Ashley Park on Building Resilience and Practicing Gratitude

06/20/21 • 41 min

Sunday Pancakes with Celia Keenan-Bolger

ASHLEY PARK is a Tony Award nominated actress, currently starring as “Mindy” in the hit television series Emily in Paris. For her performance, she became the first Asian American Actress to receive a Critics’ Choice Nomination for “Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.” She will next appear in Bleecker Street’s upcoming feature Mr Malcom’s List. On stage, Park is perhaps best known for originating the role of “Gretchen Wieners” in the Broadway production of Tina Fey’s Mean Girls. In addition to her Tony nomination, she received Drama League, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Chita Rivera Award nominations for her performance in Mean Girls. That same season, Park garnered critical acclaim for starring as “Mwe” in KPOP, for which she won the esteemed Lucille Lortel Award for Lead Actress in a Musical and was nominated for her second Drama League and Drama Desk Awards of the season. Other Broadway credits include: Grand Horizons; Mamma Mia!; The King and I; and the recent revival of Sunday in the Park with George. On television, Park reunited with Tina Fey for Peacock’s new hit series GIRLS5EVA and was previously seen in the critically-acclaimed Netflix limited series Tales of the City. Other television credits include Apple TV+’s Helpsters and PopTV/Lionsgate Television’s Nightcap. Park is the proud recipient of Actor Equity Association’s 2018 Clarence Derwent Award, and in 2019 was honored with the inaugural Marin Mazzie Award for Empowerment by the Cancer Support Community. Her outreach as a social activist and a cancer survivor has stayed important to her through her dedicated work and support of service organizations such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS. Park graduated from the University of Michigan with a BFA in Musical Theater.

Weekly Round-Up:

Listen to the Still Processing podcast episode with Cathy Park Hong.
Read the Harvard Business Review article, “To Dismantle Anti-Asian Racism, We Must Understand Its Roots” by Lily Zheng.
Listen to Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast episode, “A Life Worthy of Our Breath” with Ocean Vuong.
Watch highlights of the late Marin Mazzie in The King and I, which she starred in with Ashley.

Weekly Round-Up:

Listen to the Still Processing podcast episode with Cathy Park Hong.
Read the Harvard Business Review article, “To Dismantle Anti-Asian Racism, We Must Understand Its Roots” by Lily Zheng.
Listen to Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast episode, “A Life Worthy of Our Breath” with Ocean Vuong.
Watch highlights of the late Marin Mazzie in The King and I, which she starred in with Ashley.

Previous Episode

Lie Still On The Day of Pain And The Day Of Joy Will Greet You with Shakina Nayfack

Most recently, SHAKINA NAYFACK made television history starring in NBC’s Connecting... as the first transgender person to have a starring role in a network comedy. She can also be seen in Amazon’s GLAAD Award Winning Transparent Musicale Finale, which she helped write and produce, and Hulu’s Difficult People, for which she was a writing consultant. Her play Chonburi International Hotel and Butterfly Club premiered on Audible in 2020 in collaboration with Williamstown Theatre Festival and was recognized with a 2021 Drama League Award for Best Audio Theatre Production. She is the Founding Artistic Director of Musical Theatre Factory, where she helped to develop hundreds of new musicals including Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize winning musical, A Strange Loop and her own autobiographical glam rock odyssey, Manifest Pussy.

Weekly Round-Up:

Watch the documentary Disclosure on Netflix.
Listen to the On the Rookie podcast episode “The Roadmap For Liberation, feat. Janet Mock” and then read Janet’s book, Redefining Realness.
Read My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein.
Visit Shakina’s website to learn more about her work and download her award-winning Audible play, Chonburi International Hotel and Butterfly Club.
Support the Juneteenth Jubilee, organized by Intersectional Voices Collective.

Next Episode

The Episode with the Keenan-Bolger Siblings

ANDREW KEENAN-BOLGER is an actor, director, author and filmmaker. Broadway: ‘Jesse’ in Tuck in Tuck Everlasting (Drama League Award nominee), ‘Crutchie’ in Newsies (Outer Critics Circle nominee). Off-Broadway: Seven Deadly Sins, Mary Poppins, Seussical, Beauty and the Beast, A Christmas Carol. 1st Nat'l Tours: Spelling Bee, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Mary Poppins, Ragtime. TV: The Undoing (HBO), Three Rivers (ABC), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon), Nurse Jackie (Showtime), Looking (HBO), The Other Two (HBO). Film: The Rewrite, Marci X, Are You Joking? Andrew is the co-creator the critically acclaimed series Submissions Only and co-author of the children’s series Jack & Louisa (Penguin Random House). B.F.A. University of Michigan. Follow him at @KeenanBlogger.

MAGGIE KEENAN-BOLGER is the co-founder of Honest Accomplice Theatre (HAT), a New York-based theatre and media company, producing art for social change from the perspective of historically excluded communities since 2012. Along with many successful NYC productions, HAT has also toured with shows about gender and sexuality for the last seven years. In 2016, Maggie produced and directed HAT's first episode of the free educational webseries, The Trans Literacy Project, and has been releasing episodes since. This includes an episode currently being used in sexual harassment trainings throughout the state of New York. In November, Maggie produced and directed Unmuted, a live, online theatrical performance during a time of social isolation. Featuring 20 artist innovators from around the country, the show tackled topics like the Black Lives Matter movement, disability, climate change, and our connection to our ancestors. Individually, Maggie has toured the country as a performer, sex educator and teaching artist and was recognized by the White House when she was appointed an LGBT Leader of the Next Generation by then Vice President, Joe Biden. A two-time Point Foundation scholar, Maggie was named a “Person to Watch” by The Advocate and can be seen on The Good Wife with Julianna Margulies and in the movie Admission with Tina Fey.

Weekly Round-Up:

Listen to The Memory Palace podcast episode, “A White Horse”, recommended by Andrew.
Check out the art by Black disabled artist, Rana, recommended by Maggie.
Read the Story Corps questions to get a good conversation going, recommended by Celia.
Learn more about Maggie’s company Honest Accomplice Theatre’s Trans Literary Project.
Read the Psych Central article, “Coping with Grief: The Ball & The Box” by John M. Grohol, Psy.D.