Interview:
James Hong,
voice actor,
"Wendell and Wild"
At age 93, James Hong is enjoying his best year in an acting career that spans almost seven decades and boasts more than 500 film and TV credits. He landed one of his most prominent roles to date as Michelle Yeoh’s father Gong Gong in the Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once, lent his voice to Pixar’s Turning Red, and reprised his voice role of Mr. Ping in the Netflix series Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny. For his third voice role of 2022, Hong plays Father Best, the principal of an all-girls Catholic school in director Henry Selick’s new stop-motion animated supernatural yarn Wendell and Wild. After being murdered by two unscrupulous private prison operators, Father Best is raised from the dead by two demon brothers, Wendell and Wild, as part of their plan to build the dream amusement park in the rundown town of Rust Bank. Keegan-Michael Key voices Wendell and Jordan Peele—who cowrote the script with Henry Selick—voices Wild. Lyric Ross voices Kat, the Catholic schoolgirl responsible for summoning Wendell and Wild from the underworld with the hopes that they will bring her dead parents back to life. Wendell and Wild is now available to stream on Netflix. Best known for playing the malevolent sorcerer David Lo Pan in John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China, James Hong has also appeared in Blade Runner, Missing in Action, The Golden Child, The Two Jakes, Wayne’s World 2, Balls of Fury, and R.I.P.D. He has lent his voice to the Kung Fu Panda franchise, Mulan, Sherlock Gnomes, Abominable, and Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans. He will next voice Grandpa Wing in the HBO Max series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. Aired: Nov. 15, 2022. Web sites: https://www.netflix.com/wendellandwild https://www.jameshong.com/ |
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