Actress discusses representation and body positivity

For a film to be successful, it must look like the real world, actress Lana Condor said via livestream Wednesday during the Distinguished Speaker Series lecture. 

Condor, an Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) advocate best known for her acting role as Lara Jean Covey in the Netflix film series “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” is the third guest of the 2021-2022 Distinguished Speaker Series. 

She spoke about racial problems, beauty standards and her experience as an actress to a crowd of more than 150 UTRGV campus community members. 

Condor said it is important to include people of different races in science fiction films.

“When you do something so outlandish as sci-fi, you need very grounded, realistic performances from actors,” she said. “I believe stories are made believable when it represents the way that it looks outside, which is colorful, and that’s why I think you need [representation].”

The actress said it is important to include different cultural representations in the film industry.  

“I come from a mixed-race family, so I like to see … that dynamic,” she said. “It makes me feel like I’m being represented well, just as an audience member. I think we are seeing more of it now done well than ever before and that makes me very very excited for the future of storytelling.”

Condor spoke about an audition experience she had as a Vietnamese-born American actress.

“At the end of the meeting, they asked, ‘Oh, is there any other questions that you have?’ and I was like, ‘Well, yeah. I do have a question,’” she said. “I will be playing the niece of a white man … and I straight up asked them, I was like, ‘I don’t look like this actor that you want me to be related to, and I just want to straight up ask you, what are my chances of getting this job?’”

Condor said that the director’s response made her feel optimistic about the future.

“The director said, ‘It’s not even an issue. … We just want to see what the world looks like. We want to represent the world in a colorful way, and there is mixed-race families,’” she said. “That answer actually, like, made me want to cry out of happiness. … And it was, honestly, it was one of the best answers that I have gotten.”

Condor said society’s beauty standards influenced her perception of her body.

“Constantly being critiqued by, you know, your teachers or your peers, you start to critique yourself and their noise starts to become your own noise,” she said. “So, it was a kind of a slow burn into one day me waking up and realizing that I wasn’t talking to my body or myself in a positive way.”

Condor said that beauty standards are created through movies, television and social media.

“You have to understand that it is unrealistic standards of beauty on film and television, straight up, period,” she said. “It’s the same way people talk on social media, like social media is your highlight reel. It’s not your life, it’s just your highlight.”

Condor said it is important for people to have positive conversations with themselves and to know what they see on social media and television is not real, and what matters is what is inside.

“Here is the tea,” she said. “If you get even, like, a pimple on your face and you go to work, it becomes this huge issue. To producers and to filmmakers, it becomes this huge thing. It was like, ‘Oh my God, now I have to change the lighting and I have to change the angles to hide your acne and all this stuff.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, take a breath. Because aren’t we trying to tell realistic stories that represent our world correctly? Yes. So guess what? People have acne. Leave me alone.’”

For more information on the Distinguished Speaker Series, visit its website.