Cover Jason Tobin shadow boxing at his studio (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
Jason Tobin shadow boxing at his studio (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
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Jason Tobin tells Tatler how martial arts have helped him find his place in the world, from self-defence to landing diverse acting roles, in this series on a new generation of Eurasian action and martial arts film stars who navigate their identities and find new purpose from the craft
Jason Tobin is elated about his role in A Thousand Blows, a historical drama series slated for release this October on Disney+. He plays a Chinese man who runs a boarding house in 1830s Victorian London, where gangsters, murderers and immigrants fight for survival in the violent melting pot of the city’s East End.
Far from Young Jun, the brash, funny, martial-arts-practising gangster-playboy he played in all three seasons of the HBO action series Warrior, his character this time is mild-mannered, meek and not a fighter. “I never attempted to be Jackie Chan. I’ve always marketed myself as an actor: I want to be challenged; I want to play different things,” says Tobin, a martial artist who practises boxing, Thai boxing and Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial art. “As an actor, you get to be someone else and it’s very liberating, even for a brief period. That’s the feeling I’m chasing. To jump between these two roles has been really satisfying.”
Read more: Shannon Lee Discusses Her Father Bruce Lee's Legacy And Impact On Asian Representation In Hollywood
Above Jason Tobin (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
Jason Tobin (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
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Over the three decades since he moved to LA to look for acting work, he has played a variety of characters: an auto technician in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) and later Fast and Furious instalment F9 (2021); a businessman in Jasmine (2015); a shady tipster in Fistful of Vengeance (2022). But when he first arrived in Hollywood, it hadn’t occurred to him that such a wide range of roles could be within reach.
“The archetypes that I now play were not open to me before. When I arrived in America 30 years ago, the biggest Hollywood film that had any Asian representation was Joy Luck Club (1993),” he says. “I wasn’t getting enough auditions or opportunities in Hollywood.” While he believes that an actor’s job is to “wear a mask” and be “cast [taking into consideration] the way I look”, the scope of stories and characters in Hollywood was predominantly white. It wasn’t common to have directors and scriptwriters from Asian or other non-white backgrounds offer experience to those from racial minorities back then.
“I kept getting cast as the Chinese politician because I was very young and energetic. When a show producer says, ‘Oh, we need a kid to deliver Chinese food for this team’ or ‘Asian gangster number whatever’, they’d come to me,” he says, admitting he still cherished any opportunity in the competitive industry.
Above Jason Tobin (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
Above Jason Tobin (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
Jason Tobin (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
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In those early days, the only Chinese onscreen hero he could relate to was Lee. Being the only Chinese student at his UK boarding school, Tobin would get picked on; it was his white father who started to show him movies featuring the martial arts icon. “It was his way of giving me an Asian male role model, who helped me get through my childhood because he was someone I could aspire to. In western cinema, there really weren’t any Asian role models,” he recalls.
This motivated him to learn martial arts to defend himself, seeing how Lee defeated his opponents with the “flashy kicks which are so exciting to see” in martial arts films. Later on, Tobin also dabbled in hung kuen (a Shaolin style) and wushu. But at a certain point, he realised that some of the traditional martial arts and wushu he had been learning “are fantastic for movies and TV but aren’t necessarily practical for fighting in real-life scenarios”
He has since moved on to learning mixed modern martial arts, which is a combo of styles for real fighting, Tobin has also gradually come to realise—unlike how Lee established the “strong Chinese man” image by playing physically powerful characters in western films—that he can push for better representation of and respect for different cultures by taking on diverse acting roles.
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Above Jason Tobin (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
Jason Tobin (Photo: Arlo Pyne / Tatler Hong Kong)
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That’s not to say Tobin shies away from what may be considered clichéd Asian roles such as his meek Chinese immigrant in A Thousand Blows. “Do I worry about perpetuating stereotypes? Yeah, maybe.” But he adds that he always voices his concerns to the production crew if he feels the presentation of an Asian character is off. “You do your best to do the role justice. If I read the script and I think, “Oh my God, this is just utter stereotypical bulls**t, then I won’t do it.”
He feels pleased—and lucky—that he is working at a time when Asian American cinema is burgeoning: with Netflix series Beef (2023), starring Ali Wong, the first person of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, enjoying massive critical and popular acclaim; Michelle Yeoh becoming the first Asian to win Best Actress at last year’s Oscars for Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022); and the growing number of films and series about the Asian experience overseas.
“In Warrior, [my character] Young Jun literally says the same words I feel in life: ‘I’m Chinese, but I’ve never been to China. I was born in America, but I’m not American.I don’t know who the hell I am’,” Tobin says. “I understand what it’s like to be an immigrant, to not fit in, and that I’m not Chinese enough in Hong Kong, not English enough in the UK and not American enough in America. This is a very familiar story for Asians anywhere in the world. These characters are part of me.”
The actor says he wants to continue to tell Asian American stories in the future. And wherever in the world his job takes him next, he feels growing his career doesn’t necessarily mean expanding his prominence in the US. “[Even] if I never work in Hollywood again, but I only work in Asian American roles, I’ll be very happy—there are so many stories that I can relate to.”
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Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
