Gedde Watanabe Didn't Think His 'Sixteen Candles' Role Was Racist During Filming

This weekend marked 40 years since the release of John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. In a recent interview with PEOPLE, Gedde Watanabe reflected on playing Chinese exchange student, Long Duk Dong. The actor, now 68, reveals that he wasn’t initially aware his character was an offensive stereotype:

“Frankly I was like, this is a good job, and I’m going to get paid more doing one week in this movie that I did for all the years I was in the theater.”

“It didn’t really occur to me that it was a stereotype, because there wasn’t really anything out there for Asian actors at the time. It was just so scarce. So I didn’t think it was stereotypical or racist. Isn’t that weird?”

But Gedde did know some lines were problematic:

“I remember the movie using the word ‘Chinaman,’ and even then I was like, “Oh, that’s not great.’ But you also have to remember in that period of time, people still had to be educated about parameters, what the alarm bells were when it came to being offensive.”

I wonder if the filmmakers gave him a heads-up about the gong sound they used every time he appeared on screen. Woof!

Gedde, who is Japanese-American, was born and raised in Utah. He wasn’t even sure he could pull off Long Duk’s heavy accent for his audition:

“But I had a friend who sort of sounded like him, and he helped me and let me listen to him and would talk with me, and then I went in and auditioned and got it.”

The actor stayed in character after he got the role, and it wasn’t until the table read in Chicago that he surprised John Hughes with his real accent: “He totally burst out laughing. He was in shock.”

Gedde says the ’80s were “a hard time” for Asian-American actors, and there was no one to guide him about “the fine line between being a goof in comedy and what’s stereotypical and what’s offensive now.” He adds that Long Duk wasn’t all bad; Gedde says it was “really unusual” that the character got to party and landed an American girlfriend. He also thinks Long Duk was so offensive that he became a driver of positive change:

“People study him in the Asian studies class. In some ways, that takes the sting out of the role. People are having conversations about him. It’s interesting that this one role did so much.”

Sixteen Candles star Molly Ringwald has been outspoken about how John Hughes’ films haven’t aged well. In a 2018 essay for the New Yorker, she wrote that Long Duk Dong was “a grotesque stereotype.” She also pointed out that the late filmmaker’s writing could be misogynistic and problematic. That same year, Molly did an interview with NPR, and said, “I don’t want to appear ungrateful to John Hughes, but I do oppose a lot of what is in those movies.”