Cool Zone Media.
Hi, I'm Ryan Seacrest and I'm Brian Dunkleman.
And this is the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, home of the Academy Awards and possibly the most televised theater in the world. Three months from now, live on this very stage, and as yet unknown talent will be launched into superstardom. We don't know who that is yet. Right now, they could be parking cars or even waiting on tables.
Who knows.
What we do know is by the end of the summer, that person's life will change forever because you at home decide who will become the next American Idol.
It's June eleventh, two thousand and two, and a new show called American Idol has just debuted on Fox. It was competing with some of the biggest shows of the day, although scripted stuff was in reruns by the summer to set the scene. Frazier, Scrubs, Girlfriends, Buffy, Small Bill, Gilmore Girls, on and on. If you were there, you know, if you don't, you weren't missing out on as much as
millennials tell you you were. American Idol's main competition that was airing a new episode was a rival reality show on ABC called The Mole.
Ten strangers playing from up to one million dollars, among them, a saboteur, a trader, the Mole, the winner, the one who answers the question who is the Mole?
Oh?
Is that Anderson Cooper pre CNN. Yes it is And one of the funniest things to me in the world is that Anderson Cooper. Iconic NEPO Baby says that nine to eleven woke him up and got him to return to Centrist News instead of hosting The Mole and The Mole Season one Unbeatable reality TV. You can watch it online for free anyways. American Idols path to being on
American primetime TV was not smooth. The format was cribbed from popular talent shows from overseas like Pop Idol in the UK and Pop Stars in New Zealand, and the guys who made these shows had a big hand in
bringing it to the US. Producers Simon Fuller and Nigel Lithgow brought it to the States, but Fox Network owner and feminist icon Rupert Murdoch wasn't sure that this would play in the US, and the show only made it onto the network because his daughter Elizabeth had seen Pop Idol in the UK and thought that it would work in America, and boy did it work. American Idol won the night in ratings when it debuted nine point nine viewers tuned in to the Moles six point nine and
a Fraser reruns seven point seven million. Excellent showing from Fraser heads there all over my face. The format of the show would be tweaked many times in the years to come. One of the most major examples is that Ryan Seacrest went on to host Idol for over twenty years and Brian Dunkleman quit after a season. Whoops. Pop Idol had four judges, but American Idol only managed to get three to commit in time for the show to start taping, and so.
We have first up Grammy Award winner Randy Jackson.
I think the main thing really for me is uniqueness, having a different, unique style of different sounding voice, and also just having you know, phenomenal talent.
Singer, songwriter, dancer, choreographer and pop diva legend all Abdul.
Would you think my perspective would be absolutely different than the other two judges because I'm an artist.
And the acid tongue star of pop idol in the UK, Simon Cown.
We are going to tell people who cannot sing and who have no talent that they have no talent and that never makes you popular. We are going to show the audition process as it really is because shows in the past have not shown the brutality of auditions.
Auditions are horrible places to.
Go and I'm warning you now you are about to enter the audition from.
Hell, whether you were a reviewer or not. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdull, and Simon Cowell are one of the most iconic millennial pop culture trios ever. They were perfectly calibrated for the early two thousands. Paula was the nice one, Randy was the constructive one, and Simon was evil and sometimes funny. He was evil, and because he was evil, he had a lot of success. The most significant example is less than a decade later, he was one of the inventors of One Direction. Do you understand the level
of evil that requires? Simon Cowell was the boy conjurer, and his criticism of singers he thought were bad weren't just cutting the cold, get extremely personal and were often what people were talking about the next day, even more so than the performances themselves.
Yes, you have personality, but dogs have personality.
The audition of him being on the shoe was horrible.
Here's how the show worked. When it aired, Contestants between sixteen and twenty four years old were encouraged to come out and audition in droves across the country. As the production started to weave through the most talented contestants, or, as would become clear, the contestants that would play the best on TV. You'll see what I mean and immediately, American Idol auditions were huge. Thousands of contestants would line
up outside stadiums across the country. The record ended up being twenty thousand people in Philadelphia in two thousand and seven, and hopefuls would be whittled away round after round, and only around one hundred and fifty people would actually make it to the judges table. From here, good singers are pushed to something called Hollywood Week. Judges would continue to eliminate contestants through the semifinals, at which point the decision
would be turned over to the public. Voting was done first by calling a telephone number, then you could text a vote starting in the second season, and you couldn't vote online until twenty ten, and finally at the end of the season a winner was announced in a gigantic finale at the Dolby Theater in la And in those early seasons, the prize was massive, a major record deal with as many as six albums, attached management from Idols in house representatives, and a two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars advance. As the show grew less popular, the prizes dwindled down to a potential single and closer to sixty thousand dollars. If you were around for the early Idol years, you really couldn't avoid it, and the show was turning out genuine stars. Maybe this is me being nine coming out, but the thrill of seeing Kelly Clarkson demolish one Justin Guarini.
The winner of American Idol two thousand and two is.
Kelly plugs incredible and she immediately became one of the biggest pop stars in the world. And sure, that nearly ten million viewership for the premiere was impressive, but the show gained serious steam throughout that first season. When Kelly Clarkson won, over twenty two million people were watching, and that just doesn't happen anymore on Network TV, and thankfully Kelly Clarkson is heure with us to this day. We
love her. She's a legend. This success continued for American Idol into its second season, which featured the very wholesome rivalry between Ruben Stutdared and Clay Aiken member them.
The winner of American Idol two thousand and three is Ruben Stutner.
Ruben Studdard eventually won, but they both went on to find mild success separately, but in a twist that I love, they found even more success when they continued working together. Since they were on American Idol, Ruben and Clay have done a Christmas show together on Broadway. Hi, I'm Ruben Studdard and he's the person that lost to Ruben Starter and we're talking about Ruben and Clay's first annual Christmas Carol Family Fun Pageants Spectacular Reunion Show. I mean, you
gotta love them. The two tour together for the twenty year anniversary of their original competition on Idol and recently appeared on the Masks as two Beats b ee Ts like the Vegetable. Twenty years after they met, They appeared as the Vegetable beats on the masked singer singing a Michael Bublay cover. If you don't believe me, it sounds beautiful.
Coming bad.
But I can't stress enough they are dressed as glamorous root vegetables. But when Ruben and Clay were competing on Idol back in two thousand and three, this was even bigger than Kelly Clarkson's moment. Thirty eight million people watched the finale that year when Ruben stuttered one. That's twice as many people who watched the Oscars this past year. American Idol was a star making vehicle. The early winners and runners up became household names, and many had real
staying power. In case you forgot names like Jennifer Hudson, Carrie Underwood, Jordan Sparks, Adam Lambert, David Archiletta, and Catherine McPhee were all Idle contestants. And it's not hard to understand why American Idol was such a major force. We can talk all day about how reality TV was really starting to boom around this time, but I think the simplest explanation is that this show literally narrativized the American dream. Most of these contestants were young people from the middle
of nowhere, and the show really leaned into that. In classic reality TV fashion, the most promising contestants would be framed adoringly as talented kids with big dreams, like it's impossible to not root for these people based on how the show frames them. Hello Kelly, Hello, I'm a big fan of you. By the way, I just turned twenty the same girl day birthday comings And by the third season of American Idol, audiences were well aware that the show was not a fluke. But as I recall, there
was more than one type of American Idol viewer. There were the people who watched every single episode and obsessively called and texted in their votes for their favorite people in the later rounds. And there were people who were mainly in to watch the auditions. I was one of those. And if you don't watch for the good auditions, and you won't, you were watching for the terrible auditions. Weirdly,
we talked about this phenomenon recently on sixteenth Minute. People who first experienced their fifteen minutes of fame after being shown in some public freak show styles setting, and that is kind of what we're looking at here people who were not good, and it was unclear in the way American Idol framed them if they knew they weren't good. But here they are being paraded on national television so that the famous three judges can confirm that they are indeed not very good. Oh good.
