BoJack Horseman’s Diane Nguyen & the Paradox of Diasporic Identity

According to Dazed Magazine, BoJack Horseman’s Diane Nguyen is “the most human cartoon on TV” (McLaughlin, A love letter to Diane Nguyen, the most human cartoon on TV). Diane is a writer caught up in the chaos of Hollywood, known for her wit, unapologetic feminism, and compassion and complexity. She has been described as the heart of the Netflix TV show BoJack Horseman, a close confidant to the vexingly flawed protagonist BoJack Horseman, bearing witness to and navigating the sins and nuances of Hollywood. When season five premiered “The Dog Days are Over,” this marked BoJack Horseman’s first active effort to meaningfully address Diane’s Vietnamese-American identity. In the episode, Diane Nguyen books a flight to Hanoi, Vietnam after an emotional breakup, hoping to rediscover herself and find a deeper meaning in life. But what she finds in Vietnam is more confusion about her identity and sense of belonging in the world.

In the wake of the controversy over the casting of Alison Brie — a white voice actress, a household name in comedy — as Diane, show creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg and writer Joanna Calo sought to approach Diane’s heritage with sensitivity. Consequently, Bob-Waksberg and Calo hired Vietnamese-American actress VyVy Nguyen to fulfill the role of consultant and voice actress for three separate characters in the episode. Through an interview with VyVy Nguyen, I was able to better understand the politics of the production, as well as the limitations and untapped potential of the episode.

Both at face value and in the production process, BoJack Horseman aims to subvert stereotypes. In execution, however, it creates and perpetuates yet more problematic tropes that undermine that effort. While it is not lost on viewers that BoJack Horseman is a work in progress, the show’s half-baked attempts to right its political wrongs ultimately only allows Diane her Asian-American narrative at the expense of Vietnam and native Vietnamese characters, and reflects the hegemonic nature of the Hollywood political economy.

During the production process of “The Dog Days are Over,” Bob-Waksberg quickly realized that he had written Diane’s family background into a dead end. In the first season, viewers are introduced to Diane’s family and as a means of understanding her tumultuous childhood and lack of familial support growing up. Pa Nguyen is a character who viewers had been introduced to, in Diane’s own words, as “a mean, sadistic alcoholic who never supported anything [she] did and actively delighted on seeing [her] fail.” Ma Nguyen similarly exhibits emotionally abusive behavior, and was known to be a frequent smoker and drinker. Both her parents are characterized as outwardly crass and aggressive “townies” with exaggeratedly thick Boston accents — not a trace of Vietnamese heritage exists in their household. In “The Dog Days are Over,” teenage Diane is seen confronting her father about her identity and why she “looks different from the other kids.” Pa, whose job as a tenured professor of Vietnamese history at Tufts is finally revealed, tells her to “shove it up her rear,” ending the conversation by saying, “you’re just the same as anybody else, and don’t let nobody tell you different.”

According to VyVy Nguyen, Bob-Waksberg had originally envisioned Diane to be third or fourth-generation Vietnamese American, and writers had intended Diane to state this fact in a voiceover. Furthermore, as planned in season one and two, Diane’s parents’ Bostonian stereotypes were meant to subvert the stereotype of the “fresh-off-the-boat” Asian immigrant, Nguyen said. But when the producers ran the script by VyVy Nguyen, Nguyen corrected the producers on the history. She had to explain to the crew that most Vietnamese Americans came after the Vietnam War, so it’d be virtually impossible, or extremely rare, for Diane to be a fourth or fifth generation Vietnamese American. Bob-Waksberg himself admitted the pitfalls of his earlier character development, apologizing to Nguyen for not taking the history into consideration and giving Diane’s parents unrealistic Boston accents. The producers couldn’t backtrack on the persona they had given Pa Nguyen, so they promoted the idea of him as an America-loving Bostonian who had rid himself of his cultural roots at the first opportunity.

