Summary

The Wedding Banquet cast reveals the gayest thing they have in their house.

The cast reveals the other rom-com characters they’d love for their characters to interact with.

The four actors discuss the thing that most excited them about the project.

We could all use some more joy and laughter right now, and luckily, The Wedding Banquet delivers both of those things in spades. A remake of the 1993 Ang Lee film, Andrew Ahn’s version updates the story for a modern audience, amplifying the film’s queerness and leaning into the screwball tone. The plot sees Min (Han Gi-chan) plan to marry Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) so he can stay in the country with his boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang) and Angela can afford another round of IVF with her partner Lee (Lily Gladstone). However, the arrival of Min’s grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung), who insists on giving the fake couple a traditional Korean wedding banquet, throws a wrench into their plans.
The film refreshingly allows its actors to play against type to some extent. Known for dramas like Killers of the Flower Moon and Certain Women, Gladstone gets to lean into the humor in this film and flex her comedy chops, while Yang gets to dive deep with some more dramatic emotional material after cracking everyone up on Saturday Night Live and Fire Island. After conquering space as Rose Tico in Star Wars, Tran gets the chance to shine in a more grounded part, and Gi-chan makes his English-language film debut after winning hearts in popular K-dramas like Where Your Eyes Linger.
Collider got the chance to talk to the cast about the film’s hilarious “de-gaying the house” scene, what other rom-com characters they’d most like to see theirs interact with, the thing they were most excited about when signing up for this project, and more.
‘The Wedding Banquet’ Cast Reveals the Gayest Thing in Their House

COLLIDER: First of all, congratulations on this movie. It is such a fun time. I feel like the “de-gaying the house” scene — nothing has made me laugh harder this year. I’m like, “My multiple Kathryn Hahn posters would absolutely give me away.”
BOWEN YANG: As a Kathryn Hahnhead.
A Hahnaissance woman, if you will.
KELLY MARIE TRAN: Hahnassiance — oh, yeah.
For anyone who wants to answer, what would be the gayest thing in your house that you would have to stash away if you were in this scenario?
YANG: Too many things.
LILY GLADSTONE: I’ve got a rainbow doormat. It’s like, “Welcome!”
Before you even enter the house.
TRAN: Lily has a bunch of stuff from the film actually.
GLADSTONE: I do. I have the carpet that’s in the shared living room. I have my little gardening clogs. Not explicitly queer things, but definitely…
YANG: Infused with queer energy.
TRAN: We all stepped on that carpet.
I love it. So powerful.
YANG: Yes. What would mine be? I’ve got plenty of things. I’m gonna say, there is a big — I was saying earlier — there’s a big Happy Together poster. Wong Kar-wai film that’s about these two toxic gay guys who love each other but are not right for each other, if anyone hasn’t seen it. But that’s probably it. My dad, when he came to my apartment, was like, “What are those two guys doing?” Because they’re just like making out on the screen. I was like, “Don’t worry about it.” But yeah, probably that.
TRAN: I don’t know how gay this is. I think it is. Okay, let me know. This is actually really embarrassing, and I’ve never said this before, but on top of my bed in my bedroom, I have a compilation of a bunch of different picture frames and photos that I’ve printed off the internet, and they’re all photos of different Broadway things that I love. There’s a black-and-white photo of the Rent cast, there’s Idina Menzel flying during “Defying Gravity,” there’s John Gallagher Jr. during Spring Awakening.
YANG: Oh my god.
TRAN: Is that gay?
YANG: Pretty gay.
I would count that for sure. [To Gi-chan] Do you have a good answer for this?
HAN GI-CHAN: Oh, yeah. I was thinking about it, and I think I have one. This is also the Where Your Eyes Linger poster that I have.
YANG: There you go. It’s his K-drama.
GI-CHAN: This is my debut drama. In my home on my wall, my parents were proud of me, and they put a poster on the wall, and two boys are like [puts hands close together] looking at each other. That’s pretty gay I guess.
Incredible answers.
GLADSTONE: [to Gi-chan] You’re the gayest thing in your house.
GI-CHAN: [laughs] Exactly.

