The more visibility, the more opportunities for Asian-American actors to play great roles. It goes to the studios opening up roles they might not have considered Asian actors for. The talent is there. I don't think there needs to be one superstar, but having more roles open up, that's the way changes happen.
— Nahnatchka Khan
I grew up watching television as a kid. It was always something I wanted to pursue.
In the writers' room, the challenge is always to tell interesting stories in unexpected ways, so we try to never limit ourselves in how we accomplish that.
I'm not Chinese, but both of my parents were born in Iran; my brother and I were the first ones born here. First in our family to go to college, that whole thing.
If you want to be a writer, you have to learn to write in other people's voices until you get the chance to write in your own.
Norman Lear was talking about everything in the '70s... race, sexism, all of it. The network comedy really stayed away from that in the 1980s and 1990s.
Randall Park and Ali Wong, they are so many things; they're not just one thing, they're bigger than just their identity.
Stuff starts to feel stale comedically when you're just rehashing things, so putting together a writers' room where the majority is made up of people who have not been the focus of the story, it flips everything around.
In terms of leadership, you've got to allow for people to be amazing and to contribute in a way that's meaningful. You can't hold on so tight that people don't get a chance to do what they do best.
With 'Always Be My Maybe,' this has to be funny; this has to be entertaining. And then, when we stop for these moments with the characters that are emotional, you kind of feel it more because it's a little bit unexpected.
Whatever I do - whether it's directing, producing - I just come at things from characters, from stories, from jokes and scene rhythms. I'll always have that at the epicenter, I think.
Not everybody can see every moment of their life displayed by one set of people. It's just not going to happen.
It's something that's almost taken for granted in sitcoms about white families. Like, 'Oh, we're going on a summer vacation!' As if that's something that everybody does.
It's cool to be able to use comedy as a way to make people feel like they're a part of a bigger collective rather than as a way to divide.
I was Persian-American, but I hated bringing Persian food to school. I just didn't want to stand out in that way. I wanted to be like everybody else.
If you try to describe NASCAR to anyone, you sound crazy.
Comedy always benefits from different points of view and even tension. It can never be satisfied.
I went to USC and got my first break writing for a kids' show called 'Pepper Ann.'
The idea of dealing with success is always interesting to us: You spend so long struggling to make good, and then what happens when you finally do?
When you're writing a pilot, unless you already have an actor attached to the project, you're writing it with all the voices sort of in your head. Once you actually cast it, the actors become the voices of the characters, and you start to write for them and their strengths.
Not to say that I saw myself in the Iron Sheik, but our whole family would gather around the TV on Saturday and watch the Iron Sheik wrestle. And he was the bad guy, so everyone else was booing him and cheering whoever he was fighting - it was the opposite in our house.
If I waited to write only for a Persian lesbian, I'd still be waiting. But I can write for straight white men because those are the jobs.
You can be a successful woman and also be vulnerable, and that's important to show people.
Women behaving badly has always been funny, to me personally, so I knew I wanted to do something like that.
The family sitcom has been around forever, since the advent of television. I don't need to reinvent it. But if you take something and you do it in a way that you haven't necessarily seen before, that's right where I live.
I personally feel like the end product is always better when you can make a collective. It's like a band. You can have a bunch of individual great musicians, but when you come together, there's a sound that it creates that you couldn't do on your own.
Using humor as a wedge into different kinds of stories is my go-to. I think anything I do would have some sort of streak of humor in it.
My parents certainly didn't understand TV comedy. They wouldn't turn on 'Married... With Children' and laugh.
I've read many great samples, both of existing shows I liked and original pilots, and definitely hired the writers - or, at least, tried to!
My family never took vacations growing up. It just wasn't a thing.
I love women who don't apologize.
Networks love data. They love to be able to look at numbers and try to predict what they think will work.
There's some actors that go easily between drama and comedy because they play the naturalism of the role, and they just have natural timing.
When we were growing up, the only person we saw on TV that vaguely resembled us was the Iron Sheik - the pro wrestler whose signature move was the 'Camel Clutch.'
The first time I ever wrote anything, it was an editorial column for my high school newspaper.
'Modern Family' is unique in that it's telling the story of three different families, which is a huge amount of characters to service.
Some people don't have a sense of humor about certain things, and other people do.
This is going to sound weird, but when I was a little kid, the Iron Sheik was really big in our house.
'Seinfeld' was an amazing show. It's iconic and defined a whole generation of comedy writers - but by their own admission, that show was about nothing.
Working in network sitcom arenas, whenever you decide to depart from the norm and tell a story that's not typical, I think you're always a little bit nervous.
Cable shows do 13 episodes. I get that. I can wrap my head around 13 episodes. You make them all, you post them all, and then you get to air them. The network cycle is way more intense. There's more episodes.
In comedy, it's so subjective; there is no right or wrong.
Find like-minded people who are on the same page as you, and then lift each other up.
You don't have to be just one thing. I think that applies to women in front of and behind the camera.
If you take a step back, you realize that the TV landscape really has been... There have been some amazing shows in terms of representation, but not for Asian people.
Sometimes you can feel the gears shifting in scripts, like really trying to make something work that feels sweaty for whatever reason. I really enjoy reading material that just flows - it's definitely a skill to make something feel effortless.
Having a range of perspectives allows you to tell stories through a different lens and approach things from fresh angles. If you're straining everything through the same filter, you're always going to wind up with the same product.
I love strong female characters.
I really related to that experience of being what we call the 'bridge generation' and always trying to navigate your more traditional growing-up experiences with wanting the latest Air Jordans or whatever it is: Trying to explain to your parents why, and they just, like, don't get it.
I think a lot of quote-unquote 'comedic actors' really go for the laugh and are overly straining and sort of trying.
