8Asians | An Asian American collaborative blog

So I should have blogged about this Viagra commercial when it first came out this past April, but there wasn’t a higher quality version or official versions of the commercial on their website. Now I see this ad running more and more so I’m sticking with this one. Apparently Kelly Hu is the third actress in this series of women pitching Viagra. On the Viagra site, the first two women are white – so it’ll be interesting to see if Viagra continues these series of ads, if African American and Hispanic women will be used.

My first memory of coming across model and now actress Kelly Hu was right around after graduating from college in the early 90s and coming across an early Asian American lifestyle magazine called Transpacific:

“Transpacific, which is published every other month in Malibu, Calif., is believed to be the longest running. Originally called Asiam, it has been out for seven years; it differs from A. in that it includes articles on life styles and business trends in Asia, while A.’s focus is entirely American.”

On kind of a big tangent here in italics, Jeff Yang (yes, father of “Fresh Off The Boat’s” Hudson Yang) who was A. Magazine’s editor in chief and founder. And it must have been destiny, because the first time I met Jeff Yang, it was in 1995 at Harvard at an Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Students Association (ITASA) conference. Yang was on a panel discussion on “non-traditional” careers for Taiwanese Americans (i.e. not becoming a doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.), which included being a publisher for A. Magazine (the other panelist I recall, was talking about entrepreneurship). At that conference, I also recall Kristie Wang, then Program Director Center for Taiwan International Relations, give the speech, “How I Became a Taiwanese-American and why It Matters” – which really made an impact on me. Showing you how small Taiwanese American world is, 20+ years later, I’d meet her (like Jeff Yang), in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Getting back to Kelly Hu and the Viagra commercial. From what I recall, Hu appeared a few times in some fashion photo shoots for that magazine – and those photo shoots were pretty hot.

When I first saw Hu in the Viagra commercial, I was like, ‘Is this who I think it is?’ I quickly Googled to see if that was Hu, and I was pleased to discover that I was right! In doing a quick background check, I was shocked to discover that Hu is now 47 years old. My biggest impressions of her from an acting standpoint were her roles in The Scorpion King as Cassandra and X2: X-Men United as Lady Deathstrike.

Based on Hu’s tweets (@KellyHu), she’s clearly happy to see herself in the Viagra commercial:

Hopefully Hu is getting paid a lot of residuals for the commercial.

In the past, I’ve also blogged about Hu’s political activism in regards to getting out the Asian American vote for elections, but not a lot of people know about her interest in Asian American civic engagement and support for Obama as well as they know Hu as an actress.

In another example of “connections” – as soon as I saw the Viagra commercial, I emailed the YouTube link to a friend and former work colleague of mine in LA – since she and her husband are friends with Hu, though my friend said she hasn’t seen Hu in years.