Ron Song’s journey to stardom began in Hollywood, but he didn’t plan on being an actor.
The former UC Irvine employee decided to take classes at Second City Hollywood after his 50th birthday to “be a better manager” as he felt one became “more isolated” as he moved up the ranks. At the time, Song was managing teams at the university.
For the better part of 20 years, he worked in higher education. He had stints at Stanford, the University of Chicago and Santa Clara University before landing back home in Southern California.
The San Gabriel Valley native got his big break when his instructor at Second City felt he’d be a good fit for a role on Amazon’s Freevee series “Jury Duty.” The show ended up being a smash hit garnering two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nod.
As you can imagine, Song has since quit his job at the university and has gone all in on acting.
His latest project is the production of “Unbroken Blossoms,” which is a story of a movie within a play.
“I’m learning so much as I’m working on this,” he explained. “The story is about two Asian American consultants who were part of the silent film era, which I didn’t know Asians were even a part of at that moment in time when they worked on D.W. Griffith’s film ‘Broken Blossoms.'”
While the play takes place in the early 1900s, Song noticed some similarities to today.
“The United States, they’re facing the Spanish Influenza, the Great War, there’s a lot of turmoil. And here we are now in this moment post-COVID pandemic and really thinking about Asian-American representation, we have a chance to really push our representation forward,” he said.
Song noted the play “is a moment of reflection” for him, and hopefully, for the audience.
“Those same hopes and dreams still existed over 100 years ago and we think about the progress we’ve made and we’re so happy about it and we’re also thinking ‘How much further do we have to go?'”
Watch “Unbroken Blossoms” at the David Henry Hwang Theater at East West Players from June 27 to July 21.