Hearing the producers’ contemplations firsthand offers greater insights into how the producers have evolved, or responded to public backlash, since the beginning of BoJack Horseman. The development of Pa Nguyen is still a puzzling, even offensive caricature of an elder Vietnamese immigrant who, in real life, has probably lived through an insurmountable burden of history given historical context. It’s not the fact that Pa Nguyen is a morally questionable person that creates an offensive depiction of a Vietnamese person — it’s the fact that Pa Nguyen’s moral questionability and political incorrectness is not backed up by truth, or history, especially when it very well could have been. It’s not unrealistic that a Vietnamese refugee could have reactive, Republican, America-loving politics. It’s not unrealistic that a Southeast Asian immigrant who is a byproduct of war and colonialism could be an emotionally abusive parent. It is unrealistic, however, to slap the label of “professor of Vietnamese history at Tufts” on a character like Pa, just for the sake of Diane’s inquiry into her identity. When Pa tells Diane “she’s no different from anyone else,” this statement glimmers with the hope of empathy or insight into another dimension of Pa’s mind. But the potential is never explored. Even under the supposed attempt to turn a stereotype on its head, Pa is still a caricature. He is a supporting character who underpins, but also compels Diane to confront, emotional abuse and childhood trauma. With regard to ethical representation, however, the creation of Pa gives little thought to the burdens that immigrants and people of color already carry — his portrayal inadvertently minimizes the weight of parental abuse that viewers trust, are written into scripts with mindfulness and sensitivity. Pa Nguyen’s character raises questions of whether BoJack Horseman hastily slaps themes of childhood trauma onto its characters the same way it does Pa Nguyen’s esteemed profession and thick Boston accent.

At every step of Diane’s journey in Vietnam, she is met with challenges to her “authenticity” — as both an American and a Vietnamese person. Joanna Calo, the writer of the episode, interweaves clever, funny, and believable encounters into the diasporic experience in the homeland, such as a moment when a white American tourist says to her “Me America, you Viet-nam,” refusing to believe Diane is American, despite her perfect English. At one point, she becomes fed up with forcing herself into self-imposed expectations, and has a romantic affair with an American stranger at a bar, whom she essentially deceives into believing she is a non English-speaking native Vietnamese woman. She says, “It’s freeing to be this person he thinks you are, this person who isn’t bound by her own history or sadness. This is a person who could do whatever she wants.” The stranger takes Diane to the Hollywood production set that he’s an assistant on, boasting that he “basically runs things.” When a klieg light almost crashes on top of them, Diane’s frantic exclamations oust herself as an American. The stranger becomes furious, calling her a liar, but she excoriates his misogyny, saying, “It didn’t strike you as weird that you talked for two hours straight and I said nothing? Or is that what felt special?”

This scene is a clever, well-thought-out rebellion against the Orientalist Miss Saigon trope. Deborah Root explains the trope in Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, And The Commodification Of Difference, “After the American man fulfills his dream of an erotic adventure in the exciting war-torn soon-to-be-former colony, the Asian woman sacrifices herself so the white lovers can be together” (Root 68). Diane’s awareness allows her to be in control, despite the power dynamic that seemingly serves the American stranger. For a moment, she gets to break free of the emotions that control her, even if it’s under the exotifying male gaze. And finally, the self-important American stranger gets put in his place, exposed for his misogyny in a way that is rarely depicted on television — it’s a funny and satisfying ending to her excapade in Hanoi.

Yet, Diane once again gets her character development at the mercy of historical tropes. By virtue of her Americanness, Diane has the power to subvert a stereotype and fight back against the leering, fetishizing American gaze. But the scene does no favors for native Vietnamese women who still are not represented as complex and three-dimensional onscreen. By framing Diane’s Americanness as power, the producers inevitably reaffirm tropes about vulnerable Vietnamese women. Even when Diane’s Americanness is not power — in a jarring first impression of Hanoi, she is slapped by a Vietnamese grandmother who warns her to stay away from her nephew — there are negative connotations to her interactions with Vietnamese people. Although these encounters can be realistic, and justified — this is Diane’s perspective, after all — not a single Vietnamese character is given subtitles or a prominent voice of their own. The only Vietnamese native who speaks English is the hotel receptionist who fills the white-praising Asian role, expressing excitement over Laura Linney’s Eat Pray Love-esque Hollywood film being filmed in Hanoi.

