Lela Lee (born in Los Angeles, California) is an American actress and cartoonist, television writer, and the creator of the animated cartoon Angry Little Asian Girl and the related comic strip Angry Little Girls.[1]
Lela Lee | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Cartoonist / Actress / Writer |
| Years active | 1994–present |
| Website | lelalee |
Career
Acting career
She is a film and television actress, with roles in the 1998 film Yellow and the 2002 film Better Luck Tomorrow. She was a series regular in the short-lived Sci Fi Channel series Tremors, and had a recurring guest role on NBC's Scrubs. Lee made a guest appearance in the first episode of Season Four of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing an angry Asian woman, who launches a physical and verbal attack on star Larry David after he suggests Tang is a common Chinese name. Lee was also in the episode "Animal Pragmatism" of Charmed as Tessa, a college student.
Angry Little Girls and Angry Little Asian Girl
Angry Little Girls was developed as a character she developed in 1994 when she was a sophomore at UC Berkeley. She developed the character after attending Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation with a friend.[2] That night, Lee stayed up drawing with typing paper and Crayola markers, and a video camera[2] and made the first episode "Angry Little Asian Girl, the First Day of School."[3] Three years after creating the first episode of the Angry Little Asian Girl, she created four more, and sent the five episodes titled Angry Little Asian Girl, Five Angry Episodes to festivals where they were well-reviewed by critics of the LA Times and LA Weekly.[4] These episodes, like the first, use foul language and shocking imagery to bring attention to issues surrounding the intersection of being Asian and a woman.[3] Audience members came up to her after screenings saying that ALAG spoke for them and that they too had similar experiences growing up in America. Lee then made a batch of T-shirts based on the show.[4]
Lee expanded ALAG to include other girls of different backgrounds and personalities. She took two years to teach herself how to draw comics with books checked out from the library. With the newly created characters, and an umbrella name of "Angry Little Girls" Lee turned her work into a weekly comic strip self-published on her website www.angrylittlegirls.com. Lee added characters of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds to increase her strip's public and commercial appeal.[3] In 2005, the first book of collected Angry Little Girls strips was published by Harry N. Abrams. Following this, several other themed collections of Lee's comics were published by the publisher's imprint, Abrams Comic Arts.[5]
Filmography
Television
| Year | Title | Role | Episodes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Relativity | Tour Guide | Episode: "Billable Hours" |
| 1998 | Felicity | Pauline | Episode: "Finally" |
| 1998 | Profiler | Kathy Jung | Episode: "Ties that Bind" |
| 2000 | Rude Awakening | Joyce | Episode: "Yes Sir, That's my Baby" |
| 2000 | Opposite Sex | Judy | Episode: "Homosexual Episode" |
| 2000 | Charmed | Tessa | Episode: "Animal Pragmatism" |
| 2001 | One on One | Reporter | Episode: "The Way You Make Me Feel" |
| 2001 | Friends | Wedding Guest | Episode: "The One With All the Cheesecakes" |
| 2001 | What I Like About You | Waitress | Episode: "Holly's First Job" |
| 2001–2002 | Scrubs | Bonnie | 3 Episodes |
| 2003 | Will and Grace | Ping | Episode: "Swimming to Cambodia" |
| 2003 | Tremors | Jodi Chang | 13 Episodes |
| 2004 | 10-8 Officers on Duty | Marilyn Choi | Episode: "Flirtin' With Disaster" |
| 2004 | Curb Your Enthusiasm | Bobbi | Episode: "Mel's Offer" |
| 2005 | Untitled Oakley & Weinstein Project | Officer Chin | Episode: "Pilot" |
| 2007 | The Young and the Restless | Speech Therapist | Episode: "1.8672" |
| 2009 | The Eastmann's | Mother | Episode: "Pilot" |
| 2014 | Angry Little Asian Girl | Kim, Maria, Deborah, misc voices | 12 Episodes |
| 2014 | Growing Up Fisher | Mrs. Han | 2 Episodes |
| 2018–2020 | Better Call Saul | Lillian Simmons | 2 Episodes |
Film
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Flow | Yel Fan |
| 1997 | Yellow | Janet |
| 1998 | Shopping for Fangs | Naomi |
| 2000 | The Girls' Room | Chloe |
| 2000 | Rave | Lisa |
| 2000 | This Guy is Falling | Alison |
| 2000 | The Medicine Show | Incompetent Nurse |
| 2000 | The Moment After | Sarone |
| 2001 | A Kitty Bobo Show | Maggie |
| 2002 | Better Luck Tomorrow | Slapper |
| 2003 | Exposed | Missy |
Writing credits
- Angry Little Asian Girl (2014) – creator, writer, executive producer.
- The First Day of School (2014) – writer
- Dinner Party (2014) – writer
- Kim's Date (2014) – writer
- Mother Lee's Etiquette (2014) – writer
- Sistahood (2014) – writer
- Deborah's Diet (2014) – writer
- Occupy Placentia (2014) – writer
- Chuy, the Undocumented Chicken (2014) – writer
- Kim's Twinkie Defense (2014) – writer
- Fast Food Rude (2014) – writer
- Xyla's Therapy (2014) – writer
- Anger Management (2014) – writer
