Tig Fong on Navigating the World of Stunts and Directing

Mixed Asian Media - November 18, 2022

By Lauren Lola

Tig Fong was a few days into the beginning of production for the fifth season of the FX horror-comedy, What We Do in the Shadows, when they sat down for an interview with Mixed Asian Media over Zoom. Not long before then, the stunt coordinator and director had been nominated for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or Variety Program at this year’s Emmy Awards.

“I mean, it's lovely to be recognized. It's an honor,” they remarked on the nomination. “I always thought it would have happened on a bigger action show — I felt I was going to get one of those things. Because I did some big action shows just leading up to What We Do in the Shadows. But this, of course, was in the comedy category. It was exciting. It was exciting to go. Very, very posh event.”

A quick glimpse at Fong’s IMDB gives way the decades of work they’ve done in the industry — largely in the stunt world. From doing stunts for the 1995 Keanu Reeves flick, Johnny Mnemonic, to serving as the stunt coordinator for shows like Titans and The Boys, they’ve been around for quite some time and have seen how much has changed in the industry.

It’s a sight to see for someone who embodies several intersectionalities that, historically, either have or would have kept them from the opportunities they now have. Fong is Chinese and Polynesian, and was adopted by a Chinese immigrant family. They are also queer and genderqueer, though they prefer the term māhū; a Hawaiian word referring to people of a third gender or “in the middle.” They are also neuro-divergent.

Fong grew up in Halifax, a small town in Nova Scotia — a province on the east coast of Canada that has a history of escaped African slaves winding up there and being offered land by the British, in exchange for their services in the Civil War.

“I only go back that far only because there's been an interesting racial mix that's been happening in Nova Scotia for hundreds of years, well before Chinese got there,” they explained. “And then there has been, therefore, racial tension that has been in Nova Scotia for that long. It's not the happy ‘everybody getting along’ thing that we are sort of taught in school. There were issues, there were racial issues, in the Maritimes and in Halifax going back hundreds of years.”

Fong felt the effects of that racism growing up. With no central Chinese community to find shelter in, they were often the only Asian kid in school and experienced anti-Asian racism, making for a difficult and painful childhood. They didn’t feel like they belonged anywhere, which was only heightened by the fact that they’re also neuro-divergent.

Even when they later relocated to Toronto and interacted with locals in the city’s Chinatown, that sense of belonging still wasn’t felt. As they described, they would receive looks from people like they had two heads whenever they spoke Toisanese, the dialect of Cantonese they grew up speaking and one that — as they found out — wasn’t considered “proper Cantonese.”

Kinship came through connecting with Polynesian folks in places like New Zealand, Hawaii, Tahiti, and Nuku Hiva, where they were warmly embraced upon revealing their own Polynesian heritage.

“In my experience, Chinese people can and are rather exclusionary to mixed race people with Chinese ancestry, perhaps because there are so many Chinese on the planet,” they later recounted via email. “Polynesians were nearly wiped out by colonization, and most of us are mixed due to colonialism and our much smaller populations. I feel that this is perhaps why Polynesians seem to be so much more welcoming of other Polynesians.”

Fong eventually did find solace in their Asian identity through seeing the likes of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li perform in their respective filmographies. Watching them is what inspired them to pursue martial arts in film.

“It's interesting to note too that Bruce Lee, of course, is not purely Chinese. He's mixed as well,” they noted. “My parents commented that they thought I looked a bit like him, and I didn't mind that comparison. I didn't have anybody else to compare myself to. There were no other role models in sports or in film or in TV or anywhere else that I could see. And like I said, being the only Asian kid in school, there's no one to look up to. There was nothing. There were only these Hong Kong films and only these, at that time, strong male characters that I would want to emulate.”

While Fong was able to get themselves trained in martial arts, the path to making it in film was trickier to execute. They moved to Toronto to work in the film industry there and after doing extra work and special skills work, they eventually landed a stunt contract.

To say that their career took off from there was debatable, where despite relocating to a much more multicultural city, they entered an industry where they may or may not be hired solely because they’re Asian — a reality that they didn’t expect to be somewhat traumatic.

“Sometimes I just shrugged and took it as it is,” they commented. “I'm like, ‘Yeah, I get it. You don't need Asian people. You don't need Asian people in this story.’ This is Anne of Green Gables? Not that there's any stunts in Anne of Green Gables, but you know, you don't need an Asian-looking person so I'm not going to get hired.”

“And if there's a movie with Yakuza in it or Triads, they didn't care which back then, I guess I was going to be one of the first people to get called, and I was thankful to get those calls,” they continued. “I was thankful to get that work because I really, really wanted to work in film. I just didn't anticipate as I got in that I wasn't going to get called unless it was an Asian specific role, which there were few and far between.”

Later, when the industry shifted towards casting Asian people in accordance with their correct ethnicities, that also proved to be a hurdle for Fong as a mixed-race person, being told that they weren’t “Asian enough.”

“So then, that was the first time that I experienced that,” they said. “I had grown up with racism, I had grown up with horrific violence and racism. I became a violent person as a result of all that racism and anger and hatred, and I spent most of my life with suicidal ideation because of the trauma of all that. And then to be told that I now cannot work because I am not Asian enough, that was a real kick in the head because I also couldn't work as a white person.”

It's because of the limited opportunities already available to them as a person of color that Fong wasn’t out about their queer identity for the longest time, out of not wanting to reduce their employment opportunities even further. That’s why now, they use their position to remedy the lack of diversity and inclusion in the stunt community, by mentoring a lot of stunt coordinators who are female, of color, and who are LGBTQ.

For about a decade, Fong would work anywhere from three to ten times per year as a stunt performer. In time, they got into stunt and aerial rigging. As a result, more doors opened up for them. They did that for several years before being asked to build fights. They were receiving work, despite not being credited for it.

