‘Dope Thief’ is one of the best things he has done
For those of us who grew up watching Dustin Nguyen on “21 Jump Street”, seeing him again on our TV screens in recent years – most recently on Apple TV +’s “Dope Thief” – is related to make contact with an old friend again. So where has Nguyen been and how did he get back to Hollywood?
It appears that Nguyen had built up a busy and successful film career in Vietnam, where he was born but left as a teenager (with his family in 1975 after the fall of Saigon). He returned to the country for the first time to make the Vietnamese language film ‘The Rebel’ from 2007 – who became a huge blockbuster.
“People said,” Hey, you should come back here and be part of this Renaissance with the film industry, “Nguyen remembers.” I have made a decision to just move and hope for the best. I opened a production company there, and I started to direct and produce and tell and told stories that I really wanted to do, and never looked back. “
That even included hosting and producing a local version of my favorite reality show, “The Amazing Race”, of which he now admits that he was a pretty rough learning experience.
“It is a brutal show to produce in terms of logistics, and to do it with the Vietnamese budget, which was probably a tenth of what they would do in the US and Australia,” he says. “We didn’t have enough manpower, so I ran back and forth as a director. And then you throw in the host obligation. It was brutal. You sleep for two hours, and you have to be the first to inspect the first site that the participants will start from. That was 30 days together.
Ok, maybe that wasn’t for him. But still, he made a good life for himself in Vietnam when an accidental e -mail from an old “21 Jump Street” colleague brought him back to Hollywood’s Radar. In 2018, Steve Beers, who worked as a producer on ’21 JUMP Street ‘, was an exec producer on’ This is US ‘, and had considered photographing some episodes in Vietnam.
“I had been to Vietnam for so long that I had heard Bever,” says Nguyen. “I said,” Steve, come by, I’ll show you around. We can handle the production service for you. ” He offered me a few guest places at those episodes, and I did one because it specifically photographed in Vietnam.
His friend Justin Lin also stood out around the same time. “A few years ago I had done a movie for him as an actor, and he said,” Man, what are you doing in Vietnam? ” I told him that I made films here and lived here.
Nguyen aimed the directing of a film in Vietnam, but got the “Warrior” set on time to appear by the end of season 1. In the end, Nguyen got the chance to also send episodes of “Warrior”, and that led to his full -time move back to the United States.
“It just all coincided,” he says. “I was worried because I have been gone for so long, and there might be a ‘out of sight/out of the heart’. So I had to get to know the industry again, or introduce the industry to me again.”
From there he played in the Netflix film “Blade of the 47 Ronin” and the crime drama film “The Accidental Getaway Driver”, which premiered in 2023 at Sundance. Then “Dope Thief” came.
“It was a great decision to go back, and life just has a funny way to send you in certain directions,” says Nguyen, who is now located in Hawai’i. “Accidental Getaway Driver” and “Dope Thief” are two of the best things that have come my way in the more than 30 years that I have been as an actor. I am so proud to be involved in those two projects. ”
In the case of ‘Dope Thief’, Nguyen returns as son Pham, a drug trafficking that was thrown to him as ‘a Vietnamese Tony Soprano’.
“I have never seen Vietnamese American male characters on this screen,” he says. “When we did the deal, I had to die in episode 6, and when I was photographing, [exec producer] Peter Craig continued to write more and more things. Then I found out that I was in episode 7. “If there is a season 2, Nguyen says that Craig has hinted that his character, son Pham, can be seen on the flight with the cartel.
For Nguyen it was also a bit incredible to hear from younger artists and craftsmen who say that his visibility – as one of the few Asian Americans on TV in the 1980s – helped their decision to get into the company.
“Jump Street,” that was the jackpot for me, in terms of such a character, “he says. “At the time it was really difficult to find parts for Asian Americans … Some actors on ‘Warrior’ came to me on my first day on the set, and told me how inspired they saw me on ’21 Jump Street.” That just meant a lot to me. “Happy to see that Nguyen gets his.
