Daniel Dae Kim Isn’t Afraid to Fail Daniel Dae Kim Isn’t Afraid to Fail
The New York Times
In the new Broadway production of “Yellow Face,” the “Lost” and “Hawaii Five-0” star is taking a risk. “I am aware,” he says, “that people have not usually seen me in this way.”
It’s tough to see the resemblance.
In the Broadway production of David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face,” starting previews at the Todd Haimes Theater on Sept. 13, Daniel Dae Kim will star as DHH, a fictionalized, none-too-sympathetic character based very loosely on the Tony-winning playwright.
“Who wouldn’t want to have their doppelgänger be Daniel Dae Kim?,” said Hwang, whose play premiered Off Broadway in 2007 and who helped cast Kim in this Roundabout Theater Company revival.
Who indeed? Since Kim first broke through in 2004 as the brooding, morally conflicted former enforcer on the hit ABC series “Lost,” and later as a tough, shotgun-blasting detective on the CBS reboot of “Hawaii Five-0,” he has become known for a certain type of character. Earnest. Serious. Enigmatic. Dignified.
As the King of Siam, “Daniel stood in the middle of this enormous space and just held the entire audience in the palm of his hands,” said Maria Friedman, who performed alongside him in a 2009 staging of “The King and I” at London’s cavernous Royal Albert Hall. “There’s nothing slight about him.”
Kim revisited the role in 2016, making his Broadway debut in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of “The King and I,” where he was praised by Ben Brantley, a former chief critic of The New York Times, for his “astute comic timing” and his character’s “restive, self-delighted intelligence.”
