BD Wong gives doctors, priests and other people with answers a calm authority that makes us want to listen. We value him most when the writing lets us see what maintaining that composure costs.
Fi1m perspective
BD Wong's priests and psychiatrists listen intently, making someone else's troubles worth our attention. In Jurassic Park (1993), his Dr Henry Wu brings that same calm authority to the business of creating dinosaurs. Steven Spielberg gives us creatures worth staring at, but Wu gets little opportunity to become a person beyond his job. We like the assurance Wong supplies; we would have liked the writing to ask more of him. It is a small part in a film we recommend wholeheartedly, and an example of how easily his steadiness can be taken for granted.
His stage work had already offered other possibilities: Song Liling in M. Butterfly (1988) was his Broadway debut. Screen work brought repeated casting as doctors and other professionals, a restriction he has discussed himself. A character who knows what to say is useful to a script, but that can leave an actor with little else to do. The later Jurassic World trilogy (2015–2022) gave Wu more to do, expanding a character the original film had barely developed.
Oz (1997) gives him a more substantial task as Father Ray Mukada, a conflicted prison priest. Creator and writer Tom Fontana wrote the role specifically for Wong, giving him room to play the priest's own uncertainty. We were disturbed by Oz, because the ensemble makes its prisoners' suffering hard to dismiss as television spectacle. Wong's thoughtful authority belongs in that ensemble, although it cannot excuse the programme's growing taste for excess. Mukada offers a chance to see Wong working beyond the limits of a part that chiefly requires him to supply information.
From 2001 to 2015, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit made sustained use of his composure through the psychiatrist Dr George Huang. Whiterose in Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot (2015–2019) later offered a more morally ambiguous character, extending the possibilities beyond the familiar counsellor. These parts reward the attention Wong gives to what a character is thinking while other people talk. Start with Oz if a punishing prison drama appeals; be prepared for writing that sometimes asks too much of a capable cast.
Biography
B.D. Wong is an American actor. Born Bradley Darryl Wong on 24 October 1960 in San Francisco, California, he made his Broadway debut in the 1988 production of M. Butterfly, for which he received the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Clarence Derwent Award and Theatre World Award.
Wong is known for his film role as Dr Henry Wu in Jurassic Park (1993) and its later entries Jurassic World (2015), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022). His television work includes Father Ray Mukada in Oz (1997–2003), Dr George Huang in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2001–2026) and Whiterose in Mr. Robot (2015–2019). He also voiced Captain Li Shang in Disney’s Mulan (1998).
