50 Fun Facts About Crazy Rich Asians

Which real carrier refused a product placement in Crazy Rich Asians, so the film invented its own?

Singapore Airlines was unsure the film would show the carrier and its customers in a good light, the producer said. The first-class suite of the made-up Pacific Asean Airlines was a purpose-built set.

For what token sum did the author of the novel Crazy Rich Asians option its film rights?

One dollar was all he asked, in exchange for a continuing say in creative decisions. An earlier suitor had proposed casting a white actress as Rachel Chu.

Which actress, who plays Eleanor Young in Crazy Rich Asians, lent the film her own emerald ring?

Michelle Yeoh loaned pieces from her personal jewelry collection, and the makers insisted everything the Young family wore be real. Guards were hired to protect the gems on set.

A Mandarin cover of which Coldplay song plays over the final scenes of Crazy Rich Asians?

Yellow was approved in under 24 hours after the director wrote to the band about growing up Asian-American and wanting to reclaim the word. Coldplay had hesitated at first.

Which streaming giant offered Crazy Rich Asians a greenlit trilogy, only to be turned down?

Netflix reportedly offered seven-figure paydays for every stakeholder, but the author and director chose Warner Bros. for the cultural impact of a wide cinema release.

Rachel Chu deliberately lets Eleanor Young win at which pastime at the climax of Crazy Rich Asians?

Mahjong mattered so much to the director that he hired an expert to choreograph the scene. Rachel hands over the tile Eleanor needs, showing she could have won herself.

Customs held up which fake stuffed animal for the Crazy Rich Asians set, believing it was real?

A tiger made of foam and fur in Thailand stands in the foyer of the Young family home. The mansion itself was an abandoned building the crew found full of monkey droppings.

Which BBC travel presenter landed his first major acting role as Nick Young in Crazy Rich Asians?

Henry Golding reached the director through a tip from an accountant, after finalists from Los Angeles and China failed to convince. He had once worked as a hairdresser.

Crazy Rich Asians was Hollywood's first modern-day studio film with a majority-Asian cast since which 1993 drama?

The Joy Luck Club arrived 25 years earlier, and one of its stars returned for the new film as the Young family matriarch.

Which actor from The Goonies said Crazy Rich Asians inspired his Oscar-winning return to acting?

Ke Huy Quan had quit acting in 2002 for lack of roles. Seeing fellow Asian actors on screen, he said, gave him serious FOMO.

What does Rachel Chu find in her hotel bed after leaving the bachelorette party in Crazy Rich Asians?

A dead fish lay beside a scrawled message calling her a gold digger. Nick's cousin Astrid helps her clean up and bury it.

Which food is the Young family wrapping when Eleanor first warns Rachel off in Crazy Rich Asians?

Dumplings are being folded when Rachel admires Eleanor's ring, which Nick's father had made because his own mother refused to hand over the family ring.

Where does Nick Young make his second, successful proposal to Rachel Chu in Crazy Rich Asians?

On an airplane about to leave for the United States, Nick kneels with his mother's own ring, the sign that Eleanor finally approves of the match.

How does Rachel Chu know Goh Peik Lin, the friend who takes her in during Crazy Rich Asians?

College roommates years earlier, the two reunite in Singapore, where Peik Lin is the one who reveals that Nick's family is essentially Singaporean royalty.

What does Astrid discover about her husband Michael Teo early in Crazy Rich Asians?

He is having an affair, which Michael later blames on the gulf between her fortune and his modest background as a former soldier.

What does Eleanor's private investigator reveal about Rachel Chu's mother's husband in Crazy Rich Asians?

He is still alive: Rachel had been told otherwise, and he is not her father at all. Her mother fled the abusive marriage for America while pregnant by an old schoolmate.

Which role does Nick Young fill at Colin Khoo's wedding, the reason for the trip in Crazy Rich Asians?

Best man is the job that takes Nick home for spring break; he tells Rachel it is about time people met his beautiful girlfriend.

