Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Wong.
Paul, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My original background is musical. My mother was a voice major/piano minor during her one year of college before getting married and becoming a housewife in the 1950’s (as one did). My earliest memory as a child of 3 years old is being put to bed and then hearing her play Bach 2 and 3 part inventions on the piano because that was the only time she had to herself to play the piano, what with keeping the household running and taking care of me and my younger sister. And I would hear her singing in her beautiful lyric soprano voice. I don’t have an independent memory of it, but my parents would later tell me I was always after her to teach me to play piano at that age. I have a home video at 11 months old being held in her lap at the piano and using my hands to bang away at the keys imitating her. Apparently she kept telling me I was too young. I turned 5 years old and knowing you needed to be 5 to go to school, I fully expected to start school the next day. Unfortunately my birthday is in January and the school cut off was September so I had 8 more months to wait. Apparently in an attempt to keep me occupied, my mother started teaching me to play at that time and I took lessons with a series of teachers until half way through my senior year of high school. I was the accompanist of our junior high school and high school choirs, played as a guest pianist with the school orchestra and was at the “best in my high school” level when I graduated.
And I don’t remember a time when I didn’t sing and always had a naturally good voice. But despite my musical background, I never considered it as a possible vocation, growing up as an Asian American child of the 60’s where the unspoken expectation was to go to college and go into some profession. I was always good academically, and I liked that stuff too so I just did both academics and creative stuff throughout school, graduating as valedictorian of my high school class. I did my first musical at age 13 and caught the musical theatre acting bug, which remains my first love creatively to this day. I did several musicals as an actor, as a orchestral pianist and as a musical director in high school and also did 2 shows as an actor while at UC Davis as a Chemistry/Pre Med major.
I was accepted into the UCLA School of Medicine and figured I’d have to give all that up to study. But I discovered that as a student in any field at UCLA, I was eligible to reserve a piano practice room in the music department for 2 hours a week, so I did that, figuring that would be my creative outlet (apparently only music majors are allowed to sign up to reserve these rooms nowadays). I would go to the Music Library to sign out scores to play and sing and one day as I was exiting the library, I heard singing coming from a nearby room. Curious, I peaked past the darkened door and discovered it was the Schoenberg Hall Little Theatre, where there was a class taking place. A girl was striding back and forth across the stage singing “It’s a Fine life” from the musical OLIVER and the rest of the class was in the first 3-4 rows of the darkened theater so I was able to slip into the back row undetected. It was a musical theatre audition class where a student would perform and then the professor and other students would critique and give suggestions for adjustment. It looked like so much fun but I figured that was all behind me so I left. A few months later my friend Melanie from UC Davis with whom I had done a production of GUYS AND DOLLS transferred to the UCLA Theatre Arts department and contacted me since she didn’t know anyone else there. Melanie started meeting me at the piano practice room where we would sing together and I would play piano. One day she said “I found the greatest class, the UCLA Musical Theatre Workshop”, which turned out to be the same class I had stumbled upon so I started helping her prepare for her weekly assignments. Then one day she arrived at the piano practice room and said “One of the class assignments is to do a 2 person scene and I can’t find anyone to do a scene with me.” I don’t know if it was because she was a winter transfer student and everyone else had already paired up or if there was an odd number of people in the class but in any case she went to the professor and explained the situation. She told him she had a friend who wasn’t in the class and asked if she could do her scene with him (me). The professor said yes so the last day of winter quarter I arrived with Melanie at the class and everyone is looking at me like “Who’s that?” because I wasn’t in either the music department or the theatre department and no one had ever seen me before. We did a scene including Shall We Dance from THE KING AND I and it went well. In the post performance critique session, the professor said “I like your work. Would you like to join our class next quarter?”. It was scheduled on Saturday mornings so it didn’t interfere with my medical school classes so I said “Yes” and that’s how I got into the UCLA Musical Theatre Workshop as a medical student! And it was there where I made so many friends who are among my closest friends to this day.
After my medical training was completed, I saw a casting notice for the East West Players, the longest running theatre of color in the US for a production of A CHORUS LINE. I went and did well with the singing but had never really had dance training and hadn’t done a show for 6 years so my dance audition was terrible. Nevertheless, I got the call to offer me the role of one of the auditioners who gets cut after the first number. I was working as a physician full time by then and I almost didn’t accept the show, thinking “I’m going to spend all this time and effort to be on stage for 10 minutes and then have to wait backstage for 2 and a half hours for the last 5 minutes of the closing number and bows” but ultimately I did accept. During the rehearsal process I was asked to understudy a couple of the main roles who are on stage the entire show and during rehearsal I worked hard and my dance skills got much better. 10 days prior to opening night, one of the actors I was understudying quit the show and I got bumped up. That was the first of my 10 mainstage musical productions at the East West Players.
