“I’ve just been overjoyed to hear that Paxton’s family history was able to reach so many people. “I’ve had so many people reach out to thank me for the representation, or to tell me that their grandfather was in an internment camp and the scene made them cry,” he says. The discussion of Japanese American incarceration on a Netflix show encouraged many Japanese Americans with shared history to reach out to Darren on social media. Paxton then brings his grandfather to class to talk about the injustice of being wrongfully imprisoned. Poring through a box of books given to him by his grandfather, he unearths a journal and a photograph of his family at Manzanar, one of the 10 camps the government sanctioned to incarcerate over 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent during the war. Paxton’s heritage plays the most active role in his character this season when he struggles to find personal family history for an extra credit project. Mindy Kaling and her team asked for his permission to make Darren’s heritage a part of Paxton’s character, and Paxton Hall-Yoshida was born. Paxton was simply Paxton Hall until Darren was overheard practicing his high school Japanese with an assistant director on the show. That would all change after Darren was cast in Never Have I Ever. And I felt like if I was cast as a distinctly Asian character, there’d be controversy around that.”
“Even coming into acting, I never really thought about leaning into my Japanese heritage because there’s this feeling I have that I’m not Asian enough to do it. “I felt like I couldn’t fit in anywhere,” he says. The teasing would spark a long period of feeling like he wasn’t white enough when spending time with his white friends or Asian enough among his Asian friends - a feeling that would stay with him after he graduated from college and spent the next seven years struggling as an actor. But after moving to Florida, he was made fun of by his peers for being Japanese. Good luck!’”ĭarren, who is mixed-race Japanese American, has always been proud of his heritage. “My mom stressed that I had to do well in school and go to college, but because we had no money it was like, ‘get a full-ride scholarship. “I’m not going to say she was a tiger parent, but she very much gave me my core values of hard work and discipline,” he recalls.
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