By that does.
These kinds of contestants range from people who actually do think they are very talented singers to people who just kind of seem to want to be on TV for whatever reason, whether it's personal gain or just attention. And as we now know, this is a kind of person someone who would want to appear on as many reality TV shows as possible. But at the time this wasn't quite as understood, so the contestants on Idol who were bad were framed as completely delusional.
I want to be the next American Idol, and I want to make it to Hollywood, and it's been my all time dream for a long time to become a big, famous singer performer, and this is just one way to do it if I make it.
Thank you an elementary school Jamie was not alone in Reveling and a Bad audition. They were so popular that Fox would air entire specials around them. During season one, they aired something called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a whole special about auditions, and while a bad audition would occasionally make for conversation at the water cooler, something that allegedly happened, it wasn't until season three of Idle that, at least for a time, one bad audition overshadowed the
eventual winner. And the winner that season is incredible and thankfully is successful to this day. It was Fantasia Burrino, and she was nominated for an oscar last year. But for a time, the most famous person to be on Idol in two thousand and four was someone who never made it to Hollywood Week. And you can tell how you're supposed to feel about the audition based on how this contestant's introduction is edited. For comparison, here is how we meet eventual winner Fantasia.
Even nineteen year old Fantasia Burrino.
Can predict how the judges will react. I predict that Randy's going to like way years Paula.
I think she's gonna like, but.
I think I'm gonna have a little trouble out of common.
But I'm ready for Simon A ready for Simon. And here is how we meet the subject of this week's sixteenth minute.
The producer's cast and crew to express their gratitude to engineering student William Hung for showing up and shaking his bonbon William, Yes.
Talk to me, tell me your name. You blow me off.
Like it's all the same you, lady person, I'm taking away like your bomb.
Yeah, babe bee. She begs, she begs, Oh baby, she moves.
She moves, William Hung. Your sixteenth minute starts now. Welcome to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's main characters and learn how their moment affected them and what it says about us and the Internet. And this week we're talking about someone I consider to be the patron saints of main characters, William Hung and just a headsap. This is going to be a two part episode because there is a lot going on in
this story. Not only does it take place at a time where the Internet was still catching on in terms of being a part of shaping our minds and television, but it happened over two decas gades ago and intersects with how turn of the century reality TV framed people.
Particularly in this case Asian Americans and immigrants. The she Bangs moment lives on in infamy, but I want to take special attention towards that issue, specifically in the second part of this episode, to examine where it fell in the history of cruelty and antipathy towards Asian men in Western media. But for all intents and purposes, the subject of this story, William Hung himself, rejects a lot of
the popular narratives around his legacy. So for part one of this episode, I'm going to tell you the story of William Hung as it rolled out in real time, and then we'll chat and in next week in part two, we'll take a look at some of these narratives, ones that intersect with anti Asian racism and how American reality TV can be uniquely debaucherous. And this story is a real throwback. So buckle in and come with me if you dare to two thousand and four. Ooh, this year
was formative for me. George W. Bush became president again and didn't even need to lie about it this time. A movie I consider critical to my personality Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera starring Gerard Butler as the phantom in the actual worst vocal Performance of two thousand and four comes out.
Stood two.
And William Hung becomes the most famous American Idol contestant of all time for a quote unquote bad audition at the beginning of the summer, just as school was getting out, and our relationship to the Internet was very particular at this time. To set the scene, this is a year where MySpace was the most popular social media site. It was the year that Facebook launched in a strange Zuckerbergian horny experiment. It was before YouTube even existed. Blogs and
message boards are the norm. Blogger and Friendster and Mozilla, Firefox and Confessions by Usher are playing at a dance. The top shows around Idle on TV where CSI lost, Desperate Housewives Survivor, and Everybody Loves Raymond, and Reality TV
specifically was having a huge moment. What constitutes reality TV is pretty nebulous, but it has been around in some form since TV has existed, beginning with candid Camera coming from radio to TV in the late nineteen forties, then giving way to early dating shows like The Dating Game. In the sixties, televised talent shows became more popular in the eighties, with That's Incredible debuting on ABC in the eighties and Cops, the most sinister reality show of all time,
starting up in nineteen eighty nine. But I think most people consider the start of contemporary reality shows with MTV's The Real World in nineteen ninety two. Then in the late nineties into the early two thousands, the debaucherous contest based shows began to take off. Survivors started in two thousand, then Big Brother, then Fear Factor and on and on. The Bachelor premiered less than three months before American Idol,
and this was just in the US. Again. Idyl was a direct ripoff of two different international talent shows, and it kind of scratched the itch of a wide range of genres. It had the exploitative, luring character study of everyday people as in Survivor, while also having the pop of an old school star search setup. And yes, while it took Idle creator Simon Fuller a little bit of pixie dust to sell Fox on the value of the show, it wasn't a shock that it did well. It was
literally cooked in a lab to do well. Here's some initial reception of the show in the New York Daily News. Two days after the.
Premiere, Fox's music talent search series American Idol is looking like the first new hit of the summer. American Idol also demonstrates the unpredictability of summer reality shows. Several weeks ago, Fox introduced Looking for Love Bachelorettes in Alaska, in which five women will select a husband from fifty eligible men, but audiences haven't bothered to watch.
And not for nothing. I would have watched that shit pronto, put it in a syringe for Jamie. But you get the idea. American Idol blew up at a time where reality TV was just becoming a fixture of American life. But how do we get from here? To William Hung nearly two years after the show's debut. Well, here's what you need to know about William, and I'll let him
expand in our interview. William was born in Hong Kong in nineteen eighty two and then moved to the La area Van Nis to my local heads with his family when he was eleven. This is where he spent his adolescence and he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to study civil engineering. And it's here in the early two thousands, that William learns that American Idol is holding auditions in nearby San Francisco in September two thousand and three,
when he's twenty years old. I'll let him tell the story of auditioning in more detail, but it boils down to this. William had a good sense of humor about himself. He enjoyed pop music, and he was familiar with American Idol because everyone was. And so he auditions. He gets through the general round, he gets through the producer, and he keeps on getting through until he's told on the second day of auditioning that he will be presented to
Randy Simon and Paula themselves. The gods have agreed to meet with him, but before we get to the audition itself. A lot of people I spoke to about this episode were kind of surprised at how early William Hung became a sensation in American Idol's run, and I can't help but agree. There are only a few other contestants who I remembered, but no one like William. In fact, the only other two contestants I remembered clearly as having bad
auditions were from two thousand and eight. In twenty ten, first pants on the ground.
