Joy Ride’s Ashley Park on How She Deals With Racism in Hollywood: ‘I Realized How Good I Am at Code-Switching’

While speaking to PEOPLE about her new film Joy Ride, actress Ashley Park revealed how she deals with racism in Hollywood and how her experience with being “accommodating” ultimately “comprised me as a person.”

In Joy Ride, Park stars as Audrey, a successful attorney who goes on a business trip to Asia. However, after things take an unexpected turn, Audrey enlists the help of her childhood friend Lolo (played by Sherry Cola), her former college roommate and Chinese soap star Kat (played by Stephanie Hsu), and Lolo’s quirky cousin Deadeye (played by Sabrina Wu).

Joy Ride marks Park’s first leading role and is also the first film the Emily in Paris actor’s been in that was written and directed by Asian women and has a cast of Asian stars. Park stated that she instantly noticed a difference in her experience.

Park said, “First of all, Sabrina and Stephanie and Sherry, all of us are so happy and conditioned to be supporting characters. It really did feel like family right off the bat. And there’s a certain level of comfort, especially with [writer] Teresa [Hsiao] and [director] Adele [Lim] and [writer] Cherry [Chevapravatdumrong] at the helm.”

The Beef actor went on to reveal how she connected with her Joy Ride character. In the movie, Audrey works hard to blend in with her coworkers (who are mainly white males) as a means to further her career.

Park noted, “That’s actually why I understand Audrey so well. I want to acknowledge that I’m complicit and completely figuring out a way to be a part of that world. I am Audrey in that way.”

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Ashley Park Said That She’s Been “Accommodating” in Order to “Be Everybody’s Safe Place”

The Broadway star continued, “It’s an accommodating thing. It’s what people do on a basic level and I did times a thousand to be everybody’s safe place. Because I always had a chip on my shoulder of ‘Oh well, if that role wasn’t supposed to be Asian, I probably would never have gotten it because I wasn’t good enough.”

Park also admitted that at times, in both her life and career, she’s altered her behavior in order to make others more comfortable.

Park said, “We code-switch because we’re trying to find a way to be indispensable to people, whether as their buddy or confidant. The reason code-switching really helped me as an actor is because I’m really good at immediately observing what somebody needs and what somebody feels safe with. Not changing myself for that, but because it makes me feel good to be that for them. But that compromised me as a person a lot.”

Park noted that, in contrast, she didn’t feel like she had to perform or change any part of herself on the Joy Ride set.

The actor said, “We talked about it a lot, me and and [sic] Adele and Cherry and Teresa. I didn’t have to code switch for anyone, and I could just be there as myself. I can be me.”