Rosalind Chao, once Star Trek’s Keiko O’Brien, now Hua Li in Mulan, reflects on her career and Asian-American representation

Rosalind Chao as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Keiko O’Brien (left) and Mulan’s Hua Li (right)

Rosalind Chao, known best to Star Trek fans as expert botanist Keiko O’Brien, has been promoting the new Disney live-action remake of Mulan. Chao plays Mulan’s mother in the film.

Chao’s career spans five decades and was the focus of a recent interview with Variety. In the interview, the Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine actor described some of the challenges she has faced getting roles as an actor of Asian descent. For Chao, it goes all the way back to her childhood, but she didn’t always want to act. “I remember seeing Connie Chung on TV,” Chao said, “and that was my first memory of seeing an Asian-American woman who spoke like me and looked like me on camera. I think that’s why I flirted with being a journalist. I thought, ‘That’s something I can do.’” Just as it began to look like her career was heading in that direction, she was picked up for a role in the hit series M*A*S*H and her acting career was off and running. “Acting is an addiction,” she said. “It kept coming and there was nothing I loved more.”

It wasn’t always easy for Chao to get roles. In fact, she was told (more than once) that her heritage made her unsuitable for certain roles. Auditioning for a production of Hedda Gabler, Chao was told “it didn’t make sense to have an Asian person in a period piece.” Auditioning for what she called a “potentially life-changing” role onstage, Chao recalled the show’s producer saying, “You’re my choice but the director doesn’t want to cast you because you’re the face of the enemy.”

It hasn’t all been a struggle, however. In spite of these challenges, Chao has had a successful acting career. “For every backwards-thinking person,” Chao said, “there were many people who were forward-thinking and gave me amazing opportunities.”

For Chao, a hero like Mulan seems to hit home. “If you were an Asian girl and this movie had come out when you were nine years old, wouldn’t that have made a difference [in] how you felt about yourself?” she said. With Mulan premiering in the wake of anti-Asian sentiments fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chao acknowledged the success of Asian-led films Parasite and The Farewell, saying, “We had grown as a community and were used to being seen. So when we were slapped down again it really made us rise to the occasion. I love seeing how strong our community is and how supportive we are of each other.”

If you’d like to read the rest of Chao’s uplifting interview, then you can do so at variety.com.