Ke Huy Quan Opens Up on Refugee Past and Hollywood Return
The conversation took place at Phoenix Palace in New York City's Chinatown.
Ke Huy Quan sat down with Sunday TODAY's Willie Geist at Phoenix Palace in New York City's Chinatown for a conversation tracing his path from child refugee to movie star. The interview covered his journey fleeing Vietnam as a refugee, his breakout as a young actor in the 1980s, the years he spent away from acting, and his return to the screen in the Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Quan has used a string of recent television appearances to revisit the same arc, discussing his early roles in The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom before the long gap that preceded his Oscar-winning comeback. On a previous Sunday TODAY appearance with Geist, Quan recalled improvising a line in Cantonese during his Indiana Jones audition after running out of English words while being challenged by Harrison Ford, saying, "The more he challenged me, I ran out of words! I didn't have any English words left to challenge him so the only thing I did was I challenged him right back, but in Cantonese!"
The TODAY conversation also centers on Quan's new memoir, Never Say Die, which chronicles his story from his childhood escape from Vietnam through his early fame and eventual return to acting. Quan has described the book across multiple appearances as a fuller account of his journey than a single television segment allows.
Quan's media rounds promoting the memoir have included stops on Good Morning America, The View, and Jimmy Kimmel Live, each revisiting different parts of his biography, from his refugee childhood to his memories of working with Harrison Ford. Quan previously told Geist on Sunday TODAY about cursing at Ford in Cantonese during his Indiana Jones audition, a story he has continued to reference while discussing the book.
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