CMU grad and Hollywood icon Ming-Na Wen to be at Steel City Con

Hollywood icon and Carnegie Mellon University grad Ming-Na Wen returned to the Pittsburgh area this week to cheer on her beloved Steelers and meet with fans in Monroeville.

She will be among the celebrities at Steel City Con at the Monroeville Convention Center Friday and Saturday, the first two days of the three-day pop culture event.

Wen took a quick break during her travel from Las Vegas to the Steel City to talk about coming back to her hometown. She was born in Macau, spent her early years in New York City and grew up in Mt. Lebanon, graduating from high school in 1981 and then studied drama at CMU.

Her family founded the Chinatown Inn in Pittsburgh.

“Pittsburgh has definitely created a plethora of life experiences for me that has helped me in my acting, and helped me as a mom — and helped me with so many (other things),” she said. “I’m pretty embedded as a Yinzer, I believe.”

Her panel discussion at the convention is scheduled for noon on Saturday.

She was at Thursday night’s Steelers game with the rock band Styx.

Got @STYXtheBand and @MingNa in the house ???? pic.twitter.com/P1UrfnyOJe

— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) December 8, 2023

School days

Wen said she fell in love with the stage in third grade while performing in an Easter play in New York.

“I just remember vividly being on stage for the first time, and I fell in love with the whole making people laugh and having that sort of control of entertaining people,” she said. “It’s never left me.”

Her family would soon move from the Big Apple to Pennsylvania and settle in Mt. Lebanon, where she graduated from high school in 1981.

Growing up in Mt. Lebanon as an Asian-American in the 1970s and early ’80s was a bit of a challenge. There were not many in the school district, according to Wen.

“No there were not,” she said. “To have a very Chinese name sort of created more obstacles for me, I believe. I tried to change my name. I tried to Anglicize it a few times in junior high school. I tried Maggie. I tried Doris, and nothing stuck.”

She reverted back to Ming-Na, which means “enlightened,” and found solace in science fiction and performing.

“Science fiction and fantasy allowed you to escape where you are and live out the possibilities of being anything and everything that you wanted to be,” Wen said. “Acting allowed me to be other people. Those were definitely two great aids in coping with things.”

Wen went on to study drama at CMU and graduated in 1986.

Career milestones

Some entertainment historians argue her big break when she was cast in “The Joy Luck Club,” or when she became the first Asian-American actress to land a contract role on a daytime soap, performing as Lien Hughes in “As the World Turns.”

Others say her talent began to bloom as a fanfare artist for King Friday in the children’s educational television series “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

“It was amazing to be in the land of Make-Believe,” she said. “How perfect for me, because that’s where I feel like I thrive, and that’s sort of where Mr. (Fred) Rogers thrived, too. … What a privilege to have that on my resume.”

Wen called the late Rogers “a remarkable human being” and “so sweet and so kind.”

She recalled being on set as a CMU student and hearing Fred Rogers prepare for the show.

“I remember overhearing Mr. Rogers tucked away in the back, maybe behind the castle, talking to himself,” she said. “Really talking to himself, answering himself. I thought, ‘Wow. Is he OK?’

“Then I realized later on that he was just going over his lines with his puppets. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know if he’s all there. He’s a little cuckoo.’ Then I realized he was just being a professional and working on his lines.”

Wen commended Rogers for hiring locally and supporting the CMU drama program.

“He loved to showcase diversity, which was way ahead of his time,” she said. “He had this wonderful mix of people, and that’s not very easy to do, especially back in those days. I just love that he made that a priority on a national level. It’s something I’m very grateful for.”

Franchise star

Convention goers are likely to recognize Wen from her seven seasons as Agent Melinda May on “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

It was the first series to be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Several episodes directly crossed over with the films.

The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe would not be the same without the tremendous work by Wen and fellow “S.H.I.E.L.D.” stars Clark Gregg, Brett Dalton Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge and many others.

“We put in many, many hours,” Wen said about the experience. “Unlike doing a film, where you have a massive budget and you have pretty much a blank check to spend, we had a very limited budget. We also had very limited leeway in what our writers and our producers were able to use in the Marvel catalogue.

