'”
The actress also acknowledged that her career — including the successes of Crazy Rich Asians, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Everything Everywhere All at Once — exemplifies that Hollywood has witnessed some progress over the last decade.
“You could see that there is changes, otherwise I would not have been able to make Everything Everywhere All at Once,” she said, shouting out the film’s directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. “I will be eternally grateful to my two Daniels, my little geniuses, to have been bold enough — it was courageous to do that film, because once again, we checked all the wrong boxes. But we prevailed.”
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On Thursday, Yeoh accepted the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear award for lifetime achievement, which was presented by Anora filmmaker Sean Baker. At Friday’s press conference, the actress said that she earned the award through sheer persistence.
“I think today I sit here with a Golden Bear, not because of just one movie, but the perseverance, the resilience, the stubbornness to say, ‘I won’t just go away,'” she mused. “I will stay until the right changes are made, not just for minorities but for everyone.”