During my medical career I continued to do musical theatre when I could swing the schedule but in 2015 I had the opportunity to take an early retirement so I did in order to have more time flexibility to pursue show business more fully. Before that time, I had been approached 4 times for representation by agents who saw me in these small musical theatre projects but I had never had the time availability to make it work. But the week I retired I attended an open call for my current talent agency with the goal of getting representation for larger and higher level musical theatre projects and perhaps even Broadway. It was the standard two 16-bar song cuts of contrasting styles. They liked me and invited me back to the dance call. I did well there (more about that coming up) and they invited me to come in to discuss signing. At our meeting they did offer me representation for theatre but said they didn’t have anyone of my type at all so also offered to represent me for film/tv/commercials even though I had no experience or credits with any of that. I agreed and they started sending me out. I booked my 3rd TV audition for an NBC medical drama titled Heartbeat, ironically not playing a physician but playing a terminally ill patient. Since that time I’ve actually done more film and tv work than musical theatre including a feature film in June 2024 and 7 short films during this year as well.
Backing up a little, in 2009 I kept running into auditions where casting seemed to want to see me as a singer/dancer even though I had minimal dance training (perhaps because I’ve always been lean and have the right lines to be a dancer). I was always athletic enough to learn simple stuff but as I progessed to higher level productions requiring higher level skills, my dancing was increasingly not on par with my singing skills. I was complaining about it to other performer friends and they recommended me to their first dance teacher, who gave private lessons. I went to her with the intention of getting a crash course in a few of the more common steps or movements and liked it so much I went every week for 10 years until the pandemic hit. So when I went to the agent dance call, I nailed it to the point that they thought I had been a dancer originally but had just aged out a bit (Ha ha!). Anyway, during the time I was doing shows and working full time, I was doing it for the love of it, without the pressure to earn a living or get the better agent, or get to the next step, etc. And now that I have my medical retirement, I’m still in the same situation of doing each project because it fulfills me creatively. My other actor friends joke that I’m doing everything they were doing 50 years ago except waiting tables, lol! Besides my show biz activities, I play tennis 2-3 times weekly and enjoy international travel (almost 90 countries spanning all 7 continents) with my husband (together 36 years this December) and our Bichon Frise dog.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Acting is 99% rejection so my road has been as bumpy as the next person’s in that way except that I’ve never felt the pressure to have to support myself financially as an actor so that aspect has been easier. On the other hand, I’ve had to give up certain opportunities along the way due to day job time flexibility restraints but all in all, it’s been a good trade off for me, in retrospect. There are certainly a lot more opportunities in the arts for POC artists now compared to the early days, although there’s still progress to be made for POC artists to have equal opportunities for roles from both a quantity and a quality aspect.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’ve covered some of this already. I started out in musical theatre, which remains my first love. I audition for shows as always, but I’m also a member of Los Angeles’s Musical Theatre Guild, who produces staged concert reading productions of lesser known shows. In addition to film and TV work, I’ve also done a role in a podcast series and narrated an audio book, both jobs coming to me unsolicited from producers who saw my actor reel elsewhere or who knew of me through mutual connections. I always say medicine is a very linear business. The training has specific steps that have to be taken in sequence, and you can’t skip any, but if you can get through it, you’re pretty much guaranteed a job for life. In show business you can knock on a door for 10 years without success, and suddenly another door can unexpectedly open and you have to be prepared with having your skills ready to take advantage of them when they occur. I am most proud of my work ethic, dependability and preparedness, which is also what sets me apart.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I’ve learned that you can never predict anything in this business. While it’s good to have a plan and a direction, it’s important to stay open to random opportunities that may come along. In my experience it’s often been those unexpected turns that wind up being the most satisfying.
I have a few things coming up before the end of the year. I’ll be singing for the East West Players 60th Anniversary Gala Celebration in November. That’s particularly meaningful to me since I got my Los Angeles musical theatre start there.
I’m also singing with Musical Theatre Guild in THE HOLIDAYS ON STAGE & SCREEN, a concert of holiday songs from musical theatre origins at the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood later in November. It’s a fundraiser to support our youth educational outreach programs to keep musical theatre alive for future generations of both patrons and artists.
And I’m working on a presentation of a new musical project in December titled RISE TO THE TOP, kind of a “Top Chef” story with a Chinese twist.
And I can’t wait to see what 2026 holds!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.Paul-Wong.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulwongactor
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulWongActor
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-wong-ba20107/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@pauljwong
- Other: https://linktr.ee/Pauljwong
Image Credits
Karen Huie (last image only)
