Things were about to get freaky in Singapore. While fans couldn’t stop drooling over the glorious shirtless-ness in last year’s Crazy Rich Asians, Nick Young was really about to give Christian Grey a run for his money.
“When I did my first draft of the movie, the producers and director Jon Chu made fun of me because I had all these hot, steamy, getting-it-on scenes,” screenwriter Adele Lim tells Vulture at the Women in Film Oscar Party. “That’s the kind of writer I am, which is true — but also, it’s a bigger thing. It’s a movie for women and we never see Asian men in that light. Give the people what they want!” says Lim. “Sometimes people don’t know what they want until they see it, and walking across are perfectly chiseled abs. And I’m like, yes.”
Co-written by Peter Chiarelli, the film blessed audiences with actors like Henry Golding and Pierre Png (and their jawlines), to name a few. While Lim says they’re “trying to work it out” for her to be part of the sequel, she hopes they don’t shy away from the sexiness. “I want to see that across all platforms, honestly,” Lim says. “Somebody asked me recently: Is it about objectifying Asian men? They didn’t want to use the word objectify, but I said, absolutely! Because they haven’t been seen in that light before. I want to see more of it! I want it out there.”
The movie is PG-13, but Lim has no regrets. “I probably had them getting more into it than taste would allow. And I’m really glad I had restraining influences in the movie pulling it back so it was appropriate for a global audience,” she says. “But no, if I had it my way, [it’d be] absolutely [sexier]. You hardly see that chemistry in the media.”