In Crazy Rich Asians, Peik Lin says Eleanor sees Rachel as an unrefined version of which fruit?

Banana is Peik Lin's shorthand for someone Asian on the outside and Western within. She urges Rachel to earn Eleanor's respect by standing up to her.

In Crazy Rich Asians, Eleanor Young says she quit which course of study to marry and start a family?

Law school is the sacrifice Eleanor holds up as proof of putting family first, a pointed contrast with Rachel, the professor she accuses of chasing her passion.

Which specialty of professor Rachel Chu helps her outwit Eleanor Young at the end of Crazy Rich Asians?

Game theory lets Rachel see the stalemate Eleanor has built: whichever way Nick chooses, he loses either his family or the woman he loves.

Which Fresh Off the Boat star plays economics professor Rachel Chu in Crazy Rich Asians?

Constance Wu first had to turn the part down over a clash with her sitcom schedule, then wrote the director a letter that persuaded him to delay filming by four months.

Which rapper plays Goh Peik Lin in Crazy Rich Asians and adds verses to its end-credits song?

Awkwafina, born Nora Lum, recorded her verses for the closing version of Money (That's What I Want) in a separate studio from its singer, Cheryl K.

Which British star of the sci-fi series Humans plays fashion icon Astrid in Crazy Rich Asians?

Gemma Chan played a lifelike robot in Humans before becoming Astrid, then took two different Marvel roles, in Captain Marvel and Eternals.

Which comedian and licensed physician plays Peik Lin's father, Goh Wye Mun, in Crazy Rich Asians?

Ken Jeong filmed for less than a week and took the small part simply to belong to something he called monumental. He gave up practising medicine in 2006.

Which veteran actress, aged 91 on release, plays Nick's grandmother Shang Su Yi in Crazy Rich Asians?

Lisa Lu had played the Empress Dowager Cixi in the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor three decades earlier. She was born in Beijing in 1927.

Which Glee actor appears only in the mid-credits scene of Crazy Rich Asians, as Astrid's ex-fiancé?

Harry Shum Jr. gets one fleeting glance yet is billed among the main cast. The director said a follow-up film would give his character, Charlie Wu, far more to do.

Which Silicon Valley comedian plays Bernard Tai, Nick and Colin's old classmate, in Crazy Rich Asians?

Jimmy O. Yang was on the director's dream casting sheet before any casting was confirmed. On Silicon Valley he had started as a guest player earning $900 an episode.

Which Daily Show correspondent plays Eddie Cheng, Nick's cousin from Hong Kong, in Crazy Rich Asians?

Ronny Chieng knows the setting well: born in Johor Bahru, he commuted across the border to lessons in Singapore as a boy.

Which Philippine talk-show host, a president's daughter, plays Princess Intan in Crazy Rich Asians?

Kris Aquino is known in the Philippines as the Queen of All Media. Her mother and, later, her brother each served as the country's president.

Which director of Step Up 2: The Streets and the Wicked films made Crazy Rich Asians?

Jon M. Chu won the job with a visual presentation about growing up as a first-generation Asian-American. The novel even mentions him in passing, as its author knew his cousin.

Which relative of Nick Young calls himself "the rainbow sheep of the family" in Crazy Rich Asians?

Oliver T'sien, Nick's second cousin, is played by Nico Santos of the sitcom Superstore and becomes good friends with Peik Lin.

Who is the actress girlfriend whose film Alistair Cheng is financing in Crazy Rich Asians?

Kitty Pong is played by Singaporean actress Fiona Xie. In the novel she drops Alistair for a billionaire's son once she hears the Chengs are poorer than she thought.

Which resort-chain heiress marries Colin Khoo at the lavish wedding in Crazy Rich Asians?

Araminta Lee stands to inherit a resort empire worth a billion. Her bachelorette party, filmed at a Four Seasons resort, is where Rachel learns how hostile Nick's circle can be.

Which name does Nick Young use for his grandmother, the matriarch Shang Su Yi, in Crazy Rich Asians?

