How Ashley Park Stopped Thinking Of Herself As A Sidekick
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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-year-old 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.
“I’m very proud that I’ve worked on every rung of the ladder,” Ashley says. “When you go to college, you don’t want to be a senior right away—you want to be a freshman.”
Going from an ensemble member on Broadway to a supporting character on TV shows means Ashley has observed the kind of leadership she wants to emulate, like Lily Collins in Emily in Paris and Laura Linney in Tales of the City. She held those examples close as she took the lead in Joy Ride.
While filming, Ashley realized how much of herself she had previously compromised. “I got to a point where I found my worth in not being the central focus,” she says. “I was still treating myself like I was a supporting character.”
It’s a mentality she’s been determined to change since wrapping Joy Ride—and one she is eager to apply to all aspects of her life. “I deserve to take care of myself and not just everyone else,” Ashley says. “I’m treating myself like a lead now.”
That refreshed approach to life has inspired an overhaul of her self-care routine, with Pilates at the core. Ashley trains with Sarah Brooks when she’s in New York City and Brandon Perry when she’s in Los Angeles.
“I don’t do personal sessions because I’m fancy,” she says. “It’s literally because if I take a class, I will find a way to cheat. When someone is one-on-one with me, it’s such good accountability.”
Her new perspective on exercise was also due in part to the pandemic. Before, she focused mostly on cardio. “Now, for me, working out is not about losing weight; it’s not about burning calories. Instead, I feel a difference when I am stronger and more muscled.” She also feels a shift from within on the days she exercises in the morning. “It changes the trajectory of my mental state because I’ve taken care of myself in some way,” she says.
If it were up to Ashley, she would do Pilates every day, but that’s a challenge because of her schedule—she’s been filming Only Murders in the Building’s third season—so she has settled into about three sessions per week.
Ashley says she still loves to run but hasn’t been able to do it much after spraining her ankle earlier this year (on the way to the bathroom at a Beyoncé concert in Dubai). “With my injury, I’ve learned it’s not just about getting stronger and sweating, it’s about preparing my muscles as my instrument,” she says.
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And for her, there’s been a noticeable difference on-screen once she started caring for her body, and even paying careful attention to her skin went a long way. Now, Ashley doesn’t step on a set without using her FaceGym toning device (which targets the facial muscles) in the a.m. at home.
“When I wake up, I’m puffy because those muscles aren’t woken up,” says Ashley. “Working them out gives me a lift.”
The actor has also visited acupuncture and massage therapists more regularly to prime her body for the busyness of her schedule.
Those packed days on-set make it difficult for Ashley to do something else she loves. “I haven’t been able to grocery-shop because I’ve been traveling so much,” she says. But the day before we spoke, Ashley made a pit stop at Trader Joe’s. “My personal meditation is reorganizing stuff,” she says. That includes the inside of her fridge, and the thought of arranging her groceries brings a huge smile to Ashley’s face. She also enjoys preparing food. “I love chopping vegetables, especially peppers and radishes,” she says. “When it looks nice, I’m more excited to eat it.”
Watch Ashley Park talk about what she loves most about her body:
She doesn’t typically consume three square meals; instead, each day is a little different. But she does have an ideal meal. “A big salad with steak and cheese makes me feel the best,” Ashley says. And there’s one type of dairy product she’s developed a strong appreciation for, thanks to Tik-Tok: cottage cheese. “I put it in eggs and eat it plain.”
Her diet sometimes includes hanyak, a traditional Korean herbal mixture. “It tastes like the earth, and I used to hate the flavor of it, but now I love it and can taste the nutrients,” Ashley says. “I use it for general health—I take it for digestion and sleeping.” She usually consumes hanyak when she’s in Los Angeles, where her doctor grows the herbs. She focuses on holistic medicine, and it’s an approach that Ashley has come to value, especially after a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia at the age of 15.
“It’s not that I’m skeptical of pharmaceuticals—I love an Advil—but because of the cancer experience, I’ve also realized how amazing holistic medicine can be,” she says.
Currently cancer-free, Ashley doesn’t want to be defined by the disease. She recalls convos with her doctors: “They said,‘You might have fertility problems, you might have...’ I was like, let’s stop there.” She didn’t want to know the laundry list. “The mind is so powerful that as soon as we think something’s a possibility, it manifests it.”
Ashley has put a lot of thought into how the mind affects the body. “I’ve finally learned the power of a mental health break,” she says. “In my 20s, I thought of vacations as, you can travel and do exciting things.” But that idea changed. “It’s shifted to vacation being alone time.”
She feels her healthiest when she’s on a beach, or just near water. And she’s dedicated more time to an activity she finds particularly soothing: painting. “I always travel with a watercolor set.” Her favorite thing to create? Cards. “I love giving handwritten cards more than gifts,” she says, sharing that at the end of shoots, they’re often her token of thanks to others.
In fact, she remembers the exact card and message she gave to Josh Fagen, a producer from Point Grey Pictures. “I wrote this: ‘I’ve never worked with a more championing straight white guy in the industry, truly the best on set every day,’” Ashley says. A work environment with this kind of support, and Asian women at the helm, has helped her come into her own.
Ashley recognizes that the creative team behind the film—a powerhouse trio consisting of director Adele Lim and writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao—is pioneering a new kind of Asian storytelling. Joy Ride is unabashedly thirsty, and the blatant sex jokes initially surprised the actor. “I’m pretty sure we all had the same reaction of, ‘What kind of sick f*cks wrote this?’” she recalls. “And when you meet Cherry and Teresa, they’re so unassuming, you’d never think they wrote it—and that’s exactly the point.”
Joy Ride is groundbreaking because it shows Asian women in their complex glory—horny side included. “Asian women on-screen, especially in America and Hollywood, have been so sexualized and fetishized for the benefit of other people’s stories or jokes,” Ashley says. “And we’re like, ‘We’re gonna go balls to the wall, further than anyone’s gone with Asian women.’”
That refusal to be bound by expectations deeply resonates with the actor. “That is exactly what has made me the person, the performer, everything that I am today,” Ashley says. “You cannot put me in a box.… Do not put me in a box.” Spoken like a true main character who is now comfortable in her mind, body, and spirit.
Photographed by Ben Watts. Styled by Kristen Saladino. Hair: Clara Leonard using Davines at The Wall Group. Makeup: Vincent Oquendo at The Wall Group. Manicure: Mo Qin at The Wall Group using OPI. Set design: Michael Altman at See Management.
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