Being brave and bold with Victoria Park of The Flash

Victoria Park doesn’t wait for someone to give her permission. She gives it to herself. 

This quality is what’s taken her on a film career that started (and continues!) with Wong Fu Productions and brought her to us in Vancouver with her recurring role on The Flash.

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We sit down with the actress and cinematographer in her hotel room, and she plays every bit the bubbly, accommodating host. It feels less like an interview and more like a conversation between old friends. But don’t mistake her friendliness for any kind of weakness: she’s not afraid to ask for what she wants.

“I don’t have to wait for something to give me the green light, I don’t have to wait for someone to tell me that it’s okay,” said Park. “I can just be brave and be bold and make these moves myself.”

Having this confident attitude wasn’t always the case for her, but it’s a lesson she’s had to learn throughout her career. We talk about those lessons learned, reflect on her work and on being an Asian American — and yes, get her to answer a few of your burning questions about The Flash.

The Flash

On The Flash, Park plays Kamilla Hwang, an aspiring photographer and the girlfriend of Cisco Ramon, one of the show’s leads. She joined the popular superhero show not until its fifth season, and she remembers how anxious she felt the first time on set.

“Everyone on the show has been so amazing,” she said. “I get really nervous coming on to a set for the first time. Especially for a show that has been going on for so many years. I came in on the fifth season [and got] the first day of school vibes. Who am I going to sit with at lunch? Is everybody going to be nice to me? Everyone was so sweet.”

Naturally she shares many scenes with her on-screen partner, Cisco, played by Carlos Valdes, but if she had to choose her favourite it would have to be the scene where they go on their first date, well, hundreds of times, because it’s a comic book show and of course time travel is involved.

“Kamilla and Cisco go on their first date but because they keep going back in time to save something that happens, they go on a first date hundreds of times and each time Cisco comes in as a different version of himself,” she said. “That was a really fun scene to shoot because I stayed in the same place all day but Carlos kept coming out in these ridiculous characters and outfits.”

Park also had an answer to the question devoted followers of the show kept telling us to ask: Will Kamilla and Iris become friends?

“I love this question,” said Park. “I heard that she was talking about it at Comic-Con, but yes, we are friends. In season six, Iris expands her newspaper and one of the people who works for her is me. We definitely continue our working relationship, and I’d venture to say our friendship as well.”

Working with Wong Fu Productions

Before she was in The Flash, Park got her big break on a Wong Fu video — but didn’t even know who they were. 

“I will always think of Wong Fu so fondly because they gave me one of my first acting roles ever and it was when I was still figuring out if I still wanted to be an actor,” she said. “I grew up in Illinois in a very non-Asian area so I didn’t really have a lot of Asian friends. I wasn’t really entrenched in Asian things so I didn’t even know what Wong Fu was.” 

Imagine her surprise when adoring Wong Fu fans began to bump into them while they were filming.

“I remember being on set and we were filming on the sidewalk,” she said. “I thought we were just these kids playing around, and this group of fans walked by and went, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Wong Fu!’ I had not realized it was such a big thing. So I went on YouTube to look them up and realized it was a big deal, and that was how it all started.”

From there, they continued to work together and Park would even land her first lead in a feature with them.

“They’ve given me a lot of my milestone opportunities on top of being just great guys that I’m honoured to call my friends,” she said. “They really have done so much for the community. If you think about all of the people who are now movers and shakers, a lot of them have worked with Wong Fu or started with Wong Fu … they are a huge deal.”

Read our interview with the legendary Phil Wang of Wong Fu Productions.

Being Asian American

Having grown up in a primarily non-Asian area, Park’s Asian American identity was not something she thought a lot about at a young age. It explains her blind spot for Wong Fu when she first got into acting. 

But as she got older and moved to a city with a bigger Asian community, she’s reflected more on her background and it’s become a part of her identity that she is proud of. 

“It’s definitely been a journey. When I was growing up, I never realized I was Asian. I always knew I was different but I thought it was because I was kind of a weird kid,” Park said. “Now it’s so interesting looking back, I wonder how much of that was because I looked different. Getting older, having Asian friends for the first time in my life, being able to talk through some of these things and … realize that this actually did affect me, where I thought maybe it didn’t, is important.”

For a long time, Park said that she tried to avoid associations with being Asian, and then she tried to make herself what she called “super Asian.” Now, she’s come to terms with what being Asian American means for her, even if it might not look like other Asian American backgrounds.

Her blend of backgrounds would surface prominently in the planning of her recent wedding. Her wish to honour her family would clash with her desire to keep her wedding a low key affair.

“We were actually not very interested in having a wedding. If it were just the two of us, we would have just gone to the courthouse, because we just wanted to be married and didn’t want a big show of it,” Park said. “But something that is important to both of us is honouring our family, honouring our parents, being able to include them in that process.” 

Park had friends from a lot of different backgrounds and many of her non-Asian friends were a little less understanding about the balance she had to find in her wedding planning. 

“They were like, ‘If that’s not what you want to do, why are you going through all this stress, all this money, just to appease your parents?’ At times it was hard,” said Park. “We asked why we were doing this, but what we kept coming back to was that the wedding day was less about us and more about all the people in our lives that brought us to this place.”

What’s Next

Despite all her acting credits on screen, she first fell in love with this industry doing work behind the camera and Park is looking to get back to those roots in an upcoming project.

Park majored in film production and cinematography, but when she moved to LA, she fell into acting, so that’s what she’s been doing for the past few years.

“But my work on the other side of the camera is something that I’m really passionate about and something that I’d love to go back to doing,” said Park. “I’ve got a couple of ideas and projects that I’m working on with some people and I’m looking to get back on the other side of the camera, directing maybe writing.”

You can catch Park on the upcoming season of The Flash or on her Amazon mini-series, Too Old to Die Young.

Listen to the full interview below and subscribe to our podcast on most streaming platforms: