Cho: Qualms About Harold & Kumar Part III
2 min readAt first, Star Trek XI‘s John Cho was not sure whether it would be wise to take on another Harold & Kumar movie.
When Cho got the call about making another Harold & Kumar movie, he wasn’t sure that another movie could capture the magic again.
“My hesitation was that the second one took place a minute after the first one, so I see the first two as really linked, and much more similar,” Cho said. “The first one was a lot of race satire, and the second was a political satire, and I didn’t know whether we could make another one in that vein. I also didn’t know if we could do another movie where they were the same age as the first two.”
But when he got further details, Cho was reassured. “So when I heard that they were older, and that it was going to be a Christmas movie, that really turned me around,” he said. “I thought that could work, doing a traditional Christmas movie and putting a Harold & Kumar spin on it, and have them be older and have them be separated. When I heard that pitch, I was really optimistic.”
But at first, during rehearsals, Cho wasn’t sure that it was working out after all. “The first week of rehearsal that we were in, it felt a little bumpy to me,” he said. “I can’t really put my finger on exactly what it was, but I wasn’t super confident after that first week of rehearsal. I was a little worried.”
Cho’s worries concerned the interaction between Harold and Kumar. “…I actually think I was worried up until the first week of shooting, because I was doing stuff without Kumar, and I wasn’t sure whether Harold and Kumar had their groove back yet,” he said.
But once shooting began, his worries faded away. “But then Kal and I shot our stuff,” said Cho, “and it felt like, OK, yes, I now know that we’re making a Harold & Kumar movie.
“…so it didn’t feel right until we were doing our thing together again.”
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas will release on November 4.