{"id":2880,"date":"2016-10-11T20:28:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T20:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/10\/11\/new-cbc-sitcom-exposes-the-convenience-truth\/"},"modified":"2016-10-11T20:28:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T20:28:26","slug":"new-cbc-sitcom-exposes-the-convenience-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/10\/11\/new-cbc-sitcom-exposes-the-convenience-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"New CBC sitcom exposes The Convenience Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katherine Monk \/ The Ex-Press<\/em><\/p>\n

VANCOUVER \u2013 Andrea Bang thanks the Toronto Blue Jays. Not only did the team win the required games to advance, they pushed back the network premiere of her new show, Kim\u2019s Convenience.<\/p>\n

The new CBC comedy based on Ins Choi\u2019s award-winning Fringe play airs this evening, but it was originally slated to air last Tuesday \u2013 in the heat of the Blue Jays\u2019 wildcard bid. The network wisely aired the ballgame instead, but Bang wasn\u2019t depressed about the delay.<\/p>\n

It gave her another week to mentally prepare while promos whetted the public appetite for a family comedy set in a Toronto convenience store.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want to compete with the Toronto Blue Jays,\u201d says Bang, sitting down for a chat on a rainy day in Vancouver.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know our show is in good hands. I also saw that some people love the show even more now, because we didn\u2019t get in the way of the Jays.\u201d<\/p>\n

If anything, Kim\u2019s Convenience is something of a tribute to the city of Toronto, a reflection of its multi-cultural identity as it takes us into the lives of the Kim family, lead by father-figure Appa (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee), who runs a convenience store in Toronto\u2019s Regent Park.<\/p>\n

According to Bang, it\u2019s also a broadcast first.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada is a multicultural country, but it\u2019s not often reflected on TV, so as the first sitcom with Asian leads\u2026 it feels original,\u201d says Bang, who remembers buying a lab coat for one of her first auditions as a scientist.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who have seen ads or promos \u2013 people of all backgrounds, not just Korean \u2013 seem to relate to it. I think because it\u2019s not just about where they come from, necessarily, but about their experience running a small family business. And family dynamics in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bang says no matter what your background is, families are families, and they are subject to the same universals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole Kim family is a collection of real people. These are not stereotypes. Each character has a past a present and a future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bang plays Janet Kim, a 20-year-old woman trying to find her place in the world without alienating her parents or isolating her brother, estranged from the family unit for reasons that are not immediately revealed.<\/p>\n

\u201cJanet is like a version of me. But a lot cooler than I am,\u201d says Bang.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny, some scripts are harder to remember than others. But this one, when I got the audition sides for Janet, it immediately resonated and I remembered it \u2013 which means I could relate to it right away, whether it was on a conscious level or not,\u201d says Bang.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019d be friends in real life, but if we ever got in a fight, she\u2019d beat me.\u201d\u00a0Bang smiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel empowered when I\u2019m playing her. I think the fact she is interested in the arts and is an art student studying photography lets me relate,\u201d says Bang, a graduate of psychology at the University of British Columbia.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven the way she deals with her parents feels familiar,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn every role, I try to incorporate different parts of myself \u2014 especially this one. Having grown up with Korean-Canadian parents and friends and family, I could draw upon my own experience \u2013 as well as the people around me.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Bang, the sister of fellow actress Diana Bang (The Interview), growing up in Burnaby and attending Burnaby North High School was a pretty average affair. She didn\u2019t think about it too much \u2013 until she walked a few scenes in Janet\u2019s shoes.<\/p>\n

\u201cJanet fights with her father and sticks up for herself. I\u2019m still learning how,\u201d says Bang. \u201cI\u2019m not sure why it\u2019s hard for us [as women]. I feel it\u2019s a bunch of things, like maybe something that was unconsciously done through society. As a woman, I think sometimes you are told not to say what you think \u2026and as an Asian woman taught to remain silent, worrying about what people will think,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cJanet is outspoken and wants her opinions to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bang says she never saw the successful stage play that spawned the series, but when she read it she \u201claughed and cried\u201d because it touched on human truths, and at the end of the day, it\u2019s the common touchstones that will make Kim\u2019s Convenience a success \u2013 just as it did for another CBC groundbreaker, Little Mosque on the Prairie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we often miss how similar we are to one another.\u00a0 Hollywood likes to put people in boxes \u2013 and not just based on race, but on how you look, older, younger, whatever. You are put in a box, and you tend to stay there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bang says things seem to be changing. \u201cSociety seems to be moving in the right direction. But it\u2019s taken a long time for [race and gender] to be part of the conversation. The world of mainstream entertainment seems to be opening up to people of different backgrounds for the first time. That\u2019s exciting, and Kim\u2019s Convenience feels like a part of that shift. I\u2019m so grateful to be a part of it\u2026 and very excited for what\u2019s to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katherine Monk \/ The Ex-Press VANCOUVER \u2013 Andrea Bang thanks the Toronto Blue Jays. Not only did the team win the required games to advance, they pushed back the network premiere of her new show, Kim\u2019s Convenience. The new CBC comedy based on Ins Choi\u2019s award-winning Fringe play airs this evening, but it was originally … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNew CBC sitcom exposes The Convenience Truth - Thunderbird Entertainment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/10\/11\/new-cbc-sitcom-exposes-the-convenience-truth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New CBC sitcom exposes The Convenience Truth - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Katherine Monk \/ The Ex-Press VANCOUVER \u2013 Andrea Bang thanks the Toronto Blue Jays. 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