"For myself, it was such a survival-mode situation," she said. "I didn't think of it that way at the time."
"Gilmore Girls" star Keiko Agena is opening up about what it was like to play the iconic character of Lane Kim on the popular series.
Agena's character was the best friend of main character Rory Gilmore, played by Alexis Bledel, on the series, which ran from 2000 to 2007. (The show returned to Netflix as a four-part revival in 2016.)
On the June 19 episode of the "Dear Felicity" podcast, Agena revealed that she sometimes feels a "disconnect" with fans who loved the character.
"I think ... the disconnect is that I also love that person?" she said. "But I don't know how to be that person."
Agena said she is working on letting go of the idea of being Kim for fans and now celebrates the character instead of feeling a responsibility to be her.
"I think what it was for people was different from what it was for me," Agena said. "So in a weird way, I feel like I want to honor what the experience that people had from the show and what it means to them, especially young Asian people, because I get that comment a lot about what it was like for them to see someone like that on-screen."
She revealed that as a young person at the time, she was in "such a survival-mode situation" while on the show.
"I didn't think of it that way at the time. So now it's just a mix of just having gratitude for having gone through that experience and having that experience," she said. "I have to let go of the pressure that I put on myself to be the best version of who it is that I think that you love. Because I love her, too."
Agena also opened up about how casting in Hollywood has changed for Asian-American actors, noting that she doesn't believe she would have been cast as Korean-American Kim today, since she is Japanese American.
"Asian Americans are in a delicate place right now where it feels transitory, where now ... people want to be very specific," she said.
"You want to be cast and you want to be authentic to that ethnicity because representation is so important," Agena said. "But there's also this desire -- after the transitory phase -- where can we, as Asian Americans, open it up so that we can have the true actor's experience?"
Agena said that both while filming "Gilmore Girls" and in the years since, she's thought about how her character was famously Korean American and Lane's storyline largely revolved around her relationship with her mother and their ethnic identity. She noted that Lane's life was loosely based on one of the show's writers, Helen Pai, who is Korean American.
"So I don't think that role cast that way would happen today," Agena said. "But at that time in 2000, it was such a different time ... and I'm grateful for obviously in my life what happened from that."
