Main Character Energy

With a new film, actor Ashley Park is getting top billing for the first time in her career-and she's channeling those lead vibes into everything. From fitness routines to mental health practices, she's finally treating herself like a star. About time!

- By Kat Moon

When Ashley Park first read the script for the new movie Joy Ride, she didn't picture herself in the lead role. Which of the supporting characters will I be? she recalls thinking as she devoured the material that made her burst out laughing in some parts and cry in others. Up to that point, Ashley had never been number one on the call sheet. "I've always thought about how my character could propel the protagonist," she says.

But this project was different. The film follows her character, Audrey, as an ordinary work trip to China descends into a frenzied search for her birth mother. She is joined by Sherry Cola's Lolo, Stephanie Hsu's Kat, and Sabrina Wu's Deadeye on this journey of self-discovery. Equal parts raunchy humor and dramatic heart, Joy Ride unapologetically centers Asian characters. And Audrey is the focal point.

Playing the lead role was a game-changing experience for Ashley. "You don't have to be, like, 'Here's my one scene...how do I make it about this other person's story?" the 32-yearold actor says between sips of tomato soup as we chat outside a café on New York's Upper West Side. Indeed, Audrey is the kind of multifaceted character Ashley has waited her entire career to play.

Born to Korean parents in Glendale, California, and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she started her acting career in theater. Ashley made her Broadway debut in 2014 as an ensemble member in Mamma Mia! and was cast in musicals such as The King and I, Sunday in the Park With George, and Mean Girls (in which she had the role of Gretchen Wieners and earned a Tony Award nomination). In 2020, she began playing the part she's perhaps best known for-radiant Mindy Chen on Netflix's Emily in Paris.