Gonna talk about my brother Kevin Lau (he’s the dude kneeling in the middle of the picture). The episode of @LovecraftHBO that he wrote airs this coming Sunday.

I’m gonna brag about him for a sec because he’s humble and stuff and isn’t on social media. /1

We’ve known each other for many years. Back when we were young and clueless we'd chat over beers and cigarettes about our love of cinema. We had similar tastes. We thought to ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could make it in Hollywood and tell the stories we wanna tell?” /2

A lot of people are going to be hearing about Kevin in the coming months. And they’re gonna wonder where this overnight success came from. And I can tell you it has been decades of hard work that has gotten him to that “overnight success” status. /3

He’s gone from “Lovecraft Country” to working with Joss Whedon on “The Nevers”, to getting an overall deal at HBO where he’s now doing amazing, exciting stuff. And when he has time to breathe, we develop our own projects. /4

Years after college, I continued down my path as an actor, and he went from working in different avenues of the industry to going to Columbia University to get his MFA. /5

All the while we would continue to work together on shoe string budget student films. He’d write/direct and I literally just filled in where needed: acting, ADing, gripping, craft services, etc. We learned together and came up together. /6

And one of the constant themes in our life that we would always return to was, “We wanna tell our stories and create a mythology for Asian Americans in a way that ‘The Godfather’ did for Italians.” /7

Of course, that sentiment wasn’t always shared. We’ve had so many people telling us we needed to change our stories to white characters, or if we wanted to make any money to write more “mainstream”. /8

Kevin would fight it tooth and nail if he felt it ruined the integrity of what he wanted to share. And Kevin is an artist through and through. You won’t find someone more dogmatic than him when it comes to truth in storytelling. /9

Before the renaissance of storytelling in television, he was fully ready to be a pauper in the world of independent film.
After his graduate thesis “Made in Chinatown” (the photo above was taken during that production), we were trying to figure out our next step. /10

We took one of his features (which again, was an Asian American cast) and broke it into an epic, sprawling TV show. And Kevin wrote, what is in my opinion, one of the best pilots ever.

We got a lot of interest, but of course, a lot of hesitation for the obvious reasons. /11

In time though, Kevin's talent spoke for itself and his spec script made its way around town and people took note of him, which is how he became the “overnight success” that he is. Kevin is the hardest working person I know. /12

And I say all of this, not just to let everyone know about him, but also as a reminder to myself that at the end of the day, hard work and tenacity is everything. The rest of it is static. Keep your eye on the prize. /13

So, all that being said, be sure to tune in to the episode of "Lovecraft Country" that he wrote this Sunday, 9/20.

And yes, that is Tzi Ma in the picture, so I can claim that he’s played my dad too. /14