Before they were stars: Masi Oka, aka Hiro on “Heroes” at Racialicious

Before they were stars: Masi Oka, aka Hiro on “Heroes”

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Wow, great find by Angry Asian Man! Check out Masi Oka, before he became a household name with his breakthrough role as Hiro in the hit series Heroes. Loooooove that show, by the way. He’s the kid on the left with the dark blue shirt.

So what happened to all the other kids in the picture? If you know any of them (or heck, if you are one of them), let Angry Asian Man know!

I’m secretly hoping that all of them are now totally unsuccessful by model minority standards. Like, they’re tattoo artists or yoga instructors or something. Especially that girl with the glasses! Oh man, I had glasses just like that when I was her age. So glad I survived those horribly awkward years between ages 9 and 14.
hiro masi oka time magazine cover

Trackbacks & Pings

boston progress radio » An Interview with Kit Yan on 10 Oct 2007 at 7:04 am

[…] of Hiro Nakamura, did you know that Masi Oka, the actor who plays Hiro was featured in a Time Magazine article about Asian American smart kids. That whole story smells like someone […]

Comments

Jeremy Pierce wrote:

What I’d like to see is someone mentioning Masi’s a capella career at Brown. A friend of mine at the time called him a closet ham, because if you only knew certain things about him he seemed to fit the stereotypical Asian mold, but once he got on stage he was a total nut.

Posted 23 Nov 2006 at 9:16 am ¶
Kai wrote:

Okay this is getting uncanny: we’re clearly following the same orbits around the blogosphere because we’re posting the exact same things at Zuky and Racialicious! Well, great minds and all…

As noted at Zuky, the irony is that Masi Oka is now in People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive issue, though he kinda snuck in there under the banner of “The Men of Heroes”. People also named Yul Kwon, John Cho, Daniel Dae Kim, and Edison Chen — surely the most Asian men ever to have been included in this silly annual tradition. Jeff Yang asks “Do you think we’re sexy?”.

Cheers.

Posted 23 Nov 2006 at 3:22 pm ¶