James Roday Quotes

I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl.

I mean, a Mexican boy couldn't be anything else but an Indian. And why did you take the name of Quinn, they used to say to me. Hey, you're an Indian, so I played Indians.

Somebody told me once I wasn't Latin enough, and that made me laugh.

A lot people who hear that 'Go New York Go' assume that I must be black.

I've lived 16, 17 years of my life in Asia, and that's most of my life. I was born in Asia - I've lived cultures that are synonymous with Asian culture - but it's still not Asian enough for some people.

People look at me, and they don't see what they think is a typical Aboriginal. I always thought I'd be the white person in a black play.

I don't think that because I am Hispanic I should therefore do Hispanic work.

I haven't gotten labeled as a Hispanic actor.

Yeah, I'm sure there are stereotypes of Asian people.

I was too Jewish for 'Flashdance.'

I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque.

I played a Spaniard. I looked about as Spanish as any other fair-skinned German.

Italians are Aryans. Jews do not belong to the Italian race..

I've been told that I wasn't Latino enough, which was code for 'street' enough.

When I was studying comedy in Chicago, it wasn't long after 9/11. There were a lot Middle Eastern comedians who were doing bits about hailing cabs and being terrorists. So the first two years, I didn't do any of that because I wanted to separate myself from those guys. But race is a big part of who I am, and it should be a big part of my comedy.

I have an upfront, sort of in-the-trenches knowledge of white people's trying to avoid their whiteness and replace it with something else. When I met my wife, we went through the whole race-slash-ethnicity conversation, and she told me she was Italian. Later on, I find out she's a quarter Italian, at best.

I'm not a massive reader of online comments but I come across the odd comment where people still question if I'm English. I find that so silly.

You can try to justify how Asian you are, but you're never going to make everybody happy.

I don't often get Indian girl roles because I'm 'not Indian enough.' Which is true - I'm from Texas.

I think there's a misconception that all Asian-American experiences are the same. My experiences with my family and the way they wanted me to know my culture are not the same as others.

A lot of stuff has been said about me. People said I was a Malayali because I have Shivan in my name just like Santhosh Sivan does. But I'm a Tamilian.

I had an Indian face, but I never saw it as Indian, in part because in America the Indian was dead. The Indian had been killed in cowboy movies, or was playing bingo in Oklahoma. Also, in my middle-class Mexican family indio was a bad word, one my parents shy away from to this day. That's one of the reasons, of course, why I always insist, in my bratty way, on saying, Soy indio! - "I am an Indian!"

'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. 'Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.

I'd like it if people thought I was Jewish looking.

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.'