Check Out David Huynh’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Huynh.

Hi David, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Storytelling was something I had always considered important in my life. Whether it was stories I was listening to from aunts or stories I myself was telling to friends. The process of passing down history, enlightenment, and entertainment through story was one that truly inspired me. And so, I began my life’s passion of storytelling through a camera lens during high school and into my University years. I was enamored with stories that I could see and feel. The visual story in a photography, the visual story in moving images. The visual story in performance. I gravitated toward these three mediums of storytelling: Photography, performance and filmmaking.

I arrived in Los Angeles in September of 2003 with two college friends. We were all film students from the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba and had landed internships with New Line Cinema. I disliked the job, the position I was in was international distribution, which closely resembled working at UPS. However, the internship got me to Los Angeles and thus, I began my journey as a professional actor and photographer. Today, I am so grateful to say I have performed as leads in indie feature films, cut my teeth with some of Los Angeles’ most prominent theatre companies and have appeared on some of the most popular television shows on network and cable tv. Recently I’ve had the fortune of being on a series that is now streaming on Netflix; “The Sinner” season 4, and will be seen in season 2 of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” streaming on Paramount Plus.

I feel that my career as an actor has allowed me to pursue my portrait photography as a passion, and I am able to visually tell stories that are close to me through my own camera lens and not just embodying a character in front of one.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I felt that one of the biggest struggles I endured was finding my community, finding where I fit in comfortably the most, being surrounded by the people I wanted to be part of. It took me some time, some years to discover my community, my people. I found it in both where I lived and how I lived. I found my community of artists in the theatre, doing small plays, I found my collaborators in the coffee shops in Echo Park, listening to their stories on open mic nights for poetry readings and short stories. I found where I belonged, mostly through the people I wanted to know.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am an actor. It’s taken me many years to be able to both proudly admit that I am one in this city of so many other actors and to truly say I am an actor out of passion and vocation. I have always kept both a passion and a job, and previously acting had not meant both. Acting was a gift, but I had to work to pay the bills. Now that acting is paying the bills, I’ve allowed myself to be the photographer I’ve wanted to be out of passion. Today, I’m best known for playing CJ Lam in season 4 of “The Sinner”, from USA Network, currently streaming on Netflix. I’ve always seen myself as a serious actor, I rarely get to do comedy, and the characters I end up playing are indeed very serious people. People going through loss, personal struggles, drug addiction and abuse. I do find that these characters and themes find me. We gravitate toward each other, the law of attraction working overtime here, I think! Some of the recent projects I’ve been involved with that make so proud are “The Brother’s Paranormal”, a play written by Prince Gomolvilas that was produced by East West Players and staged at the Historic David Henry Hwang Theatre located in Little Tokyo, and “The Sinner” on Netflix. “The Sinner” is an anthology series starring Bill Pullman as Detective Harry Ambrose. The series is marketed as a ‘why-dunnit’ rather than a ‘who-dunnit’ and is unique for its storytelling. It is a remarkable series that I am quite proud of my work in. You don’t have to watch the anthology from season 1 to enjoy it, so if you’re coming across this interview and are curious, start with season 4!

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Many people are always surprised to discover that my mother’s aunt, my great-aunt (Madame Nguyen Phuoc Dai), owned a restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, La Bibliothèque de Madame Dai. Madame Nguyen Phuoc Dai, a retired Politian, was Vietnam’s very first female lawyer and during the war, a spy for the Viet Cong. Her story is one of great magnitude. She was not only a spy, a restaurateur, the country’s first female lawyer, but also appeared on ‘Anthony Bourdain’s a Cook’s Tour’, season 1, episode 3: “Cobra Heart – Food That Makes You Manly” where she famously feeds Bourdain a cobra heart. I hope to one day bring her spiraling story to audiences through a lens of moving pictures as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: david-huynh.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatdavidhuynh/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThatDavidHuynh
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thatdavidhuynh
• Other: david-gabe.com

Image Credits
All photos owned by David Huynh