First of all, I'm Middle Eastern; I'm Iranian, so to be playing a leading role in a big Hollywood movie, I think, is possibly one of the first times.
Indians are the second largest population in the world, but we're invisible on TV - everything is either black or white.
Growing up, there were no families on TV that looked like mine.
I think it's something much bigger than just pro wrestling and the industry I work in. It's across all media. You look at Hollywood movies: there's not the Muslim hero or the guy who looks like me and has a name like mine who is portrayed in a positive manner or in a leading role. So, growing up, I didn't have a role model that looks like me.
It seems that people are tired of everyone looking the same on television. And this seems especially true for white people. Even white people are tired of watching the same white people. That's why we've been importing them from Australia.
I challenge you to go and turn on the other cable networks to find a face like mine in primetime.
As a community, as a group of people as a society, Asian Americans have not always been visible, but we've always been present.
To be honest, even I was tanned three shades darker in 'Love Sonia.' The fact that people were able to connect to my character was very important. Why should we not have that kind of makeup?
The fact that I am a Filipino actor playing a Filipino role is crazy. Filipinos are the second largest Asian minority in the United States, and we're hardly represented in the media and on television.
By and large, most of the work that we see in the great museums throughout the world are populated with people who don't happen to look like me.
Did you ever notice that nobody you see on television looks like anyone you know?
If you watch any show that stars white people, white people aren't coming up to them like, 'Thank you for showing my face on the big screen.' Because they see their faces in popular culture all the time.
I didn't grow up with a lot of role models necessarily when I started out - there weren't many people who looked like me on TV. Not in England.
I just hope that there's a market for somebody who looks like me as the lead of a rom-com, you know?
As a kid living in an isolated desert town, the most diversity I saw in my media was Claudia Kishi, the Japanese American girl from 'The Baby-Sitters Club.'
I'm extremely proud I'm an Asian female and I'm on television, because there aren't many of us.
