How Asian Actors Are Finally Breaking The Sidekick Stereotype
Conrad Ricamora starred in the first gay sex scene featuring an Asian-American actor on ABC’s boundary-pushing How To Get Away With Murder.
And, the same way that Ricamora won a recurring role on ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder. “The guy who auditioned before me was white, the guy who auditioned after me was black,” Ricamora says. “I did one scene with the casting intern and the tape circulated through to the director, to Shonda Rhimes, then the ABC team.”
Ricamora’s steamy onscreen sex scenes with one of the leads, played by Jack Falahee, got everybody buzzing. The actor has appeared in four episodes as a recurring guest, and he will play more of a major role when the series returns January 29. Rhimes, who’s kept relatively silent when talking about race, sexuality, and gender casting in her shows, lashed out earlier this year after an infamous New York Times article called her an “angry black woman.”
She later echoed her sentiments to The Hollywood Reporter in October. “I find race and gender to be terribly important; they’re terribly important to who I am,” she said. “But, there’s something about the need for everybody else to spend time talking about it … that pisses me off.”
Ricamora said that working with Rhimes was a refreshing change from his experiences in audition circles where he’d be pigeonholed into playing specific, one-note roles.
"Instead of [the show] being about an Asian guy who has sex with his white boyfriend, or it being labeled a ‘gay’ situation, it was just about a couple in love," Ricamora says. "That in itself is progressive."
Growing up, Ricamora — who’s half German/Irish, half Filipino — admitted that he also had a skewed outlook on masculinity and sexiness. “The standard of attractiveness had to do with being white,” he says. “You could be the hottest Asian or black guy, but if you’re not the white guy, you’re almost less than or a second-class citizen. But, now people’s perceptions of what is sexy is broadening. And, mine is too. I didn’t have a lot of Asian-Americans to look up to, like, ‘Oh, wow, he’s hot,’ or ‘She’s hot.’”
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