Jeannie Mai Quotes

I go to castings and see several black and Asian girls, then I get to the show and look around there's just me and maybe one other coloured face.

When you walk into a room, and you're the only one of something - the only woman or the only African American - that immediate feeling of loneliness happens.

There really aren't any completely Asian people singing right now.

There's a burden of representation that comes into play when there aren't enough representatives of a certain group in popular culture.

When I was in school, you never saw anyone who looked like us that was on TV. And that was really weird for me because there's so many people of South Asian descent in America - in the world.

The color and the diversity dies out, and it gets whiter and whiter, and that's in any field. There is also this idea that there can only be one gay person or there can only be one Asian-American woman in the office, and so it also perpetuates itself where we are isolated, especially the more successful we get.

My experience as a black woman in the industry is simply that often I was the only one in the room. Often I would be the only woman and the only person of color. Sometimes I would be one of several women but the only person of color. Sometimes I would be one of several people of color, but the only woman.

I grew up in musicals, and if you looked like me and sounded like me, you were the character; you were never at the center of the story.

Growing up, I didn't see anybody with my skin color or my background. I didn't know it was possible to have a Middle Eastern actor in a lead role.

In the '90s, I was the only kid around that looked like me.

If you never, or rarely, see your experience depicted in art or pop culture then you can begin to feel isolated or separate; Othered. So, representation is super important.

It's hard to accept yourself when you live in a world where nobody is like you, or you feel like nobody is like you because there's no representation.

Wherever I go, people ask: 'What is she? What is she?' There has always been an agenda - they're excluding me or including me in something with that question. It is the first thing agents in Los Angeles ask me. And then I'd hear: 'You're not black enough, you're too black, you're Italian - no, you're Spanish.'

When I first started, all the media I ever got was, 'Hey! There's this Indian girl. And even though she is Indian, she gets views and stuff.'

I'm not into the Oscar and Emmys as much as I used to be because I'm tired of looking at people who don't look like me.

I'm stuck somewhere a small island in the middle of the Atlantic where I'm alone. Because in France, they're like, 'No, you're not like us, you're not a French guy.' And in America, they're like, 'You're not like us.' I'm really alone in my little thing.

I come from a place where we feel like we're not represented in the national media.

When I was a kid, it wasn't very often that I could go to the movies and see an entire movie carried on the shoulders of someone who looked like me.

When I first came out to L.A., Hollywood's idea of a Latina was Mexican. It was almost like they had never seen or heard of an Afro-Latina before.

I wasn't able to relate to anyone on TV growing up, so I wanted to bring my own experiences to the screen.

Jewish, black, Filipino, whatever the specificity is, it's specificity that makes a good story. And I think people are tired of seeing the same old shtick on network television. It's just a group of white people hanging out talking about their jobs. Who cares? We've seen that.

I want to see more Asian. I want to see more Latin. I want more Indian. There's more than Mindy Kaling out there, guys! There's more than Bai Ling.

There are plenty of Latina actresses that no one's ever heard of... Some are really brown, some are light-skinned, and some look like they're Caucasian, but it's like we only want to identify with a certain kind of look and celebrate that under the guise that this is a 'Latina actress.'

Early on, I played a Chinese delivery person, and even that, which was very innocuous, felt like I was somehow betraying myself. I felt very self-conscious on set doing that role, with a crew that was almost entirely white.

I'm really passionate about representation in film. I feel like the world is dominated by such a small group of human beings. There are so many different kinds of people that aren't represented, that don't have characters who look like them.