Garrett Wang

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Garrett Wang
Wang in 2013 at FedCon in Germany
Born	Garrett Richard Wang (1968-12-15) December 15, 1968 (age 55) Riverside, California, U.S.
Other names	Wang Yi Jahn[1] (王以瞻)[2]
Education	University of California, Los Angeles (BA)
Years active	1994–present
Chinese name
Chinese	王以瞻
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Wáng Yǐzhān IPA [wǎŋ ì.ʈʂán] Southern Min Hokkien POJ Ông Í-chiam

Garrett Richard Wang (/ˈwɑːŋ/; Chinese: 王以瞻; born December 15, 1968) is an American actor best known for his role of Ensign Harry Kim in Star Trek: Voyager.

Wang was born in Riverside, California to Taiwanese^[3] immigrant parents. He has one sister.^[4] Growing up, Wang moved often. He attended kindergarten in Indiana before moving to Bermuda,^[4] then to Memphis, Tennessee,^[5] and then back to California.^[4]

In the summer of 1990, he attended a Taiwanese-state sponsored cultural exchange program.^[4] One of the reasons he decided to become an actor was to be a role model for other Asian-Americans seeking work in the entertainment industry, a predominantly non-Asian environment.^[4] Wang graduated from Harding Academy High School in Memphis.^[6]

Wang's parents did not support his acting ambitions. His father emigrated from Taiwan to attend graduate school in the States and did not view acting as a stable career choice.^[4] His mother was accepted to the Taiwan School of Drama in her youth, but did not attend it due to her father's objections.^[4] When his parents met actress Bonnie Franklin at an airport in Hawaii, she told them that Wang would never make it in the business.^[4] His mother eventually even suggested that he join the military to learn some discipline.^[4]

Wang attended UCLA. He switched majors multiple times, going from biology to political science to history to economics and finally Asian studies, with all his upper-division electives in theater.^[7]

When Wang decided to become a full-time actor, he made a deal with his parents that, if he was not successful within two years, he would quit, on the condition that they helped finance his expenses.^[4] After finding no work for months, he managed to book a few roles in commercials.^[4] This exposure got him a guest-star role in 1994 on the episode "Submission:Impossible" of Margaret Cho's All-American Girl as Raymond Han, a financially stable single doctor.^[4][8]

Wang starred in Eric Koyanagi's MFA thesis film at USC film school, Angry Cafe (1995).^[9][10] He subsequently came back to star in Koyanagi's feature directorial debut, hundred percent (1998), which also was Wang's feature debut.^[11][9] Both films were written and directed by, and starred Asian Americans.^[9]

A year and a half after his wager with his parents, Wang landed his best-known role, that of Ensign Harry Kim in Star Trek: Voyager, which ran from 1995 to 2001.^[4]

In 2005, Wang played Chow Ping in the TV miniseries Into The West, which was executive produced by Steven Spielberg.

He played Garan in the 2007 fan production Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, saying, "it’s always more challenging for an actor to play the bad guy."^[12]

In 1993, while a student at UCLA, Wang portrayed John Lee, a gay British Chinese teenager who kills his Irish lover, in Chay Yew's play, Porcelain, at the now defunct Burbage Theater in Sawtelle, Los Angeles.^[13][9][5]

From early childhood on, actor Garrett Wang was a science-fiction fan, in particular of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica.^[14]

He watched all the Star Trek films that came out in the theaters, but didn't follow Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) prior to working on Voyager. The first season-one TNG episode he saw was "Code of Honor", which he said all Trek writers considered "the worst episode ever produced".^[15] On three occasions, within a year and a half, he tried to watch TNG again, and it was always a repeat of "Code of Honor".

On a convention panel in 2015, Wang said of this: "I realized God was telling me ‘Don’t become a fan of TNG!’ Because I would have been too nervous to audition for Voyager. So really, God helped me get on Voyager."^[16]

At Star Trek Las Vegas in 2014, Wang was announced to be reprising his role as Harry Kim in "Delta Rising", the second expansion of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Star Trek Online.^[17]

Wang has been a celebrity moderator interviewing other celebrities at various conventions around the world since 2008.^[18]

In 2010, he was named the director of the Trek Track for Dragon Con, becoming the first actor to work behind the scenes at a convention.^[19]

Wang has participated in the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, in 2012 interviewing Stan Lee and being present at a booth among other exhibitors, and as a surprise speaker at TNG Exposed.^[20]

Through November 2017, Wang hosted a weekly podcast on Twitch. He discussed his post-Star Trek work as a convention moderator, and other anecdotes of his life.^[21]

He currently co-hosts The Delta Flyers Podcast^[22] with Robert Duncan McNeill, who portrayed Tom Paris in Voyager.

He is a Baptist.^[4]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Garrett Wang.

• Garrett Wang at IMDb
• Interview about his career and views on Star Trek (GeeksOn): Interview proper starts at 27min50sec