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George Takei on Sulu and Hollywood’s Progress in Asian Representation
Takei found in ‘Star Trek’ an Asian character built with intelligence, dignity and purpose
VIDEO: George Takei on His Trailblazing Role in ‘Star Trek’
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Key takeaways
- George Takei, 89, says playing Sulu on Star Trek was the first time he was able to portray a fully realized Asian character rather than a stereotype.
- He credits Gene Roddenberry with deliberately designing Sulu to represent all of Asia.
- Takei says Hollywood has made remarkable progress on Asian representation but stops short of calling it a victory.
George Takei was 5 years old when the U.S. government forced his family from their home on Garnet Street in Los Angeles and sent them to a horse stall at Santa Anita Park racetrack. Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Incarceration of Japanese Americans had begun. Takei’s family was part of the more than 120,000 Japanese Americans and nationals who were not convicted of any crimes but were detained in camps during World War II.
He grew up. He became an actor.
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And for years, Hollywood offered him what it offered most Asian American performers at the time: caricatures.
Then Takei walked into screenwriter Gene Roddenberry’s office.
The show was Star Trek. The character was Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise. Takei read for the part and knew immediately what he was looking at.
George Takei starred as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu on “Star Trek,” seen here in the Sept. 8, 1966, premiere episode. He says the role was “the first time that I was being asked to portray a character that was fully developed.”
CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
“I desperately wanted the role,” the 89-year-old tells AARP during a March interview in Washington, D.C. It was, he explains, “the first time that I was being asked to portray a character that was fully developed. It was a human being, not a cartoon or a stereotype, a comic buffoon or a villain, Fu Manchu. This was an identifiable, sharp, intelligent, qualified member of a Star Fleet team.”
For a Japanese American actor who had been imprisoned by his own government simply for his ancestry, that was not a small thing.
Takei says Roddenberry had thought carefully about what Sulu should represent. Asia, he understood, was not a monolith. It was vast, diverse and, in the mid 20th century, scarred by war, revolution and colonization. Roddenberry did not want to attach the character to any single nationality, Takei says. Every Asian surname, Takei explains, carries a national identity.
“Tanaka is Japanese, Kim is Korean, Wong is Chinese,” he says. Roddenberry wanted something bigger.
The answer was on his office wall. “He had a map of Asia pasted on his wall in his office, and he happened to be gazing at it, looking for inspiration,” Takei says. “And he found, off the coast of the Philippines, the Sulu Sea, and he thought the waters of a sea touch all the shores — Japan, China, Korea, Philippines — and hence, my character’s name. That’s how thorough Gene Roddenberry was in trying to convey the notion [of] infinite diversity in infinite combinations. My character is named after an ocean [that] touches all the lands of Asia.”
Takei, who graced the original series from its premiere on Sept. 8, 1966, later lobbied for Sulu to command his own ship. He got it. Sulu eventually led the USS Excelsior. Takei saw the character as more than a helmsman — he saw him as a statement of inclusivity.
The statement landed. Hollywood has changed in the 60 years since Star Trek debuted, Takei says, though he stops short of declaring victory.
In Hollywood, “there are more actors and actresses of Asian background who are depicting the diversity in Asian society,” George Takei says.
Michael Simon/Getty Images
Asian American and Asian characters are “more fully developed, although it’s storytelling, so sometimes storytelling makes it a little bit shallow. But it’s tremendously improved, and there are more actors and actresses of Asian background who are depicting the diversity in Asian society,” he says. “We have made remarkable progress.”
Takei credits his staying power in Hollywood to a particular kind of adaptability. “I’m an ambitious guy,” he says. “I’m a flexible guy. I can do a dance around the obstacles that pop up.”
The philosophy that guides him now is the one Star Trek modeled six decades ago, and the same one his father instilled in him long before that.
“My father was [the] one who taught me to be actively engaged in our society, contributing what I can, working with other people, some that I don’t agree with, but working together to find a mutually livable, positive solution,” he says. “The lessons of Star Trek are ones that we need to make sure live on and prosper.”
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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