We as “woke,” socially conscious viewers roll our eyes at the ridiculous tropes of the American man seeking an affair with a submissive, exotic Asian woman. We scoff at the age-old story of the white woman who travels to Asia to “find herself.” And we’re supposed to; BoJack Horseman intentionally uses these references for clever, comedic effect that liberal white audiences will latch onto. But how woke can a show be when it reclaims Vietnamese America by stifling the voices of Vietnam itself? Is the paradox of diasporic identity the doomed reality that we must otherize our home countries in our search for self-understanding in a Eurocentric society that we desperately attribute meaning to?

At the end of the episode, Diane leaves Vietnam with more confusion about her identity and sense of belonging in the world. In the final minutes of the episode, Diane’s character, is seen heartbrokenly ruminating while her background changes — the airport, the plane, the streets of Hanoi, her hotel room, the movie set. Diane says, “You think you might find community, a connection to something bigger. But you don’t. In fact, you feel even more alone that you were before you left. But you survive.” Other than the fact that she has come to terms with her internal pain, the episode offers little to suggest that she has been influenced by her trip to Vietnam, or that Vietnam is a place of meaning to her. According to VyVy Nguyen, the producers considered having Diane call BoJack at the end of the episode to say “it’s Diane, Diane Nguyen,” pronouncing her last name in the accurate, tonal form that it is spoken in in Vietnamese. The problem, unfortunately, was they didn’t realize that they hadn’t written in any setup in the scripts. BoJack Horseman’s decision to end the episode on the somber note further solidifies Vietnam’s role as a backdrop and nothing more. Knowing that BoJack Horseman had the potential to give more meaning to Vietnam and actually have Diane walk away from Vietnam with a meaningful takeaway, it feels as if the show misses opportunities to cherish, and give a respected platform to Vietnamese culture.

Ten years ago, when VyVy Nguyen first started out auditioning in Hollywood, she only went out for roles of the nail salon manicurist, or the masseuse.

For Nguyen, who has seen the industry evolve slowly, the opportunity to be a cultural consultant for BoJack Horseman, and be listened to, feels like quite a feat. In season five’s episode “The Dog Days are Over,” VyVy Nguyen was cast as consultant to the writers while also voicing the roles of an American airline attendant and a Vietnamese-speaking pangolin and Vietnamese-speaking mother in Vietnam.

Perhaps the producers’ sensitivity in approaching Diane’s cultural heritage largely stems from the recently-ignited controversy over the casting of Alison Brie, a white woman, to voice Diane Nguyen, who has a distinctly Vietnamese last name. January of last year, in the wake of BoJack Horseman’s season five premiere, show creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg responded to fan criticism over Diane’s casting on Twitter for the first time.

Since then, Bob-Waksberg has been more vocal about progress and cultural sensitivity, despite his decision to keep Alison Brie as the voice of Diane. In an interview with Slate, Bob-Waksberg admitted to how the casting controversy prompted him reevaluate his show, both onscreen and off.

“We really downplayed [Diane’s] race and her cultural heritage,” he said. “We’ve treated her basically like a white woman because I didn’t want to have a white woman playing an overtly Asian character, because that felt somehow more wrong to me. […] And [that fear] has had an additionally problematic effect: Because I wasn’t thinking of Diane as an Asian character first, I didn’t feel the need to hire Asian writers, and that is a responsibility that I should have felt much earlier” (Kang, BoJack Horseman’s Raphael Bob-Waksberg Talks About Coming to Terms With the “Original Sin” of the Show’s All-White Cast)

Speaking to VyVy Nguyen, who sounds like the ideal voice actress even through the phone, I couldn’t help but wonder why she wasn’t cast, or even considered for the role of Diane. According to Nguyen, BoJack Horseman producers found her IMDB page easily, given the small pool of Vietnamese American actors in Hollywood. She has wondered the same thing, she said.

“I was kind of like, well, first off, why didn’t I, or any of my other friends, get to read for the role,” she said. “So it sounds like they just kind of, you know, checked some boxes off if they could, in terms of auditioning the bare minimum of who could have been read for the role.”

