--- title: Eddie Huang on Why 'Fresh Off the Boat' Uses Racial Slurs | TIME description: Chef, writer, and 'Fresh Off the Boat' producer Eddie Huang talks about how he wants to portray his Asian-American experience in the new ABC show. canonical: https://time.com/video/NcFEvziB/ og:title: Eddie Huang on Why 'Fresh Off the Boat' Uses Racial Slurs og:description: Chef, writer, and 'Fresh Off the Boat' producer Eddie Huang talks about how he wants to portray his Asian-American experience in the new ABC show. og:url: https://time.com/video/NcFEvziB/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/NcFEvziB/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Eddie Huang on Why 'Fresh Off the Boat' Uses Racial Slurs twitter:description: Chef, writer, and 'Fresh Off the Boat' producer Eddie Huang talks about how he wants to portray his Asian-American experience in the new ABC show. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/NcFEvziB/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Eddie Huang on Why 'Fresh Off the Boat' Uses Racial Slurs > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Eddie Huang on Why 'Fresh Off the Boat' Uses Racial Slurs [Watch (HLS stream): Eddie Huang on Why 'Fresh Off the Boat' Uses Racial Slurs](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NcFEvziB.m3u8) (5:13)  _Published 2014-06-05. Chef, writer, and 'Fresh Off the Boat' producer Eddie Huang talks about how he wants to portray his Asian-American experience in the new ABC show._ --- Jul 27, 2023 4:45 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [TIME100 | Jensen Huang](/video/XFfAVpq2/) ### TIME100 | Jensen Huang [Eddie Huang: "I'm Not Mad at Margaret Cho"](/video/4cs1aqbh/) ### Eddie Huang: "I'm Not Mad at Margaret Cho" [Eddie Huang: Don't tell me what should be offensive to me](/video/9zJDXklZ/) ### Eddie Huang: Don't tell me what should be offensive to me --- ## Transcript Hi I'm Diane Tsai from Time. Today I'm here with Eddie Huang who's a chef, writer, human panda, and producer of the new ABC show Fresh Off the Boat, which is based on his memoir of the same name. Eddie thanks for being here. What's up. So first let's talk about the title Fresh Off the Boat. How did you come up with that name? The book is very much about how, growing up in America, you're almost shamed into assimilation. And I chose the name Fresh Off the Boat, because as I got older, I really, really started to own who I was, where I was from. I had that duality of growing up in a very traditional Taiwanese- Chinese home, and then the outside American kind of wilderness. And the older I got, the more I wanted to be fresh of the boat. Some critics seem a little worried about using that term as the name of the new TV show, saying that, you know, it kind of normalizes it and mainstream culture and that people will use it without knowing the real meaning behind it. What's your response to that? Well I really don't think there's many critics. Like for the most part, if you look online and you talk to people, like. I mean, people with my kind of upbringing, and my experience in America, totally understand it. If dominant culture is going to misunderstand it, or use it or whatever, I can't control that. But I know that my intention is very honest. It has integrity and it means a lot to me to reclaim the word. My mom was only in America I think three years when she had me. I grew up with people who just got here. And that experience is very special to me, and it's also an experience that dominant culture tried to kind of shame me for. So Fresh Off the Boat is gonna be the first show in almost 20 years that's based on an Asian- American family. Yeah. So a lot people have been comparing it to Margaret Cho's -. Yeah. All American Girl which didn't do very well. What do you think you've learned from seeing what happened with that show? Well I, I actually am honored that it's compared to All American Girl. Cuz when I was a kid, I remember sitting down. Like I would grab my dinner. And run to the TV, sit there with my brothers, and watch All American Girl. Because it was the first time we saw Asian people on television. I wasn't as aware of stigma and stereotypes, and all those things that people complain about. But I'm honored to be compared to Margaret Cho, cuz she's a pioneer. It's important to compare and contrast, but recognize that everything is different. And that 20 years ago she was dealing with a whole different set of circumstances. You know, she was kind of like, trying to play mahjong on King Arthur's table. And, now, I feel like, in many ways, we've broken the table and said, we don't want it. We want a folding table, and we wanna play mahjong on this table, right? I do feel like ABC is letting us work on a new table. Like it's not that same, round table that we've been forced to fit in our whole lives. Like, they've really taken the reins off and let us do our thing. This week we're taking the actors to Orlando to meet my parents. Like Randall Park and Constance Wu are gonna meet my parents, and they wanna nail the characters. And everybody is about staying true to the experience. This is why we love our family and friends. Exactly. This is why we finally left everything we know to come to a place where we know nothing and where the humidity is not good for my hair. I noticed that there is a lot of violence in your memoir from, you know, in your own home, to school and outside of school. Yeah. How do you see that being translated into an ABC show? I think it's gotta be in there. I think it absolutely has to be in there. It has to be visceral. It has to be like it was. And in the pilot, there's a moment, and you'll see it. It goes hard. You know, one of the big discussions in the show was, do we use the word ****, right? And I said, absolutely. My turn, ****. I never, never once thought about not using the word, cuz like, that was the word that was said to me. And that, there's no other word that will get the reaction that that word got out of me than that word. And you have to use it. If you're gonna be real and if you're gonna have real discussions, you have to use the word that was used. That was one of the big moments where, I was, I was very suspect about doing a network television show, but that was one of the big moments where I was like you know what, like these wanna ride. Like, they wanna go for it. They're not half stepping, and, and I was very encouraged by that. What do you think about Asian fusion? Food. [ LAUGH ] I mean, I just don't care. Like, I used to really engage these conversations. But I really hate ranking restaurants. It's like, you wouldn't go rank art, right? You wouldn't be like the 100 best paintings this year. You can't, it's food. It's like. Amorphous, it's intangible. It's not even just in the room. There's so much to what goes into the experience of a restaurant. And it's culture and I think we're really cheapen it and we shortchange it, and we create listicals, and I hate listicals. So like Asian fusion, I'm just like, well go do it. If people wanna go eat it and they're dumb enough to go eat it, I can't change their minds. Eddie, thanks so much for your time. Definitely, thank you. 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