Kelly Marie Tran is set to star in an upcoming remake of The Wedding Banquet, based on Ang Lee’s 1993 groundbreaking queer rom-com. In the original, a Taiwanese immigrant hatches a scheme to marry a Chinese woman to help her get a green card while covering for the fact that he’s in a relationship with a man. Andrew Ahn’s new version will take different twists, but it still hits close to home for the cast, including Tran. “I haven’t said this publicly yet, but I’m a queer person,” she says in a new profile from the set for Vanity Fair.
“The thing that really excited me about it was I got to play a person that I felt like I knew. I don’t feel like I’m acting at all in this movie,” she adds. “I’m here doing this amazing movie with these amazing people. I’ve never been in a queer space before. I’ve never truly felt this accepted before.”
The remake stars Tran and Lily Gladstone as a gay couple trying to have a baby via IVF. Their best friends, played by Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan, face their own difficulty as Han’s family pressures him to return to Korea and take over the family business. They launch a scheme to have a traditional Korean wedding that will help fund the fertility treatments and secure Han a green card to stay in the U.S.
Tran points to the mother-daughter relationship in the film as one of the ways it feels true to life: “I came out to my mom in a very specific experience,” she explains. “The scenes that I have with Joan Chen in this movie are very similar to the experience that I had.” And in comparison to Lee’s Wedding Banquet, she says, “The spirit is the same, and I think it’s even more queer.” You can read more about the upcoming remake here.
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