Pants on a prayer, pants on a prayer, looking like a fool with your pants on.
The prayer, and especially no sex allowed.
So I promise her love as she springs along cor set This week, I love it straw, no sex loud.
I don't want to be part of your crowd.
And you can see from these examples alone, neither of these guys are good singers. But that's not exactly the point, is it. There's plenty of bad singers that audition for shows. These people are good TV and lean into, in some cases religious and racialized tropes that Americans would be familiar with, and do not challenge them whatsoever. But that's not because the contestants embody these fictional tropes. It's because that's how
they're framed. And it's here that I want to take you on a divergent journey, a tale of two auditions, if you will, because when William Hung's audition airs, he becomes an overnight star, one of the earliest people to straddle the worlds of traditional media and word of mouth and the power of the Internet. And this reaction and legacy has a lot to do with William himself, but also has to do with how we're conditioned to see him based on how the show frames him. So here
is past one, the aired audition. We're gonna fast forward to singing because you know what it sounds like.
But we have found the next key. My name is Ryan.
Oh, nice to me too, Nice to see you, buddy.
Let me tell you what I'm gonna sing. I'm thinking Ricky Martin. She bangs, bangs.
Yes, it's a good song.
So but so it's either I really do well by lighting up the stage right, or I don't.
The producers, cast and crew would like to express their gratitude to engineering student William Hung for showing up and shaking his bond.
Bond.
Yes, talk to me, tell me your name. You've blow me off like it's all the same and wasted by the way.
You can't sing, you can't dance, So what do you wanted to say?
Hey, you know I have no professional training of singing.
No, we didn't believe it either.
No, this surprise of the century, This whole segment is a little over a minute. We meet William, we learn he's an engineering student, and we see him bomb. Paula does an awkward, encouraging dance, and Randy covers his face with a napkin to hide the fact that he's laughing. Behind William the faces of Ruben Stuttard and Kelly Clarkson loom and if you've seen the audition, and I know you have, William is dancing kind of awkwardly along with the music before he stopped by Simon and then he
is summarily rejected by the Gods. And that's the clip. But that's a lot to happen in the space of a minute, and it speaks to the economical way that American Idol editors and producers condensed ten thousand auditions into a single episode of television to get a public reaction.
And boy was there a public reaction. But before we get there and forge ahead into William's career, I want to bring you to that second path the one where Williams audition wasn't compressed in the seventy seconds and gives far more insight into why William has come to audition in the first place. So here's pathway too, a segment from the five minute cut of William's audition.
I grew up in Los Angeles, California. I was originally born from Hong Kong. So I've been here the United States for ten years and I was currently studying at UC Berkeley right now. It's kind of odd, like why I chose to even audition the first place, because my major is simple engineering. This is not totally not related to music, but I really like music. I want to make music my living.
He expands a little more in the preamble with the.
Judges, William, why are you here?
I'm here to sing to America, to sing of America? Okay, all right, I'm here for for the Trinity to sing to America.
Because you think you could be the.
Next American idol.
Absolutely, because I'm singing from my heart. I might not be the best singer around the world, but I know that I'm singing from my heart, and I put every bit of energy into it.
Really.
Yes, what's name?
H U n G?
Yes? Do you have brothers and sisters?
No?
I don't. I'm the only child, the only child. Yes. Do your parents tell you you have a great voice?
No, they don't realize.
Actually they don't realize it.
No. No, because my when I was young, my parents like to sing karaoke. I was there with them and sing with them as as a hobby.
And what do they do when you sing with them?
What do I do?
What did they do?
What did they do?
Why I sing with them? They thought I'm okay, they die, They thought I have I have some I have a chance of, you know, making it to the next level.
And again there's a lot more information you get here. He acknowledges he's not the best singer. And look, why is he here if he knows that? The age old question of reality TV returns and you get more from the judges when William finishes, and Simon Cowell really turns the knife as you might.
Expect, William, it's one of actually the worst auditions we've had this year, if I'm being honest, seriously, I mean everything about it was grotesque.
Oh stop it grotesque. It was stop it.
You can't sing, you can't dance. So what do you What do you want me to say?
I already gave my best and I have no regrets at all.
Good for you, that's good.
That's good. That's good.
That's the best attitude. Yeah, all right, soy, yes or no? No, William, you know you're not good enough for this dude, But at least you came here, you had a good time, You had fun, right.
Yes, did you think?
And we had fun watching it? Okay, thank you so much for coming down.
William, go and do some homework.
Ultimately, I think this longer cut makes the judges seem even crueler. Cowl's saying grotesque about William in particular, something that Randy and Paula to people with more humanity who happen to be people of color, immediately protest to. And this clip further asked the question of how William feels about his own ability. In one breath, he says he knows he isn't great, and the next he says he knows he can make a living as a singer and it's his dream. But it's this moment.
You can't sing, you can't dance, So what do you mean to say?
I already gave my best and I have no regrets at all.
That I feel sums William up the best no matter what others say, he has no regrets. Contrast this with how this is presented in the first broadcast.
You can't sing, you can't dance, so what do you mean to say?
And you know I have no professional training of singing.
No.
An unrelated response from William is spliced in in no small part, I think, to make him seem more delusional, like he thinks they were so blown away by his performance that they would be impressed by his lack of training and while awkward, this is how that response actually comes up in the full clip.
No, William, you know you're not good enough for this, dude, but at least you came here.
You had a good time.
You had fun, right, Yes, and.
We had fun watching you.
Okay, thank you so much for coming down.
No, we didn't go and do some homework.
Okay, you won't tell your parents that you missed today to school.
Yeah, no, you know I have no professional training of singing. No.
So the context is actually quite different. He's speaking more defensively after being roundly rejected, almost offering an explanation for the performance, instead of the edit we see where he's positioned as being almost arrogant about it. This is the nature of reality TV, and it's prompted endless discussion since
the early two thousands. Today, I think it's far more normal to assume what you're watching on reality TV isn't real than is but in the early two thousands, that built in skepticism wasn't fully formed, and it wasn't unusual to take things like that at face value. These days you have examples like Love Is Blind contestants suing their network for applying them with alcohol and misrepresenting them in
the edit while paying them very little. But honestly, if you made those same complaints twenty years ago, the understanding of how these shows were built and profited from wasn't really well understood enough to build meaningful empathy for any of their participants. And so William is presented to the world as this William pathway.
One the producers, cast and crew would like to express their gratitude to engineering student William Hung for showing up and shaking his bund And it's.
This version of William that first becomes a viral sensation, but not necessarily overnight. It takes mainstream media outlets a few days before they start to jump onto the William train, but once it starts, it's unstoppable. The Asian boy came in, of course, he goes by William, Hong Abdul says, beginning to giggle like a kid. On the first day of gym class. On his list were two songs, and he said, A'll sing God Bless America and the second song was
she Bangs. What a remarkable American Idol discovery in a nutshell. If you turn Clay ache and inside out, you would discover William.
American Idol executive producer Nigel Lithgow admits that they are anxious to get the Bay Area belter back for a mid series special tentatively titled Uncut, Uncensored, and Untalented.
