Main Event Hero Doug Kim Beating the Odds in Hollywood

It’s almost a ‘where are they now’ moment, former Main Event final tabler Doug Kim in the Washington Post spotlight as his TV series pilot ‘Just Doug’ gets set to air – not a poker-based affair, but rather a semi-autobiographical depiction of his journey ‘trying to make it as an Asian American actor in Los Angeles’.

As a freshman at Duke University, the Korean-American was bringing in a few thousand dollars a month from online poker, overcoming his scepticism about gambling in general as being for ‘degenerates’, but says:

"In the end, it wasn’t really intellectually stimulating for me or emotionally fulfilling".

Bring on his ‘last hurrah’ in the game – a ‘bucket list’-style trip to the World Series, Kim explaining: “I just expected an experience, a story, but things got really crazy when I survived each day and eventually made it to the final table. I won $2.4 million from that,” - his first-ever live cash, but it still didn’t sit well with his typical ‘Asian American upbringing.

“I was still a risk averse, typical Asian American,” he told The Post’s Tracy Jan this week. “If I had a good career in finance or consulting, I could be making many times what I made in poker. Why not put this aside as a nest egg and go on with my career as planned?”

Those plans would see Kim start and finish a short management consulting career, the financial crisis of 2008 putting paid to his plans, after which Kim says he had to “re-evaluate my life choices”.

The answer, which viewers will get to see when his pilot airs this weekend on the DramaFever streaming platform ‘created to bring Korean dramas to Western audiences’, was to expand his love of musical performance into acting – finally seeing some representations of Asian Americans on the big screen spurring him on.

It wouldn’t be an easy journey, though, fighting against an industry which “is taking its sweet time in getting Asian Americans front and center”, Kim failing to land a role in one sitcom because:

“The casting director told me I reminded her of a 'Seinfeld' type of character and they were looking for more of a jock type” which he says “was very depressing because these roles are just so few and far between”.

Thus was born the ‘Just Doug‘ idea – which Kim states “is all inspired from my frustrations with the industry”.

“It’s a TV show about identity” he explained. “Doug is figuring out why he wants to be in Hollywood — a Don Quixote trying to forge his own identity while fighting these battles on his quest for justice and meaning.”