Ken Jeong was a doctor before he pursued a lifelong dream of acting “late in the game,” as he put it to ABC Audio, so the movie star and Masked Singer judge says his Hollywood career never gets old.
“I remember Sandra Bullock, I did a movie with her….it was way before The Hangover,” he recalled about 2009’s All About Steve. “And they asked her, ‘What was it like working with Ken?’…[A]nd…she said, ‘I say this in a good way…Ken can’t honestly believe that he’s here.'”
Jeong adds, laughing, “And so…if I can kind of retain that innocence, you know, for the rest of my days, that would be a good day!”
After years pulling all-nighters on his doctor rounds, and more recently reading scripts and taking Zoom meetings, the doctor recently saw a doctor himself, for dry-eye disease. You might have seen him in those commercials for the prescription drug Xiidra.
In spite of the, pardon the pun, dry topic, Jeong doesn’t lose his comic personality in the ads.
“I think at the end of the day, it really is about it’s about connection,” he notes. “[W]hether one’s an educator or one’s a face model…You know, I think it’s all about…connection with people.”
Jeong calls his career a “dream come true,” and part of that was becoming a small part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo often add their former Community stars as Easter eggs in their MCU movies, but Jeong jokingly insists his cameo in Avengers: Endgame saved the world.
“If it wasn’t for unspoken security, man, you know, Thanos would have ruled and we would not be back in to where we were today,” he says, chuckling.
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