Yes, William became a sensation to his bafflement because he'd auditioned four months earlier and had no indication of how his segment had been edited. And if you don't know, that's just kind of how reality TV works to this day unless you're a cast member who's also a credited
producer or otherwise involved in the production. So William confirmed to me that when he auditioned, he signed a release form that basically meant he had no control over how much, or if any of his audition would appear in the final cut. He's signing over the footage of his likeness and effectively all authorial control of how we meet him. But this story didn't move at the speed most stories
due today. William takes a little while to start meaningfully engaging with the sensation, and I think if it happened now, the ship might have already sailed. But media in two thousand and four moved a little slower. There were waves in which William became more popular, giving American idol producers time to respond to and gauge what to do with his popularity. Producer Nigel Lithgow commented in something called zap Tuit News in mid February, nearly a month after William's audition aired.
I don't know what the future holds. He's going to be cold to do things, and if he's happy to do them, that's great. He shouldn't give up Berkeley. Obviously, he's an extremely intelligent guy and realizes that this could be his five minutes of fame.
Mm hmm.
Potent phrase, salient phrase. In the immediate aftermath of the She Bangs audition, there was buzz in the news and online. But part of the reason we're still talking about him now is because Hung eventually became amenable to all this attention. This appears to have happened sometime in the first month after the audition aired because Hung was rejecting appearance requests
at first. At the end of February, Hung turned down a chance to headline the halftime show of a pro lacrosse team in Philadelphia, citing the need to focus on his studies as the reason he was doing the occasional interview in the first month, but certainly not dropping his life entirely from an entertainment to night piece. From February tenth.
I wasn't expecting this media exposure. I think it's a bit overwhelming. It's also a little bit surprising because I didn't expect this overwhelming fan base. I don't know. I'm really not sure about this, but it seems positive.
As William talks about in our interview, the amount of protracted attention he was receiving, the King difficult to resist, and not strictly because of attention either. There was money in this and people weren't growing less interested in him. But again, this fervent kind of attention cuts a number of different ways, because it's in response to a fundamentally dishonest version of how William first responded during that audition, and in a truly archaic Internet landscape, early fan sites
for him started to emerge, both genuine and ironic. But before we look at those, can I just say, combing through early two thousands fan sites nearly induced in epileptic attack in me so much neon, so many flashing gifts, just a complete misunderstanding of proper line spacing and fonts awful. You're welcome because, make no mistake, there was a vital Internet community around William, one that became impossible for both
him and American Idol to ignore. On the earnest side, there was Billy hung dot com, a site that aimed to raise money to help William record an album.
They said, while William may not have the raw talent that the judges were looking for, America sees something different. William Hung, in some small way, represents each of us and how we strive to reach our dreams, ignoring all the naysayers on the way. If William succeeds in reaching his dream this will teach all of us that we can reach any potential we set our mind to reach. If he doesn't achieve his goals, perhaps it is America and not William that has failed.
And on the other side, be mocking sites with the same terrible blinking lights, most notably save William Hung dot com.
They say this, We asked him to put down the microphone and step away from the stage, but William Hung wouldn't listen. When the music stops, Will is going to wake up to a cruel reality. People haven't been laughing with him. They've been laughing at him. Will's wild ride is going to come to a very lonely end by
the end of the year. You'll probably laugh. Then, feeling guilty, you'll say, oh, well, we believe Will is going to need some serious psychological counseling, so we are collecting donations.
This was matched with increasing mainstream attention, which I will summarize through this god awful Jimmy fallon impression on snl uh trigger warning for everything.
Let me just say I have no professional training in us.
Talk to me, tell me your name, you call me up like it's on the same uh huh uh huh. But the main website that launched him as an online personality was done by a couple named Don and Laura Chin, and their site, William Hung dot net, got over four million hits the first week of its launch. Add that to an online petition with one hundred thousand signatures to send Hung to Hollywood in late February two thousand and four, over a month after his appearance, and neither Idle nor
Hung could ignore it any longer. They wanted him back. And remember that audition special Nigel Lithgow mentioned earlier. They did that in early March two thousand and four. But unlike the season one audition special, these auditions were all bad, uncut, uncensored, untalented.
They braved the auditions, They braved the provoke critiques of the judges Tonight, you brave their performances live in person. Was the panel wrong to keep them in the dark? Or do they belong on this stage? Uncut, uncensored, but untalented? You watch, you decide.
It's wild. The opening of the special pans across people who did poorly in the auditions and brings them back for an hour of prime time entertainment hosted by Ryan Seacrest wearing a suit jacket with a T shirt and jeans. Come on, and William, of course, is the best saved for last on this show.
William the Guy's gotten over seven million hits on his fan website.
Once an anonymous face in a crowded holding room. This man's life has changed beyond compare. Once he walked the campus of Berkeley alone, Now he needs a police escorts to make a chew with civil engineering classes. Once merely a number, his name is now legended across the country. Even Jimmy Fallon paid homage to William on Saturday Night Live. He's the latest American sixteen sensations.
I get recognized everywhere. It's kind of difficult to get around without getting recognized.
I guess his banging puts even Ricky Martin to shame.
He is hung, and as you can hear, the Internet is cited as a big reason he's held on to all this attention. William is a celebrity who straddles time and technology. He's really only getting his dues six weeks after he first appeared, But the Internet is a crucial part of this success. But it's still framed as kind of a joke.
You see you, h Wow, your life is completely changed.
Huh.
I can't believe it. Yeah, neither can we.
So it's pretty indisputable that William Hung is the reason that this special happened at all. And if there's any clearer indication of how famous he was becoming. It was rumored that a clay Achin special was postponed to make room for uncut, uncensored, untalented. Being famously bad could be more profitable than being famously good. But I love clay Achin Invisibles my go to karaoke show, and it hasn't brought the house down once. Things had changed for William
at this point. I love I heard that you were offered a record bill. Is it true?
Yes?
It is?
Oh, and what did you decide to do?
Did you take that? I'm still looking over the small details. Oh, yes, So what you have an agent? Now I have I'm getting somebody to walk on it. My dad again? Agents. Oh, I mean I'm trying to walk on it.
You have.
It's Team Hung, all right, it's I mean those are I mean, contrasts are very serious deals. Yes, and so they require attention. That's true.
And the record he's talking about here was very real and recorded absurdly fast. Just a month after this special aired, William's album was out on April sixth, two thousand and four, and it was titled Inspiration like you heard in the primetime interview. The album carefully projects Hung's image, inspirational in the no regrets sense, but still clearly pushing him to look silly. Of course, it leads with The she Bang's cover, and the rest are kind of randomized covers with really
basic karaoke tracks behind them. With respect to william it sounds like an album that was recorded in a weekend, because it was He covers eagles.
On cooing am I as he covers Elton John and then' Gonna be.
As a tibine And of course the album can't be complete without the YMC a.
WHYMC.
It's hard to say, why m C hey, I'm everything?
Well your man to John you can hang out with Pole say.
Interwoven into this worth these zen like monologues that fed into Williams. Don't give up persona.
