Grace Park makes capable people worth spending time with, and handles demanding action convincingly. We rate her most in Battlestar Galactica, where she has more to do emotionally than keep her nerve when things go wrong.
Fi1m perspective
When Hawaii Five-0 (2010) gives Grace Park’s Kono Kalakaua something to do with the wider team, the programme becomes easier company. Alongside Daniel Dae Kim’s Chin Ho Kelly, she helps make an ensemble worth watching beyond the central double act. We enjoyed those stretches because colleagues working together were more appealing than another round of competitive insults. Park can handle the action, but she also gives us a reason to want more time with the people doing it. That is an asset the scripts could use more often.
She went from the teen drama Edgemont (2001) to playing Sharon 'Boomer' Valerii in Battlestar Galactica (2004). Here the part allows a fuller emotional performance than the capable-action-hero description might lead us to expect. Park is equal to that opportunity, within an ensemble led by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. The programme earns its seriousness through tense storytelling, though its persistent gloom can become wearing. It is the place to start if action television has left an unduly narrow impression of what Park can do.
Hawaii Five-0 kept her as Kono for seven seasons, making sustained use of her physical assurance. She is convincing in demanding action, which helps an undemanding procedural do its immediate job. Our reservation is about how the programme spends its attention: too much returns to the two men at its centre refusing to stop talking. The wider cast cannot fix that by being agreeable. It remains decent company, but we would happily trade some of the partners’ arguments for more work involving Park and Kim.
A Million Little Things (2018) later moved her into grounded ensemble drama as Katherine Kim. That change of emphasis makes sense for someone whose company was already part of the attraction in an action procedural. We would welcome more roles that make emotional demands on her; there is no pressing need for another test of whether she can handle the physical ones.
Biography
Grace Park is an American-Canadian actress and model. Born on 14 March 1974 in Los Angeles to Korean parents, she moved with her family to Vancouver, Canada, as an infant and was raised there. She graduated from Magee Secondary School in 1992 and earned a degree in psychology from the University of British Columbia.
Park began her acting career with a main role as Shannon Ng in the Canadian teen series Edgemont (2001–2005). She gained wider recognition for portraying Sharon 'Boomer' Valerii and related characters in the Battlestar Galactica miniseries (2003) and series (2004–2009). From 2010 to 2017 she played Officer Kono Kalakaua in the revival of Hawaii Five-0, and from 2018 to 2023 she appeared as Katherine Kim in A Million Little Things.