It was when they were officially hired as a fight coordinator that things started to take off for them. From there, fight coordinating led to assistant stunt coordinating, before eventually finding themselves in the position of being a stunt coordinator. With the knowledge of camera work and movement is what also later led to opportunities as a second unit director and director.

Of all the projects that they have done over the years, the most memorable for them was being the full-time fight coordinator for three out of the four seasons of the show, Nikita.

“Something that is not common knowledge, but a lot of shows may need a fight coordinator, but they may not need one all the time,” they explained. “So, there's very few full-time fight coordinating… Actually, it was the only full-time fight coordinating position in the city when I landed that.”

They were asked by the producer if they knew how to shoot previs (previsualization of scenes). Despite saying yes, they later searched YouTube tutorials and drew upon their background in photography on how to do them.

Working on Nikita is when Fong made the most challenging step in their career. By making their previs as top notch as possible, complete with capturing the action from different angles, edits, and camera movement, they became a filmmaker by default; a detail that did not go unnoticed by director Deran Sarafian. Over lunch, Fong said to him how they would like to become a director someday. In response, Sarafian later gave them the floor for directing the action.

“That was the first time a director had said that to me and it was terrifying, and I might have soiled my pants,” Fong recalled. “And then doing it, it was such an exciting and exhilarating thing that I knew eventually at some point I was going to have to become a director. I just wasn't sure how that was going to happen either. So, that was a big thing happening inside this big step that I took working on Nikita.”

Fong would eventually sit in the director’s chair for real on What We Do in the Shadows. Although they weren’t looking to do another show at the time, Hartley Gorenstein, a line producer both for that show and The Boys, talked them into coming aboard as the stunt coordinator for the first season.

He said how it wouldn’t be very hard and that Fong would probably work a couple days a week. Cut to several shoots later where they were flying or floating the lead actors; a far cry from what Gorenstein had otherwise sold the show as. But it was all worth it, as it’s become a show they genuinely enjoy working on; for its humor and its queer positivity, both on and off camera.

“Just the way the writing was and all the sort of gender bending... well, just kind of actually orientation bending, because the vampires would often say, ‘Oh, well, I slept with my wife, but I also sleep with you,’ like another male vampire to a male vampire,” they explained. “It was so nonchalant and so easy and so funny that I, really, fell in love with the characters and I fell in love with the script, honestly and truly.”

With years of second unit directing in their back pocket at this point, going into the third season of the show, they wanted to make it official by officially being credited as such. That condition was approved without a hitch. How they made the leap into being a director for an episode that season came about under last-minute circumstances.

The team was getting ready to shoot the second to last episode of the season, “A Farewell,” when the original director, Kyle Newacheck, was suddenly called away due to the birth of his child. With everything ready to go but no director to take over and production at risk of falling behind, Fong was then brought in.

Fong was terrified the whole time, but really enjoyed the experience. “Everybody was so supportive. I have to say that I couldn't have imagined a more welcoming space to do it in, apart from the fact of, just like we talked about, all the queer positivity and everything, both on and off set, both in the story and then as well as cast and crew and all of that. I couldn't have asked for a better, more welcoming space to do it in, and the producers were all so supportive, and even the cast were like, ‘Well, we're really happy for you,’ and I had a wonderful time directing them. It was such an enjoyable experience. Like terrifying, yes. But I mean, I couldn't have had it any better. I just couldn't have.”

When Fong directed “The Wedding” episode from the most recent season of What We Do in the Shadows, they found it to be more difficult than the first time. They explained how because of their autism, as well as having ADHD and OCD, they can be used to combat anxiety a lot of the time; as was the case when they made their directorial debut. Despite being offered an episode ahead of shooting it this time around, it didn’t stop them from painstakingly agonizing over little details in advance; ranging from the location of a door, to the color of a couch, and the blocking of the actors.

But for a show where just reading the scripts alone gets them laughing out loud, it was all worth it. Without revealing plot details, Fong described the scripts for the upcoming fifth season to be “absolute bonkers.” Viewers can also expect for them to be in the director’s chair once more, for the last two episodes specifically.

“I want to get through two episodes now without falling on my face,” they said, “because every time I do it, I'm just kind of like, I have to fight... I have to constantly combat my imposter syndrome when I do these things, and I'll be combating it again. I feel pretty good right now, but I haven't really gotten to the prep stage of it yet. We're prepping all the episodes that precede mine for the other directors. There are only three directors this year. There's Yana [Gorskaya] and there's Kyle and there's myself, and I'm at the very end. So I have a long, long look at what I'm going to do and a long time to probably wring my hands over what I think I want to do.”

Beyond What We Do in the Shadows, Fong has had projects offered to them over the summer, and some of them are still in talks. Long term, they want to tell stories of LGBTQ people of color and intersectionally marginalized people; perspectives that don’t always get told.

“I'd rather do that,” they said. “I think it's more important work. So I'm trying to find those things. I'm trying to find writers to work with to make those movies, if I can. That's the future that I'm looking forward to, and maybe a little action here and there.”

Lauren Lola is an author, freelance writer, playwright, and screenwriter from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of the novels, An Absolute Mind and A Moment’s Worth. She has written plays that have been produced both virtually and in-person for theatre groups on the West Coast of the United States, and has penned the short films, “Breath of Writing” and “Interview with an Aswang.” Aside from Mixed Asian Media, Lauren has also had writing featured on The Nerds of Color, CAAMedia, PBS, YOMYOMF, and other outlets and publications.

You can find Lauren on Twitter and Instagram @akolaurenlola and on her website, www.lolabythebay.wordpress.com.