Even with a lot of talent and singing, even with a lot of talent in whatever you choose to do, you still have to put in this hard walk and you need that determination and persevereance not to give up.
And was this album reviewed well, No, of course not. But by the end of April it had broken the top thirty in the country with over forty thousand sales, and it would go on to move two hundred thousand. William got paid a twenty five thousand dollars advance to record the album, which you Don't need Me to tell you is a life changing amount of money, especially for a college student, and so he decided to take a step back from school while he explored whatever this was.
But this didn't come without its fair share of criticism, particularly among Asian writers and critics who couldn't help it feel uncomfortable with the way that William was being positioned by the media. Emil Guillermo wrote for s Fgate in April two thousand and four.
When I first saw Hong Kong born UC Berkeley engineering student William Hung sing that Ricky Martin song on Fox's American Idol last January, I tried to ignore it, but after Hung's humiliation, there came a nice outpouring of sympathy for the rejected puppy dog. Here was an accented Asian American with bad hair, bad teeth, bad moves, and a bad accent, and even though he can't sing, America still loved him. Certainly, there'd be no shortage of worthy candidates
for Hung Like stardom. Regular American Idol viewers know tons of good singers that have been rejected and abused by these shows. Simon Cowell, the difference here Hung is Asian American and the accented foreigner gag is still considered acceptable shtick in modern comedy, at least when it comes to
Asian Americans. As Asian Americans, we look through this racial lens and we see this guy who embodies all these stereotypes we are trying to escape from, said James Howe, a documentary filmmaker who explored Asian American male sexuality in Masters of the Pillow.
And we will be talked about this more in depth next week, but this conversation is obviously very relevant then and now, and something that Williams spoken on for two decades, including in our interview and the rest of two thousand and four becomes a complete whirlwind for him. There is this very two thousand music video to accompany his she
Bangs cover. There's a vanity documentary called hang In with Hung, and in old school fashion, he goes on this extensive late night tour to promote the album.
Maskats's best known RIZ rendition of Ricky Martin she Bangs at the Fox American Idola Audition since Na has become an overnight cultural phenomenon. Lady Gentlemen, Harris and I performing Yes that very song from his debut CD Inspiration, Please Welcome William Hung, Lady Guleman.
And By May two thousand and four, William Hung is one of the top acts in the country, performing at Wango Tango at the Rose Bowl over a week before Fantasia Burina actually won season three of American Idol. The other acts at Wango Tango this year buckle In were out Cast Ashley Simpson, The Backstreet Boys, Hillary and Haley, Duff, Beefy Dobson, Oh My God, the Pussycat Dolls, nerd Jeded Jackson,
The Black Eyed Keys, and I could keep going. It was two thousand and four and William Hung had made it. But things started to slow down a little after Season three of American Idol wrapped up. He made bank with ads for Jack in the Box, Singular Wireless, and Ask Jeeves, but by late summer the attention appeared to be slipping. In August, the contra cost at times said William was quote still hanging on to his fifteen minutes unquote by
taking his act to Singapore. Then he released a second an album in two thousand and four called Hung for the Holidays that didn't go over quite as well as Inspiration.
City s, I Walched, Busy, Sy Watched Dress and Holliday stylele in the Airds.
And things never again really reached the heights that they had for William in two thousand and four, with year end lists declaring William Hung around for a long time. From here, William becomes a popular reference, but was unlikely to make those big wango tango appearances he once did, particularly after his third and final album, Miracle Happy Summer from William Hung failed to make waves in two thousand and five because the.
Sun is shutting, Oh the Sun. Those like a perfect Day, I love it, we love it.
Fan sites are updated less frequently and then not at all. He makes a few cameos here and there, most notably in Arrested Development in two thousand and six.
If you know, you know, well, it looks like we've got a mistrial.
But on the plus side, we've also got a hung.
Jury hit it. But William was soon down to private appearances and gigs. A two thousand and six clipping said he charged four thousand dollars to play your holiday party, He'd made appearances at baseball games, he was declared the art of choke king question Mark. The list goes on, and by the end of the two thousands he seemed to just be scraping by, and the whole ditching college for entertainment thing didn't seem like the right choice anymore.
So it was time to return to school and get a day job, even in the midst of a surprise cameo on Idol in twenty ten. Because keep in mind, William is consistent in having no bad blood with the show, he then made a try of it as a high school math teacher for a time, something he references in his Ted Talks because for some reason, if you're a sixteenth minute character, you will somehow end up with a Ted talk. He talks about his experience teaching here.
But then when I asked the students to do the math problems, they refused. Could it be my thinking? Then my master teacher gestured to me to get our class. He said, William, if you kick this up, I will fail you. He had to take over the class for rest of the day. When I went home, I cried because I felt like that was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. It's like getting booed off the stage.
And look, anyone teaching high schoolers is five thousand times braver than me. I would never After teaching high school, William went back to school as a student, finishing his degree in math at cal State Northridge in twenty ten, then getting a master's degree, and he's now working on a second master's degree. After he flunked out as a teacher, he became a data analyst for the despised La County Sheriff's Department, leading me to the crucial question, does a
cab include William Hung? Very possibly? He then goes over to the Department of Public Health, then more recently, back to the Sheriff's department. William, I just want to talk. But through all this, William keeps up with his public profile. There the Ted Talks in the twenty tens, and there's his on and off career as a celebrity poker player.
So obviously the dream for a lot of people is to end up playing professionally. And I feel like You've done a lot of cool things in your life. You got to sing, you got to travel the world and perform for people, so what would it feel like to reach that level of being able to play poker professionally.
I think you'll be awesome because if I can't do that like some of the tournament professionals, I get to travel across the world through charity like you, That'd be fantastic.
And this poker side hustle started as a hobby and began to tumble into gambling addiction, which Hanga said contributed to the end of his first marriage. In twenty twenty four, at the beginning of his making the press rounds for the twentieth anniversary of the She Bangs audition, he shared about recovering from gambling addiction. This is from a talk with People magazine.
I knew I was good at poker, but then I got greedy. I got into sports betting, the whole gamut. I know better now. I wasn't supposed to do those things, but I did it anyway, and.
I paid for it.
I got divorced, and I learned I had to be smart about which risks I chose to take.
But through all of this, over the course of twenty years, William's message has remained consistent even as he's had to contend with all of this criticism, exploitation, and even addiction. He's an extremely resilient person and very kind. And when we come back, I'm speaking with a man himself, William m f huh. Welcome back to sixteenth minute, when American
Idol debuted. I was in element Cory School and was so inspired to also become a pop star like Kelly Clarkson that I went to audition to sing the national anthem at a minor, minor league baseball game in my city in spite of the fact that I was paralyzingly shy. And guess what, bitch, I got the gig wearing what I now realize, we're somewhat culturally insensitive twisties and a
Walmart shirt that said all American Girl. I sang the national anthem to four thousand people, and I was fine, take off your hat and stand or don't because America is not a respectable place. But listen to baby Jamie. Okay, a little pitchy dog at the end, but good for her. She's got a big future in radio. And today we are revisiting the saga of William Honk and I say, why not just cut to the chase and let's talk
to the man himself. So, without further ado, here is my interview with the one and only William Honk.
