Emmy Award-winning documentary producer Cheyenne Tan on the importance of building community on the road to success

Tan’s own journey through the industry also forced her to examine what she considers meaningful. “When my first Oscar nomination came, I was barely 25 years old. I looked around the room and didn’t have anyone to celebrate with me, while my colleagues were surrounded by their friends and family. I found myself in a very dark place then,” she recalls.

At the time, Tan had been relentlessly focused on establishing herself in Hollywood. “Before then, I spent a lot of time working. Mostly towards satisfying visa requirements, but I was also ambitious,” she says. “I had one year to do as much as I could before confronting the possibility of having to return home. There was a huge responsibility to build my career up fast.”

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Initially, she enjoyed the intensity. “It was a dream come true to work in the industry and surreal to be able to say I made films for a living,” she says. “I’m very lucky and even earned a reputation for being a bit of a Swiss army knife, because I could do a bit of everything and do it well.” But becoming indispensable came at a cost. “I became a workaholic and didn’t do much to invest in my personal life. I wasn’t dating or going out. I only saw my friends once or twice a year.”

In 2026, Tan’s efforts in research as an associate producer of Turning Point: The Vietnam War garnered five News & Documentary Emmy nominations and ultimately won the Emmy for Outstanding Research. This time, the award was only a MacGuffin, not the true victory.

“I don’t make films to win awards. I am grateful, and they’re great for my resume, but the bigger win was being surrounded by people to celebrate with, which made it so much more important and special,” Tan says. “My friends have supported me and witnessed some of my darkest moments. Their presence in my life changed what I think success looks like.” That community has grown in Los Angeles, where Tan is consciously building a life beyond work. “I think I’m doing a very good job and I’m very proud of my chosen family,” she says.

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Her friends have also played a tangible role in her career, leading her to becoming a Netflix fellow. “The Netflix fellowship opened the door to Luminant Media. It’s how I ended up working on the Vietnam project,” she explains, adding it also opened the door for her to co-produce The American Experiment. “But the reason that I even applied to the fellowship was because my friends were sending me links and encouraging me to go for it, even as I doubted I would get it. This Emmy Award is as much theirs as it is mine,” she says. “They say behind every successful man is a woman. I say behind every successful woman are more women!”

When asked what she would tell Malaysians hoping to follow in her footsteps, Tan is reluctant to offer any semblance of a formula. Beyond the privilege of having supportive parents, economic access and having the grit to learn fast in an unfamiliar environment, there isn’t much of a cheat sheet to replicate. “When journalists ask me this question, I’m thinking about friends in Kuala Lumpur and Kuching stretching impossibly small budgets into feature films. I’m thinking about an industry plagued by overwork and underpayment, with no unions or agencies to protect its workers,” she reflects, penning these thoughts on her Hot Sheets Substack.

She admits to sometimes wondering why she had to uproot her whole life to tell the stories she wants to tell. The truth is that the ecosystem and opportunities didn’t exist closer to home. “When people tell stories about immigration and success, they often skip this part. The decision gets flattened into a narrative of courage or hustle. What gets lost is how practical the decision often is. Years later, after enough projects and enough accolades, the story always looks cleaner from the outside than it ever felt from the inside.”

She knows this particularly well. “People see the Emmys and the Oscars. They don’t see the visas. They don’t see the years of uncertainty. They don’t see the apartments shared with too many roommates, the awful work environments endured simply to survive and stay working another year, the constant anxiety of building a life in a place that isn’t yet home, but absolutely loving the life built from scratch.”

Her lived experience is why she remains invested in hoping the Malaysian scene will evolve. “We need to invest in our artists.” The first step is supporting local filmmakers. “If the filmmakers don’t have the numbers to show people are interested in their work and that they’re worthy of the investment, they simply won’t have the resources to continue,” she says. Tan knows the power to reclaim soft power remains in the hands of Malaysians to safeguard and tell our own stories. “I also hope for the day Malaysians won’t have to leave Malaysia to find success.”

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