Despite her overwhelmingly positive experience working with the cast of BoJack Horseman, she voiced her mixed feelings in helping Alison Brie pronounce Vietnamese words like “Nguyen” in the recording booth, which was part of her job.

“I had so many feelings, because I am such a fan of her from Community and [Brie’s] other projects,” Nguyen said. “But at the same time, I’m like, why am I helping you pronounce this word? That is one of the most basic things you would learn as a Vietnamese American person growing up. I have cousins who have kindergarten level Vietnamese, but they know how to say their last name correctly. So it was it was kind of hard for me to be like, coaching her on this. And recognizing that, you know, this wouldn’t need to happen if they had just cast the right person.”

Actors like Nguyen face a particular set of problems in an industry like Hollywood. Within the minority of Asian American roles, Southeast Asian-specific roles are even harder to come by. Being a part of a tight-knit Asian American acting community is mired in predicaments, Nguyen said.

“If I go in for a role that’s written for a late 20s, Asian female, I will know 80% of the women there,” Nguyen said. “Since there are so few of us, we want to support each other. Like, I want to be your friend, but I am also your competition at the same time.”

Her fellow Vietnamese American actresses have echoed these sentiments. But the small waves of change happening in Hollywood are not lost on actors like VyVy Nguyen. In a conversation with a fellow Vietnamese American actress, Nguyen said the actress praised This is Us’s decision to hire a Vietnamese translator, reading lines in Vietnamese for actors to respond off of in the audition room. Maybe ten years ago, this would be unimaginable, Nguyen said.

And BoJack Horseman has been holding itself to a higher standard than it did a few seasons ago as well. Details like the casting of Randall Park as the voice of the white American tourist who insists that Diane is from Vietnam, are clever and subversive to typical narratives. In season five, actors of color Hong Chau and Stephanie Beatriz play major supporting characters.

But the political economy of Hollywood rises above small efforts to cast a “more diverse” range of actors. Nguyen explained to me how most Hollywood executives don’t even consider auditioning any Asian American actors for major roles outside of the laundry list that already exists in their heads. And if those actors are busy, they can easily give up on even trying to cast an Asian American in the role. While networks like ABC and CBS tout “diversity initiatives” that give actors of color an opportunity to perform in front of casting directors, the networks usually fail to follow through with the directors or make concentrated efforts to actually help the actors book roles.

The fight over Diane is inextricable from Nguyen’s personal and professional struggles to be cast in three-dimensional roles, and to be given opportunities to play actual Vietnamese American roles — without accents and stereotypical features. Nguyen struggles with expectations that she speak with a Vietnamese accent for certain roles, and she struggles to decide whether or not she can even audition for many Asian roles, based on how much authenticity is required. But the roles ready-made for Southeast Asians are scarce, she said.

“I appreciate that now, as I’m going out with for roles, it’s more just human beings who identify as Asian American,” she said. “And we don’t need to necessarily address their background for any reason. They just happen to be people in the environment.”

It’s a shame that BoJack Horseman has not reached out to VyVy Nguyen since the episode “The Dog Days are Over.” BoJack Horseman, even in its attempts to be progressive, only performed it when necessary and politically convenient. But speaking to Nguyen, I felt the dissonance between the expectations we wish to be able to hold Hollywood to, and the bare minimum that is barely even considered when it comes to ethical representation on a production-to-production basis. Beyond the racist castings and political economy, ethical representation is a greater burden that Asian American actors themselves are forced to carry.

“Because there’s so few of us, we really have to up our game as people, too,” Nguyen said. “We are so underrepresented that, unfortunately, whether you want to or not, you are speaking on behalf of such a large community. And if you’re not, I just feel like you’re not for the cause, and it hurts us all.”

When Bob-Waksberg and the producers of BoJack Horseman wrote the character of Diane into existence, they glossed over crucial aspects of her identity and failed to grasp the weight of minority representation — even as a cartoon. Five seasons in, the cast is finally working to rectify the problems they turned a blind eye to for long. BoJack Horseman has always been comedic and clever, and it outsmarts and denounces Hollywood seamlessly. This time, however, they cannot outsmart their own hypocrisy in ethical representation.