Hi everyone, this is William Houn. You're probably the only from my American Idol audition back in two thousand and four. It was a very unique audition. I sang the song by Ricky Martin.
She bangs the definitive performance of that song. With all due respect to Ricky Martin. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm so excited to talk to you.
You're welcome.
It's the twentieth anniversary of your audition originally airing, and there were some pieces and some interviews with you. What is it like to reflect on that moment.
I can't believe the time went by so fast.
Before we get into talking about American Idol and reflecting on that, tell me a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up, How did you grow up? Who were you at the time of this audition.
Well, I used to enjoy singing karaoke when I was very young, around ten years old with my parents. And then something that people might not know about me is that I geek out on video games and math. I'm very good at video games. I'm very good at math. Actually, you know, wherefore I put my heart into I feel like I can get to the top. That was my mentality. When I played Pokemon trading card game when I was younger, I made it all the way to the World Championships.
Wait, tell me about that.
Yeah, so you know, I started playing casually with my friends, you know, in school, and then I competed in local Tolerman's and then I just woke. I just walked my your way up, you know, city level, state level, world level. It's like, I can't believe it.
God, Wait, how old were you when you were doing those tournaments?
Like I think it's the high school college years before American Idol. Yeah.
Where were the World Championships? Did you travel to compete?
Like?
What did you do?
Yeah? I remember the World Championships was in San Diego in California, so it's not too far, but it was definitely a memory I'll never forget.
So you're you're very passionate. When you like something, you like it hard.
Yes.
What were your go to games growing up?
Oh?
I love Super Mario Brothers, Tetris. I played a lot of role playing games like Selda Final Fantasy.
That's so cool. That you did it with your that it was like a family activity too. What were your parents and families go to songs? Oh?
They they liked the older Chinese songs. I wasn't used to listening to American pop music. I only took it upon myself after I started in college. I went to civil Engineering to study at Berkeley, and I thought everything would be good because high school was easy for me. But in college, no, not so easy. I was struggling. I almost got kicked out of school, and I figured, Okay, well I need to try something else. One day I
started poster for a school talent show. Yes, and I started watching and studying the music videos from Ricky Martin online.
It was just like a way of kind of like getting out of your head and putting yourself out there.
Yeah, I mean, I had no expectations. I started the talent show. I thought, well, let's see what happens, and then somehow, to my surprise, I won. I won a DVD.
Player that's such an early two thousands price. And what did you sing? Did you sing? She bangs at the talent show? Yes, I'm curious a little bit. If you don't mind getting into it high school, you were in the Was it the Van Nuys area once you moved?
Yes?
And then when when did you move to the US?
Originally a long time ago, like like the nineteen ninety three maybe, yeah.
Okay, so the elementary So high school's kind of a breeze. What changes in college? Is it just the adjustment? Was it the program you were in? Like, yeah, take me through that a little bit.
I think the part of it is that I feel like it's hard. It's harder to find the support because in the beginning I didn't know where to find the support. I was getting by. I was passing, but I wasn't doing great. I struggle. My foundation was not very good. And that's that. And then and then eventually I need to get get some help, you know, from my peers, from tutors, I fold away. You know, I found a
way around it. But I got through it. But but it's still not the same because maybe in high school it was easier to get that, you know, a right in college and college is so different.
So you do this talent show, you preform, she bangs, you win, You've got the DVD player. What happens next?
A few days later, I heard on the news that they have American Idol auditions coming to San Francisco. I decided it was a good time to try.
Were you a fan of the show at the time.
I wasn't sure. I didn't know what some of the auditions look like. I felt like it was either very good or very bad. And I knew that Simon cow was the mean guy. Yes, Randy is the wild card, and then Paula was going to be a nice lady.
Tell me about the experience of auditioning because I know that now understanding how Reality TV is edited, which I didn't at the time, the experience of auditioning, and then we'll talk about the edit that was released. But what was the audition experience like?
Well, they asked me more questions. Uh, they asked me why I want to audition? What makes meeting I could become the next American Idol? And for the listeners, you can you can look at the extended audition online.
How does the day go?
You stand in line, you wait, you you sit down on the bench. You know, it was at baseball park, so I wait for my turn along with thousands of people. But when I got close to my turn, I was lucky. I only had to wait for a few hours. But I was watching all these people in front of me. They only got like fifteen seconds to sing before they were told to go home. And then I thought, well,
maybe it will be the same result for me. You know, I have no reason to believe that I would suddenly make it to Hollywood or even get to see Reddy Paula assignment. It takes multiple rounds. So I saw the staff members they were they were going to the other people really quick, and then I thought, oh, no, is it gonna be the same for me? And then they let me stay over a minute, and then they somehow they let me through. They told me to come back the next day.
How many people are invited back.
It's about two hundred, maybe one hundred and eighty auditioned in front of the producers. And then and then you know, they told me the same she bangs I did. And then I thought, well it could I mean, at any point I thought I would be done, that's it the war. But somehow they let me through again. Okay, it's when I get to see Randy Paula and Simon. I know that because as soon as I get past the second of the producers, I got to meet Ryan Secret.
Did your friends know you were doing this? Did you sort of do it on a whim?
Oh? No. I tried to keep it to myself. I didn't want to let to me if people know about it. I only told one classmate friend because I knew that I had to miss a couple of days of classes, so I told her to take those for me. I treat you afterwards.
Wow, okay, So then the audition happens. Then you what do you have to just like return to your life. How much time is there between the audition and when it.
Airs, about four months difference?
How did you feel afterwards? Was it just like, well that was fun?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, I no, really, I had no reason to expect anything else. I know, they told me that, you know, you're not you're not ready for this. You cannot move on to Hollywood. It's okay, I mean I expected that result. It's not nothing surprising, But but what was surprising is that the reaction after they you know, I mean, the first thing that surprises is that why they chose to broadcast my audition because in January I saw myself in the football commercial.
Was your audition included in like promotions before yours.
Yes, it was during the It was during the Cotton Bowl commercial and in New York State. I still remember it. I didn't know what to expect. I have no idea why they would pick my audition to promote a lot, not just on time. And then I was thinking like, like, wait, what what is different? What was different about my audition? Why would they want to make my audition stand out? Uh? Not many people to know this. Last fast forward to
the day. I was watching the auditions by myself, and I purposely locked myself in the room, uh, inside my dorm. I didn't want it. I didn't want people to know about it. I don't I don't know how people react to it. So I was watching from the episode from start to finish. Uh, in the you know, the San Francisco episode, right and then and then I noticed that many people who don't make it to Hollywood, they would get angry and upset.
Yeah, how did you feel about the Like the way that they edited and sort of framed the audition?
I thought I thought it was it was good for me. Uh yeah, I mean, I mean, of course I didn't have the roll, classical talent or the musical talent, you know, if you if you look in from it, you know, if you compare to people that are trained. I know, I mean I know that, I mean I'm self aware enough to know that, but but you know, I feel like, wow, I can't believe that that I'm one of the few people who who was who was positive working out the audition group.
Even though the audition is like not framed as this is a good audition. You're someone who like has a lot of composure, and you're like, ohh, so you were you were happy with the appearance generally, yeah, yeah, And overnight you are a student. You are by all accounts, a random person, and then all of a sudden you're William Hung. How quickly do you feel this sort of momentum start and like, how did you handle it?
