'Mulan' Voice Actress Reveals That Her Father Is Actually Malaysian
Done claim.
By Khadijah Amir — 15 Mar 2023, 05:36 PM
You may know her as the voice of Disney's Mulan, Fennec Shand in The Mandalorian (2019), or even as Melinda May In Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013), but Ming-Na Wen also has a special connection to Malaysia
Ming-Na Wen has graced our screens since our childhood, playing some of the coolest and most badass female characters ever written.
Born on Coloane Island, Macau, the actress caught her big break in Hollywood after playing June Woo in the 1993 movie, The Joy Luck Club, and then in 1998 as the voice of Chinese heroine, Fa Mulan, in the animated movie, Mulan.
Since then, her illustrious career has made her an award-winning actress, earning Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Female Performer in an Animated Feature Production at the 1998 Annie Awards for her role as Mulan, and recently, Best Actress in a Streaming Series at the 2022 Saturn Awards for her performance in The Book of Boba Fett (2021).
In addition to her cool exterior and shelves filled with awards, Ming-Na Wen has another cool fact up her sleeve: she actually has roots in Malaysia
In a tweet made 6 March 2021, celebrating the release of Raya and the Last Dragon, Ming Na-Wen surprised fans by revealing her Southeast Asian roots.
The tweet quoted by the actress was of a video montage of her and other voice actors from Disney welcoming the voice actor of Raya, Kelly Marie Tran, into the family. Written proudly with the hashtags, #warriorprincesses and '#southeastasiangals, Wen confirmed that her Southeast Asian heritage comes from her biological father, who is Malaysian.
Although not much is known about him, Wen's father is reportedly of Chinese-Malaysian descent, while both her parents are Cantonese. Her parents divorced when she was still a child, and her mother took her and her older brother to Hong Kong where her mother met her stepfather. The family then moved to Queens, New York.
As one of the leading faces of Asian representation in Hollywood, Wen has showed immense support towards fellow Asian actors and actresses in the industry, including Michelle Yeoh, who recently bagged an Oscar for Best Actress in the film Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022) last weekend.
