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Daniel Dae Kim has been a beloved household name for two decades, having been in Lost and Hawaii Five-O. But his 2025 Tony Award nomination for his performance in Yellow Face is the first time the actor has been recognized by a major awards body for his work. With his nomination in the category of Lead Actor in a Play, Kim is the first Asian American actor to be recognized in that category—it's a history-making moment the actor is not taking lightly.

"When I think about the fact that I'm the first Asian-American to be nominated in this category, that feels especially significant," he tells °ëµºÌåÓý the morning he found out he was nominated (when he was getting ready to get on a plane to shoot Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix). "I remember how many Asian American actors there were before me who never received any kind of recognition despite the incredible work and hard work that they were doing for generations earlier...It says a lot about where we are now as a community, and it's meaningful. It's more meaningful for that reason than it is for me as an individual achievement."

Yellow Face is currently nominated for three Tony Awards: for Kim's performance, Featured Actor in a Play for Frances Jue, and Best Revival. And though the play finished its run on Broadway in the fall, don't worry. Yellow Face will air nationwide May 16 as part of PBS' Great Performances, and it will be available to stream on until June 30. 

As someone who was instrumental in getting the show to Broadway, Kim also helped lead the fundraising efforts to get Yellow Face recorded—PBS paid for a portion of the cost while the play's team had to fund the rest. For Kim, it was immensely important that more people got to see the play: "It's not just about, you know, the few who can go to the theatre. It's about all of us. It has a powerful message about what it means to be American. It really transcends demographics and geography."

READ: Can Anyone Play Anything? Daniel Dae Kim Has Thoughts

In Yellow Face, Kim played David Henry Hwang, who wrote the play and based it on events that occurred in his own life. The show begins with the Miss Saigon casting controversy of the 1990s, where Asian actors protested the casting of Jonathan Pryce as a Vietnamese character in Miss Saigon on Broadway. At the same time, Hwang was getting ready to premiere a new play, Face Value, and accidentally cast a white man to play an Asian character. It can be seen as a cosmic bit of poetry that 35 years after Pryce won a Tony for playing the Engineer in Miss Saigon, the play lampooning that very event is now nominated for three Tonys. 

"[It's] reminding me of how long it's been and how hard it's been for Asian-Americans to be recognized as human beings, let alone for our stories to be represented in ways that are authentic," says Jue, whose past Broadway credits include Hwang's M. Butterfly and Pacific Overtures. "It still remains to be seen whether this is a trend or whether this is a moment in time. We've still got a lot of work to do, but there has never been a better time to be an Asian-American artist on stage in America."

But might Yellow Face—with its reference to Cameron Mackintosh and Frank Rich—seem a bit theatre insider-y for the Great Performances audiences, many of whom are encountering theatre for the first time? Jue isn't too worried: "I think that a lot of people, even if they don't know exactly who some of the behind-the-scenes players are in theatre—everyone loves backstage stories and gossip, and David does a great job of wringing every bit of humor out of the whole controversy around Miss Saigon and the failure of his follow-up play Face Value."

While Yellow Face is full of absurdist humor, Jue is the show's heart as Henry, David Henry Hwang's father, who in the play truly believes in the American dream. But then, the American government begins investigating Henry, accusing him of colluding with the Chinese government—an erroneous charge rooted in xenophobia. By putting both the Miss Saigon story and his father's story together, playwright Hwang shows how contradictory American society can be—how it can easily believe that a white man can play an Asian man, but not that a Chinese man can truly be American.

Jue first played the role of Henry in 2007 when Yellow Face ran Off-Broadway. To be nominated for that same role now is vindicating for the veteran actor, who remembered the skeptical comments he received about his storyline in the show back in the aughts. "Back in 2007, 2008 people were like, 'Obama's about to be president. Aren't we over this? Why are you still writing about this?' David was really visionary in understanding how fragile all of this really is," says Jue. "People are aware now more than ever that we could lose something—that makes us American, that makes us believe in ourselves as Americans—it could very easily just go away."

For Kim, it's striking how much more relevant Yellow Face has become since it ran on Broadway just six months ago. In a time when American citizens and longtime residents are being locked up by immigration authorities, without due processâ€�Yellow Face's portrayal of American citizens being locked up and interrogated because of their race doesn't seem like it's past. It's very much present.

"There's significant controversy around what it means to be American and who gets to be American, and this is exactly what this play addresses," says Kim. "As we see Asian Americans being deported now, just as they were at the time of the writing of this play, it sends a powerful message about how we can learn from history and how we should." To Kim, it makes it even more important that people around the country will be able to watch Yellow Face on their television: "I hope there can be a better understanding that the face of America can be represented in a myriad of different ways. And not the ways that we've seen historically. Asian Americans have been a part of this country for centuries. For us now, we are still fighting to be considered American—it's one of the real reasons that this play and this story deserves to be told."

And why, as Jue points out, it's important for Asian American artists to be the ones telling their own stories. When asked what advice he has for young Asian American actors, Jue, his voice filled with emotion, says: "I have learned over the course of this last season that I had been teaching myself not to dare to dream. I want people not to squelch whatever dreams that they have. I want people to dream and dream big. The focus is not awards, the focus is the work. Young Asian American actors are constantly being told that they don't have control over their careers, over how they're perceived. And I want them to focus instead on how they perceive themselves. I want young Asian American actors to understand the dreams that they have and to indulge them instead of squelch them in the way that I have for so many years in my life." He then exclaims, chuckling, "I'm still here, damn it! Yes!"

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See Daniel Dae Kim, Kevin Del Aguila, Ryan Eggold, More in Yellow Face on Broadway

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