It was overwhelming At first, I got I got so many interview and performing opportunity. I had to talk to my classmate friends. I eventually my parents found out. I also had to talk to my parents.
How did they take it?
My parents initially they didn't take it that too well. They asked a question, why I put myself on the spot like that, you.
Know, why saying was that like not something that they had known you to do in the past.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. They didn't expect that.
What kind of opportunities were being presented in the first sort of wave of attention.
The first ones I did I remember were Entertainment Tonight, Ryan ste Kreshow and Ellen de Generous.
I'm interested to talk about and I know this has been sort of reflected on in the twenty year articles, all these different ways that you are presented to the public where you are consistently yeah, I'm myself and like, I like singing and this is a positive thing. You know, there's all of these reactions where some people act as if you're not in on the joke. Was that frustrating?
Like how do you handle that? Because it's like in retrospect, if you read anything you said, it's very clear that you know you're not approaching this like I am the world's most amazing singer.
No, I'm not. The way I approach is that is that I don't feel comfortable with the people twisting my story. And I think I think, you know, I think American Idol is an amazing platform. So it's not from American Idol, it's the media. Some people on the media, they decided to twist the story.
You know, what did the media get wrong about you at the time.
I don't agree with with my with me, uh, portraying Asian stereotypes, that's the most common one I get.
Uh.
And the reason I don't agree with that is that, yes, I don't have the raw talent. I you know, I didn't make it to Hollywood right now after many years, you know, I have empathy for those people. I understand where they came from because you know, back in the days we only had very few, We have very few respectable Asian actors or entertainers.
And like crossed over into America.
Yeah right, all right, maybe Jackie Chan, Michelle Yo. And that's about it.
What also interests me, because this is a show about the Internet, is how this happens at this weird point where there's a lot of traditional media covering your story and then there's also like random people on the Internet. I remember that like huge petition to have you returned to American ideas. Oh yeah, yeah, it's a weird technology crossroads too. Were you aware of the internet conversations around you? Did you participate them? What was the situation there?
I didn't participate in them because I'm only one person. I could not handle all that totally. Yeah, And I don't think it would be healthy from mental health side of it to look at the worst and negative comments, you know. I mean someone even made up a story that I committed suicide due to hearing over those Yeah. Yeah, it's the article. The article may have been might be still online today. When people ask me about it at that time, I told them I never used drugs. I
hate drugs. So I'm standing before you, very very healthy, very positive. Right.
How do you maintain and manage your mental health when you're going through something so intense and also not relatable to most people?
How do you?
How did you manage it?
Well?
I try. I try to take the positive criticism, the constructive criticism that I can apply to improve myself, you know, like like like how for example, maybe suggestions or how I handle the media suggestions, how I meant how I manage myself you know, moving forward? Uh? And then what the negative criticism that that that's that I cannot apply. I cannot improve myself with. What's the point of listening to it? Just enjoy it? For the aside, we want.
More people need to take that advice, and we'll be right back with more from William Hung. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute. My name is Jamie Loftus and Twist. A couple years after my iconic debut at Campanelli Stadium in Brockton, Massachusetts, I sang the national anthem again to another sold out crowd who was there to see baseball and not me, And this time my little brother sang with me, and yes, I had the same culturally insensitive hairstyle. You can blame
my mom our. Whole thing became that when a Canadian baseball team came to town, I would sing the American national anthem and Ben would sing the Canadian national anthem. And my brother was really little, so it was very cute. Here's Ben.
Ben loved it.
They were born a Canadian that had a little anthem.
Oh Cada, my home man.
Ben, he's slaying there. Anyways, Here's the rest of my interview with William Hung. It all seems like everything happens very fast because you are on the show, there's these different rounds of discourse about you, and then you're making an album. How did that sort of come together?
One of my record companies at the time called records. They noticed the opportunity. They saw how I had like insane website traffic for my website. Yeah. Yeah, they mentioned the petition one too. Yeah, they noticed those things, and then they took a chance to reach out to me. They will offer like a twenty five thousand dollars advance for the record contract.
Oh my, and you're like a college student, so.
Yeah, twenty years ago. Well, I think the money was definitely a factor because I know that that if I take on this opportunity, you know, it'll be it'll be way worth way more than that. You know, it's not just the record contract by itself, it's you know, I'm going to get more performance, more commercials, things like that. So I knew that that financial side, yeah, it makes sense for me to take that chance. But I think
on the other side, the I would say the personal brand. Uh, the biggest opportunity I had by taking this is to share my version of my own story.
It's like an opportunity to sort of control the narrative about yourself.
That was yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the reason. That's the reason I said, yes, that that's the main reason.
How did you want to shift things? At that time?
I try to focus on the positive. When people question like like why why am I in the entertainment industry? Then that's a common question I get at the time, like like, you don't have to you know, you don't have the word talent. Why you wanted to still do this? You know, don't you realize people are laughing at you? And and I say, my response is that, you know, I can't please everybody, you know I have I know I have fans that that that that want me to perform,
they want to see me. Uh. And then I focused on on bringing happiness to my fans.
I mean, this first album does super super well. I remember seeing it stares. So you do a couple albums three totals, like two studio albums to christmasself and that's like throughout the mid two thousands. Are you making your full time living off of this at the.
Time, Yeah, I did it a full time for about four years.
From these very chaotic four years. Do you have any favorite memories or appearances or anything that kind of sticks out to you is like, wow, that was really cool.
Well, the one of the most nerve racking performances I did was for the Rose Bowl when I was a rnal last performer, I was on the same level as the you know, Jennet Jackson Black Ice piece at the time, the Room five was crazy.
Something that I learned more about from your TED talk that I'm really interested to talk about is the moment where you're like, all right, I'm going to get back to being myself and having kind of a normal life. When did you decide sort of like I don't really want to perform full time anymore, and how did you navigate back into normal life.
It's a transition, I think, keeping it real with you, I don't think I can go back to normal life one hundred percent. It just doesn't. I don't that will never happen. But that the way I try to transition is that, you know, I try to do the normal things, you know, going to school, eating a normal meal, not a fancy restaurant, or you know, go and join my hobbies, whether it's playing sports or video games, whatever, hang out with friends. Just gradually get back into the normal life.
Take me through your kind of career as you're coming off this wild four year journey.
So the first thing I did was I decided that I need to go back to school. I need to finish my degree, and then I changed my major to math. I finished school, I thought I was going to become a teacher. That's probably what you heard in my tech talk. I wanted to become a math teacher, but it was so tough because I feel like math teacher, like I wanted to give But sometimes it's like it's like it's
like an extra job. You know, it's like it's not just a job in the classroom, but it's also the job outside the classroom.
Did you enjoy being a teacher?
I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure if I want that as my as my long term career. So that that's why, you know. I when I saw the chance to apply for the Sheriff's Department for the statistical analysts, so the numbers guy, it's like, okay, why not. You know, that's that's good, that's a good, good time to try. I tried it. I got in. It was pretty cool.
You know.