Ah Ma is the person Nick most wants Rachel to meet when he invites her home. At the wedding she wears a real orchid brooch lent by a jeweller.

What is the name of the Young family's ancestral estate in Crazy Rich Asians?

Tyersall Park was inspired by the home of the author's paternal grandparents, with whom he lived as a boy. He lent vintage family photographs to dress the set.

Rachel Chu marvels that Changi Airport has a movie theater and which other attraction in Crazy Rich Asians?

A butterfly garden impresses her so much that she writes off New York's JFK as nothing but salmonella and despair.

Goh Wye Mun calls his daughter Peik Lin the Asian version of which talk-show host in Crazy Rich Asians?

Ellen DeGeneres is the comparison he reaches for when he grumbles that the two went to the same school, yet Rachel left with a useful degree while his daughter came back as Asian Ellen.

Neena Goh says her gilded home in Crazy Rich Asians was inspired by a hall in which French palace?

Versailles and its Hall of Mirrors are her model, though Peik Lin mutters that Donald Trump's bathroom was the other. Set decorators added the excess gilding to a real house.

Eleanor Young's phrase "kaki lang", our own kind of people, comes from which language in Crazy Rich Asians?

Hokkien gives Eleanor the words she uses to tell Rachel she is a foreigner, an American who thinks only of her own happiness.

In the opening of Crazy Rich Asians, the Young family buys the Calthorpe, a grand hotel in which city?

London is an illusion here: the Calthorpe is really a colonial-era hotel in Southeast Asia, and the New York street scenes were filmed in the same region.

Which novelist wrote the bestseller Crazy Rich Asians and has a cameo in the film's gossip sequence?

Kevin Kwan began writing to preserve memories of Singapore he had shared with his dying father. Sales of the book rose by about 1.5 million copies after the film came out.

Which singer's ballad Can't Help Falling in Love is covered in the wedding scene of Crazy Rich Asians?

Elvis Presley's ballad was rerecorded for the film by YouTube singer Kina Grannis, who appears on screen as the wedding singer.

The Young family mansion in Crazy Rich Asians was filmed at the abandoned Carcosa Seri Negara in which city?

Kuala Lumpur's Carcosa Seri Negara was built for the British High Commissioner and later became a boutique hotel, which had shut down before the cameras arrived.

The final showdown in Crazy Rich Asians was shot at the indigo Blue Mansion in which Malaysian state?

Penang's Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion owes its colour to indigo dye imported from India. The crew redecorated it as a gaming parlour for the scene.

The wedding in Crazy Rich Asians was filmed at CHIJMES, a 19th-century Singapore complex built as what?

A convent, the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, gave CHIJMES its initials. Its Gothic chapel now serves as a function hall and wedding venue.

The wedding reception in Crazy Rich Asians unfolds among the Supertrees of which Singapore attraction?

Gardens by the Bay has 18 Supertrees, structures up to 50 metres tall that gather rainwater and solar power while ferns and orchids grow up their sides.

The engagement party that closes Crazy Rich Asians is set at which Singapore resort with three towers?

Marina Bay Sands is crowned by a SkyPark, a rooftop deck and infinity pool bridging all three towers. Tourism to Singapore rose after the film showed off landmarks like this one.

Nick and Rachel check in at which colonial-era landmark, home of the Singapore Sling, in Crazy Rich Asians?

Raffles Hotel opened in 1887 with just ten rooms. Nick picks it over the family home because, he tells Rachel, he wants her to himself for a bit.

Straight from the airport in Crazy Rich Asians, Nick and Rachel feast at which kind of Singapore venue?

A hawker centre called Newton Food Centre hosts the feast. It opened in 1971, built by the government to rehouse street hawkers, and the scene was filmed there on location.

Which novel is the first sequel to the bestseller that introduced Rachel Chu and Nick Young?

China Rich Girlfriend appeared in 2015, two years after the original. Warner Bros. confirmed a film version a week after the first movie opened, but it stalled for years.