”It was remarkable how our writers and our producers were able to generate so many years of incredible stories. It was an absolute honor and love the cast, love the crew. I miss them all very much.”

She said crew members occasionally call her just to check in.

“You don’t understand the kind of family a series like that, working 15-hour days/17-hour days over a span of seven years, what that creates,” Wen said. “It was really just precious.”

It is unclear if she will be able to reprise her role as Agent May in the MCU with the company cranking out content for both the big screen and Disney+ and its exploration into the multiverse.

“I always say, ‘Never say never,’” Wen said. “Right now, it seems like were a bit of the outcasts in a way and have not been integrated into the Marvel Universe. That’s something that I think our fans would want to petition for.”

Wen played Chun-Li in the 1994 film “Street Fighter” alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Then she took the many galaxies by storm as Fennec Shand in Star Wars’ Disney+ shows “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett” and “The Bad Batch.”

The voice of the title character in Disney’s “Mulan” had a very definitive answer when asked if it ever gets boring being a badass.

“Hell, no,” she said. “It’s just my ‘nerd girl’ living out her fantasies and getting paid for it. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

Other convention guests include Alec Baldwin (“Beetlejuice,” “Glengarry Glen Ross”), Kiefer Sutherland (“24,” “The Lost Boys”), Matt Lillard (“Scream,” “Scooby Doo”), Neve Campbell (“Scream,” “Party of Five”), John Cleese (Monty Python), Giangarlo Esposito (“Breaking Bad,” “The Mandalorian”) and Dean Norris (“Under the Dome”).

Awards

Wen was in Pittsburgh in November for the CMU Alumni Awards.

“I was back very briefly, and it was wonderful to visit with my alma mater and meet with all the young students in our drama department, and kind of go back to the old stomping grounds.”

She graduated from CMU in 1986 and was recognized for her outstanding achievements.

Other famous drama alums include Ted Danson, Billy Porter, Judith Light, Grey Henson and Patina Miller.

“I am forever thankful to have received the invaluable training in Carnegie Mellon’s Drama program that kickstarted my acting career. I am honored to be given another gift with this meaningful CMU alumni award.” — Ming-Na Wen (CFA 1986) @MingNa #CMUAlumniAwards pic.twitter.com/W3UGoWPFv2

— Carnegie Mellon Alumni (@cmualumnihouse) November 11, 2023

Wen received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May.

She took home the Saturn Award for best actress in a streaming series in 2022 and received multiple nominations for various awards through the years.

Wen had this advice for young performers:

“One of the most important things is you have to have the passion and love for the art. That’s what’s going to sustain you when you’re hitting the roadblocks and feeling you’re never going to break through. You have to love the art enough to want to keep pursuing it because it makes you happy. It makes you fulfilled. That’s Number One.

“Number Two is to always believe in yourself when nobody else will and not make excuses. It’s so easy to say, ‘I’m too short. I’m too tall. I’m too Asian. I’m a woman.’

“You can always make excuses as to why you shouldn’t pursue something. … It’s the passion and the love for the arts that will sustain you.”

Family and future

Wen recently celebrated her 60th birthday. She was born Nov. 20, 1963, on the island of Macau, about 40 miles from Hong Kong.

Surprise celebrations included her husband, Eric Michael Zee, renting out a movie theater for her and multiple friends to watch Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” concert film. Wen is a “Swifty.”

“I wanted to support her because I think she’s an amazing artist and woman and business woman,” Wen said. “She represents a lot of things that I think a young woman needs these days.

“It was a lot of fun, and I really loved her theatrics in her concerts. She’s really remarkable and so dedicated to her fans.”

The family also had a quiet day at home on her actual birthday.

Wen said her future plans include releasing a cookbook through Simon & Schuster, as well as some independent projects.

The cookbook is expected to be out sometime next year. It will feature family recipes including some she crafted, others from her family’s restaurant Chinatown Inn in Pittsburgh and more Asian cuisines.

Her daughter, Michaela Zee, is a New-York based associate web editor at Variety.

Wen said Zee is a hard worker, just like her mom, and jokingly takes a little credit for her career path.

“All that time that I used to yell at her for streaming too many shows or watching too many things on her iPad, it’s paid off.”