What Role Did ‘To All The Boys I Loved Before’ Star Lana Condor Play on ‘X-Men’?
Lana Condor has become a rising star in the last couple of years. In just a short time, the 22-year-old actress went from being relatively unknown to a Hollywood sensation that young people cannot get enough of.
Condor is mostly known for her role as Lara Jean in the film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. However, fans might be surprised to know that she also appeared in an X-Men movie some years before. Read on below to learn more about this interesting role that Condor once took on.
How did Lana Condor become popular?
Condor was born on May 11, 1997, in Vietnam. She lived in an orphanage for a while before being adopted by white American parents a few months after her birth.
Condor grew up several miles outside of Seattle, Washington, and was very involved in the arts as a kid. She started out as a ballet dancer and trained with a few different schools around the country.
Later on, she began taking acting lessons and was even a theater scholar at the California State Summer School for the Arts.
In 2016, she started acting in various movies, such as X-Men: Apocalypse(2016), Patriots Day (2016), and High School Lover (2017). Then, her fame exploded in 2018 after she landed the role of Lara Jean in the Netflix movie To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
The film became a hit with viewers around the world and was especially popular among Asian-Americans for its positive portrayal of the Asian community in the United States. Condor’s career also took off soon after.
What role did Lana Condor play in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’?
Condor played Jubilee in X-Men: Apocalypse. Jubilee is a mutant who can generate pyrotechnic energy blasts from her hands.
Before the movie premiered, fans were excited to see Jubilee’s debut, especially since it was representation for Asian-Americans in an industry where Asian characters are both lacking as well as constantly used to further offensive stereotypes. However, fans became disappointed to see that the character of Jubilee was simply a cameo, and other Asian characters did not get many dialogues either.
Condor recently decided to speak out about the experience, saying: “In the moment, I was happy for any part I could get. Now, if that same experience happened, I would be pretty discouraged and upset and feel there was an injustice.”
Additionally, Condor revealed that she went on a fair share of auditions for parts that required her to play up harmful Asian stereotypes.
“A lot of times people assume I have an accent, and I don’t,” she said before sharing that she was often asked to act cute like Hello Kitty or anime characters. They wanted me to be so cutesy because that’s what they think Asians are.”
In fact, Condor later told The Wrap that she would be open to playing Jubilee again if the character could be better-written this time around, noting: “She’s a fantastic character and now I think is the perfect time to give her what she deserves.”
What future projects is Lana Condor working on?
Condor seems to be in a better place in her career now and would no longer have to play roles that are offensive to people in her community.
She recently appeared in the sequel to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, called To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, which premiered on Netflix near Valentine’s Day 2020.
Furthermore, Condor has also finished filming the third movie, To All the Boys: Always and Forever, Lara Jean. The release date for this film is still unknown, but it is currently in post-production.