Image via Sundance Institute

This movie feels like such a classic rom-com in a lot of ways, so I’m curious for you, what other rom-com character would you most like to see your character from this movie interact with?
GLADSTONE: Good question.
TRAN: Oh, wow.
YANG: I would want my character to interact with Rachael Leigh Cook’s from She’s All That.
TRAN: So good.
YANG: I think he would just sob and be like, “You were always beautiful!” or something. “I would have never put the bet on you.”
GLADSTONE: I want Lee to just have a great little insulated fun, sweet, possibly first openly queer moment with Lauren Ambrose’s character from Can’t Hardly Wait.
YANG: Ohh, Lauren Ambrose.
TRAN: I feel like Angela would be really good friends and then accidentally fall in love with Julia Stiles from 10 Things I Hate About You.
YANG: Yes.
GLADSTONE: She would.
TRAN: Right? And then she’d be like falling in love with Heath Ledger, and I’d be like, “Ugh.”
YANG: Bisexuality.
TRAN: Right? There you go.
GLADSTONE: Lee would pull Lauren Ambrose back.
GI-CHAN: I don’t think I have a great answer for that. All of you guys have a great answer.
GLADSTONE: I want to see you and — I guess she’s not a queer character necessarily, but it doesn’t have to be a queer character — I want to see Min and Wei Wei.
YANG: Yes!
TRAN: Yeah!
GI-CHAN: Okay. Amazing. We can imagine.
‘The Wedding Banquet’ Cast Reveals What They Were Most Excited to Take On

Image via Bleecker Street

Finally, this movie allows you to do things I feel like we haven’t necessarily gotten to see you guys do in your career before. [To Lily] You really get to play into the comedy, which is a lot of fun; [to Bowen] I feel like you have a lot of really heartfelt dramatic moments that were really fun to see. For all of you, what was the thing that you were most excited to take on when signing up for this movie?
GLADSTONE: I was really looking forward to having, of course, the rom-com, but I think what I wanted — what I craved the most as an actor — was this ensemble and being part of an ensemble. Having a well-balanced story, sort of like multi-pillars of a beautiful house.
GI-CHAN: For me, I’m kind of different from Lily because I didn’t know the casting list before I was in this film. So I did this audition with two scenes, the first one saying, “I don’t even want to be an American” — the first break breakup with Chris. And the other one was I’m proposing another time, but not to Bowen — Kelly this time. That kind of scene was so comic and iconic, so I really wanted to do this film. Also because this is the first time I’m using English in my entire life for acting. And when I saw this casting list, I was so happy to be a part of it and also couldn’t believe what I saw in this casting list. It was like a total fake, but it became real.
YANG: I guess I was thinking, when we started The Wedding Banquet, was just reflecting on Fire Island with Andrew. And the main difference for me in terms of the approach for this relationship was that Fire Island was very much about him falling in love — him meeting someone, and then you see the relationship grow in the early stages. I was really excited to play a lived-in relationship. Chris and Min have been together five years when you see them in the movie, and that’s something that I hadn’t really been able to engage in before, and it was nice to build that with Gi-chan in terms of like, “Okay, let’s get them to the point where they are five years in and they’re comfortable and they’re bickering and all that.”
TRAN: I think I was just excited to be telling a queer story with a bunch of queer folks. We’ve talked about this before, but it wasn’t just a lot of the cast, but a lot of our crew was queer, and so we were all sort of celebrating this together and getting to do these scenes like de-queering the house and things that we didn’t have to explain to each other.
The Wedding Banquet is in theaters now.

The Wedding Banquet

Release Date

April 18, 2025

Runtime

102 Minutes

Director

Andrew Ahn

Writers

Andrew Ahn, James Schamus

Producers

James Schamus, Julie Goldstein, Daniel Bekerman, Shivani Rawat, Joe Pirro, Kent Sanderson, Anita Gou, Andrew Karpen

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