I feel like I'm part of the bigger mission to help prevent and reduce the crime. That's really that's nice, nice, nice mission to be part of. I did that for about two years, and then I got promoted to work for public health for about six years, and then I decided to do something a little crazy, so you know, maybe it's time for me to uh get out of my job start my own entertainment business again.
I wanted to touch on this before we talk about the entertainment company. You bring this up in your TED talk as well. How the audition kind of followed you into the workplace, Like what was navigating that like when people are like, wait a second, why do I.
Was actually very open about it. I decided that being open was the best way forward because once they know the first time my whole story, they will stop asking questions about it eventually. So yeah, I think that sharing everything was the easiest way.
And then you want to get back into entertainment. Tell me about that period of time.
It was a very very interesting timing because something that another thing that people might not know is that I've been playing and studying poker for many years on the side. It's another one of my psychics. So at the time when I quit my job, the main reason though, it was that I was I was There's something called a cameo.
Uh.
It's like an app where people could request like a short video for birthday, uh, graduation, motivation, and of course she bangs uh uh. And then I got for some reason within you know, that that year that I chose to quit, you know, but the year before that, I got so many requests, uh, you know, like more than
twenty each day. And then the place I'm living at in a l A it's not ideal for doing that because you know, my my my house has read in walls mine and then my neighbors were getting very upset. Uh they were, they would complaining, they were banging the wall. And that's that's why I feel like, Okay, well, you know, between that new business, you know, uh and then my poker, I feel like I could make it. I could make it my own.
And is that what you're doing now? Or where are you at now?
The first few years when I after I decided to quit my job, I still remember, it was around the twenty twenty twenty, right before the pandemic. It was rough. I moved from l A all the way to Florida because I knew a friend there, you know, because at the time it was hard to find the house where I could do that, the singing the cambo to earn the money, because if I moved to another place I could have the same problem. You not many people could
put up with that. But at the place I moved to, it was a big house where the room was very step was pretty far away from the from the from other people.
So how long did you stay in Florida? Are you still there? Did you move back to California?
Yeah? So I stayed in Florida for about two years. And then and then after I recovered from the COVID, I gradually also started earning some extra money from poker. Everything was good, I earned, I earned really good money,
more than my job, you know. Uh. And then and then eventually another friend reached out to me, you know, uh that she said like, maybe, you know, maybe it's time for you to still of Las Vegas, you know, because Las Vegas would be an upgrade from Florida for sure, especially especially from playing for playing poker, and I got a pretty good deal on the house at the time, so it's like, Okay, let let's try, let's let's go for it.
And then to Vegas.
Yeah yeah, yeah, So in about two years I moved to Vegas and then and then reality started to set in. My entertainment business was not as good as before. The poker competitions a lot harder over there, So I wasn't doing so good.
And then did you stay in Vegas or did you go back to California or.
At one point I was so I was again desperate. I knew I shouldn't do this, but I somehow, but I was desperate. Maybe I can, I hope I was, I could get lucky. I got into other forms of gambling, and then I and then and I really shot myself on the foot.
So it's been very open over the year, you know, like having struggles with gambling and trying to find a healthy way for it to exist within your life. That seems like, I mean, I know that that is such a tricky, key thing to have to work through, especially if you're living in Vegas.
Yeah, yeah, like that mental mentally, like like like at the time I was, I was thinking about how to how do I get back to the to the top former glory. But but I realized that that's not a good way, that's not a healthy way to look at it. You know, I already should be grateful for everything I have, so you know why why I want to throw everything away? So that's that's that's so that's that's the thought that really helped me change.
Uh uh.
And then then I decided, okay, what can I do now that's gonna be better for me? Well, and then I thought, well, you know what, let's help the gambling. Let's put aside you now, let's use my math skills for to do something good right time, right, right timing.
Uh.
I had another chance to get back to the sheriff's department in l A. And that's why I moved back.
Yeah, the sheriff's department.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How are you doing now? How are you feeling these days? You You've come truly full circle in these last twenty years.
Yes, for sure, I feel very good. And I'm happily married now finally. Yeah, after the you know the path marriages that didn't quite walk out either. So it's a long like you said, full circle, you know. Now Now I still do my entertainment. I still do it on the side a psychic. It's all good. And then I also started a new business, you know, helping helping people with insurance. And the primary, you know, motivation for me is that I want to know what I'm paying my money for.
This.
It's America, you know, everybody needs to where is my money going? Is this? Why am I what am I paying for?
Yeah? Looking back on twenty years ago, two different questions. Do you have any regrets about two thousand and four and how has like how you view that period changed over time?
No regrets at all, because in life, could you want to make the best decision based on the information you know at the time, not later, not before, at the present. At that time, I got more than what I could past, I could ask for already. I'm very grateful for the experience. I feel that experience will will you know it gives me a unique healthy perspective. You know how to handle adversity no matter what happens, and no matter what happens, I feel like I can get back up.
Looking back at it, It's like the way you were treated by the media at different points, It just like makes my fist ball up. You're just like you've managed everything so beautifully. You've always been yourself, and I just it was such a pleasure to talk to you.
If you want to find out what I'm up to, you can find me on Instagram and LinkedIn.
William hun thank you so much for joining me. This was so much fun.
You're welcome.
Thank you so much to William hun for his time and his openness. I'm incredibly grateful and remain a lifelong fan. You can check out what he's up to and all of his social media at the links in the description. What I really admire about William is his gentleness. His essence has remained consistent through the years, even as the world judged and built and destroyed all of these different narratives around him. Here he is in March two thousand and four, just weeks after becoming famous.
Are you are you good at the civil engineering?
I'm I'm struggling as well with civil engineering. I'm struggling pretty much most of the things I do in my life. But no, it's no you got Why you need to, why you need to understan all of you to understand, is that everybody goes through struggles to succeed.
Yes, absolute, this was a kid, a twenty one year old, thrust into the spotlight and trying to keep things light. But there were forces moving against William from the jump. His story is singular, and while he doesn't resonate with a lot of the narratives pushed onto him. As we talked about in our interview anti Asian racism, as well as the general brutality of American reality TV. I do think they're worth exploring with people who did resonate with
those narratives. The two thousands was a uniquely fucked time for mask off discrimination and exploitation in the public sphere, and I wanted to talk to people who have either worked in that space or lived through it. And so in part two of our William Hung episode, we'll be talking to Nancy Wang Yuan and og reality TV editor and fan of this very show, Steve Flack. That's next week on sixteenth minute, and for your moment of fun, the full the necessary. No sex allowed by.
I'm sitting around modern mobs. Something wrong. I don't know what it is. Margareol comes around. She's an upus wretch. She starts playing with me or she wants is sex, but take it from me. Hear what I say.
I don't need that. There's a better way.
So I promise her love as she springs a long course. Sex is weak and love is strong. No sex loud. I don't want to be part of your crowd.
No sex so loud, and if.
You don't like it, get out of town.
I do the second verse.
Okay.
Sixteenth minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and Iheartradia.
It is written, posted, and produced by me Janie Leftis. Our executive producers are Sophie Lickterman and Robert Evans.
The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is bym sat thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and Pet.
Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cats Flee and Casper, and my pet rock Bird, who will outlive us all.
Bye.