Asiance magazine emailed to let me know they had done an interview with Byron Lawson, who plays Eddie Kim in Snakes on a Plane. Asiance magazine appears to be for Asian American women, so it includes a lot of beefcake pictures of Byron as well as odd lines like this about the author: “L Nguygen is 1½ generation Vietnamese American. She loves to write on Asian celebrities who maintain their principles and do not get caught up in the Hollywood mainstream.” I’m not entirely sure what that means. Also, if you peruse the magazine a little, you’ll find an odd assortment of articles like this one on, uhm, shaving.

Anyway, here’s the relevant part of the interview:

ASIANCE: Tell us about your new movie “Snakes on a Plane”

Byron: Snakes on a Plane is exactly like the title. It’s about a crime lord (I play) and he kills this guy in the opening of the movie in a violent way. He and his men hang this guy upside down and I basically beat him with a baseball bat. We’re in Hawaii thinking we’re in the middle of nowhere, where no one can witness this. A kid on a dirt bike sees the whole thing taking place. After the murder is committed, he takes off and is an eyewitness. He goes to testify against me. So they have to fly him from Hawaii to Los Angeles. I have to get my people to take care of this eyewitness so I don’t have to be put away. We put 1,000 poisonous snakes on the plane, not caring who is on the plane. We just want it to go down.

The premise of this story is to prevent the plane from going down with all these snakes on the plane and hurting the people of Los Angeles.

ASIANCE: So you got to work with Samuel L Jackson?

Byron: Sam is the FBI agent who is assigned to protect this kid. He’s really nice. One of the calmest guys I’ve ever met. He’s not intimidating. He golfs everyday. A really fun guy.

ASIANCE: Did they want to cast and Asian actor for your role?

Byron: Well I was going to play a different character. Then they brought a bunch of actors to read for the bad guy yet again, which is the character I wanted. All I remember is that one of my good friends and I were going back in for at this meeting. When he came out he basically said, “Byron you better bring it! Bring it like you’ve never brought it before!” He actually wanted this other character. I went in and read for it and ended up getting it.

This character as far as I know was always named Eddie Kim. He was always Asian. But they never had him speak any other language. He was a mobster out of LA. I wouldn’t say he was the token Asian. They wanted a mobster so they happened to go with the Asian mob. It is somewhat of a stereotypical character, an Asian mobster but they could’ve gone any way; Italian mob, Russian mob, etc.

The excitement this movie is getting is incredible. It’s getting a lot of press right now.