Other than quitting his job as a physician, leaping naked out of a trunk to fight Bradley Cooper in the desert was perhaps the best career move that actor-comedian Ken Jeong ever made.
Most viewers of the blockbuster comedy “The Hangover” – and the two sequels that followed – will remember this wild scene, which introduced the foul-mouthed, flamboyant gangster Mr. Leslie Chow to the world.
Playing him wasn’t Jeong’s first lucky break, but it proved to be his biggest – as the film earned more than any other R-rated comedy in history. That’s until “The Hangover 2” was made, which grossed even higher, at $581 million worldwide.
What many may not know was that the fuel for his memorable role was the rage and sorrow he felt after his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis.
It was while breastfeeding their 1-year-old twin daughters in 2007 that Tran Ho, also a medical doctor, found the lump in her breast. Although the biopsy came back benign and she underwent antibiotic treatment, it continued to grow. When Ho was tested again, the results were earth-shattering: She had stage-three, triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive variant with a 23 percent survival rate.
Nevertheless, she persisted – and underwent extreme chemotherapy treatment.
Today, Ho, 47, has been cancer-free for more than 10 years, which her husband calls nothing short of a medical miracle. On Oct. 18, Jeong, 50, will discuss his experience as a caregiver – while balancing the roles of husband, father and actor – as the keynote speaker at the Boca Raton Regional Hospital Foundation’s Sweet Sixteen – the 16th Annual Go Pink Luncheon in Boca Raton.
He seeks to empower individuals to be their own health care advocates, stressing the importance of early detection.
“To me, mammograms, talking to your doctor about your risk level, about your family history of breast
cancer, about the environmental risks of breast cancer – all these things are important,” he said in an interview with the American Cancer Society. “Ask your doctor, and get screened. I believe personally and professionally as a former physician in the importance of breast cancer screening.”
Looking back on his wife’s 2008 diagnosis, Jeong said that their life together seemed to suddenly stop in its tracks.
“I credit my wife with being so strong,” he told NPR. “And I remember right before she started her chemo … she just had a calmness about her. There was a calm strength that I don’t see in a lot of people.”
Jeong almost turned down the role of Mr. Chow but eventually took his wife’s encouragement to heart, he told NPR.
“It was my wife and even my mother-in-law telling me to take the role because you’re suffering from caregiver burnout. Because our twins are 1-year-old at the time, and I’m lighting the candle on both ends, and I was doing everything I could, you know, whether it was with the kids, or driving Tran to chemo, or making sure she was OK after she would get weak from the chemo. So ... they wanted me to have an outlet. Tran did say… ‘This is a good outlet.’”
Throughout the film, Jeong slid inside jokes in Vietnamese into his character’s dialogue that only his wife could understand – an exercise he referred to on the “Death, Sex & Money” podcast as “the most obscene love letter to a spouse one could ever have.”
The couple, who have been married since 2004, met at a happy hour for doctors in Los Angeles, where they continue to reside today with daughters Zooey and Alexa.
“It was almost like the lonely hearts club, you know – at a Dave & Buster’s restaurant,” he told NPR of meeting Ho. “Just kind of like, ‘Oh, it’s just so hard being single, and in LA, but also being a doctor.’ We’re all just kind of lamenting. And we were like, ‘Oh, wow. We have our misery in common. So – wanna go out?’”
Born in Detroit to South Korean immigrant parents, Jeong dreamed of a career in entertainment but was encouraged to pursue a more stable way of making a living. He went on to earn his medical degree, specializing in internal medicine, in 1995 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
During his residency in New Orleans, he won a stand-up comedy contest that led to an opportunity to perform at The Improv club in Los Angeles, where he set down his roots in the industry. When not practicing as a physician at a Woodland Hills hospital, he pursued theater and performed stand-up routines for $10 to $25 a night.
Soon after marrying Ho, Jeong quit his day job to chase his passion full-time. When director Judd Apatow was casting for an actor who also had medical experience, Jeong finally got the lucky break he was looking for – in the role of the doctor who delivers Katherine Heigl’s baby in the 2007 comedy “Knocked Up.”
Other gigs for supporting roles came flooding in, in films such as “Pineapple Express,” “All About Steve,” “Step Brothers” and “Role Models.” Since then, Jeong’s presence on both the big and small screens has become a constant, whether he’s judging the reality competition “The Masked Singer,” appearing as a cameo in “Avengers: Endgame,” creating the autobiographical sitcom “Dr. Ken” or starring in the popular film “Crazy Rich Asians.” He was also nominated for Male Breakout Star at the 2010 Teen Choice Awards for his role on the NBC sitcom “Community,” which ran from 2009 to 2015.
These days, audiences can catch Jeong on Netflix with his first comedy special, “You Complete Me, Ho,” which he calls a romantic ode to his wife – and is a play on her last name.
Clearly, Jeong remains a fiercely devoted husband, and weathering Ho’s battle with cancer together forged an unbreakable connection between the two.
“We have a bond that’s just so strong it’s not even funny,” he told the American Cancer Society. “We were always happy, and I married her because she made me laugh, and she has a sense of humor. We were already good friends as spouses, and that helped. We were there for each other as friends as well as husband and wife. Two friends, especially if they’re married, going through such an ordeal and to be fortunate to come out OK right now – it just makes us closer than we already were. I feel like we are one person.” O