Behind the scenes with Rachel Tan: How this Malaysian-born film producer brings stories to life on the big screen

“I left the industry for years, and to come back it wasn't easy, people are forgotten very easily. That was challenging for me,” Tan says, adding that the management company she had joined at that time had just dissolved after being in business for 30 years. “I would go on sets and get jobs just to be close to a movie and the creators behind it,” she recalls.

“I was an assistant for the director and the producers, I would fetch photocopies and other things, just to be able to learn more about the industry. I started sitting in development meetings and script meetings. I became a translator between Hollywood producers and Hong Kong directors when there would be a co-production. So, I found my niche there.”     

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From this experience, Tan first fell in love with the process of making a film and developing an idea from scratch and bringing it to life on the big screen.

After marrying her American husband, Dan Mark (then an entertainment attorney with Warner Brothers), and moving to the US, Tan took the California bar exam with the hope of setting up her own entertainment law firm. As it happened, a director friend of hers back in Hong Kong was working on an indie co-production with Hollywood, and asked if she would act as legal advisor on the project. 

Tan’s input soon traversed legal matters onto script development and more behind-the-scenes work, to the point that the director suggested giving her and Mark an associate producer's credit. Ten years on, and Tan and her husband are the co-founders of LA-based production company Kingstreet Pictures, which has released five films, including the 2024 film Sight starring Oscar Award Nominee Greg Kinnear and Terry Chen. 

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Based on real life events surrounding world-renowned eye surgeon Dr Ming Wang, a Chinese immigrant to the US who overcame significant adversity to become a medical pioneer, the movie has garnered critical acclaim and has grossed more than US$7 million in theatres in the US alone.

A story of perseverance, hope and faith, Sight is just one example of the incredible Asian stories in Hollywood with universally inspiring themes. As an Asian producer, Tan is passionate about bringing more diverse stories to life in the global film industry.

“It was quite a long process of getting the script and giving the story justice,” Tan says. ”At the end of the day, we wanted to tell a story where, it wasn’t about the country you come from, but the human perseverance, the humanity of how he overcame odds.”

“In this day and age, there are a lot of films that embrace our brokenness as human beings. And those are very artistic. But we wanted to tell a story of light, hope, and kindness. Stories that show that no matter how lost you are, it is not the end,” Tan says, adding that her upcoming film, Worth the Wait, takes a more lighthearted direction, an ensemble-type film featuring the love stories of different Asian Americans going through different challenges in their respective love lives.

Starring Singaporean actors Tan Kheng Hua and Lim Yu Beng, the rom-com will also feature an international star-studded cast that includes Lana Condor, Ross Butler, Andrew Koji, Sung Kang, Elodie Yung and Karena Lam.

Inspired by the format of the 2003 hit holiday rom-com Love Actually, the film takes inspiration from real-life love stories, from how love changes from a teen romance to life after marriage, along with the struggles of letting go of your first real love to the struggles of trying to conceive.

“It was about portraying those journeys that we could understand. It was really our blood, sweat and tears,” says the mother of two. “Worth the Wait takes inspiration from the real stories about people we know who happen to be Asian, from our friends to our own lives. It’s not an immigrant story. There’s nothing particularly ‘Asian’ about it. They’re all very American.

“They’re not sitting down eating dumplings every day, you know? Or talking about the struggle of immigrants and being a second-generation and first-generation American. I mean, I love those stories. From Joy Luck Club to Minari–there are so many great ones and they paved the way for us. Now, we just get to be ourselves. We are all that, and much more. We’re not good at Kung fu, or math or IT. We’re not delivery people. We laugh, we cry, we hurt. We have flaws. We’re overcoming. We have hopes and dreams. Just like everyone in the audience.”

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Reflecting back on her own challenges as a producer, Tan admits that her acting background serves her well in what she does today, from managing actors and directors with empathy to balancing the demands of keeping a film on budget and on schedule in spite of setbacks. She also recalls instances of working on productions and being the only female producer in meetings full of male peers.

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“I think it's changing in Hollywood, with directors like Greta Gerwig. Then again, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was good enough for a Best Picture nomination, but not good enough to be nominated for Best Director. So there’s... I don't know, some ways to go.

“I guess to be fair, they’ve been giving opportunities to men for the past few decades. And those men became really good, right? Because opportunities were presented over and over again. They could fail, they could practice. But women were not given those opportunities. So there are not as many good ones to go compete with the Steven Spielbergs of the world, because only recently, they've been given the chance to lead. So maybe it’s a process. But it's definitely something that we should continue to fight for and advocate,” says Tan. 

Another seldom-discussed struggle of show business is the fleeting nature of success and fame. Over the years, Tan learned not to let herself be defined by successes or failures in the industry, though it wasn’t a lesson she learned overnight. 

“I used to be really bad at rejection,” she says. “As an actor, you have to audition so many times. Sometimes your whole day, your whole week, is filled with rejection. It happens even as a producer, every time you’re pitching a project to investors, distributors, anyone. You just have to learn to separate your worth from it. 

“There were so many moments where I felt like it was the end of a career for me. But at the bottom of my pit, God pulled me out. When I learned to place my value in Him, nothing could change that for me. I learned to let go of success and failure. I learned to let go of the overnight success that happened to that 19-year-old girl years ago. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to fetch coffee for people, right? Or even making a box office hit, you have to let that go. In this industry, success is so temporary, and you are only as good as your last film. I learned to let it go, because otherwise, I won’t have had hands that are free to embrace what’s next. Be it a smaller movie, a greater character, a movie that flops. I don’t know. It’s all a learning process.”

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