LOS ANGELES — The topic of Hollywood awards diversity can be both dismaying and clinically dry: So many fine minority actors ignored, so many statistics proving the stubborn whiteness of the Oscars and other honors.
But Kalani Queypo chooses to be optimistic. The actor was glad to earn critical acclaim for his role as Squanto, a Native American who helped the newly arrived Pilgrims survive, in National Geographic’s miniseries “Saints & Strangers.”
Sweeter still would be hearing his name announced as an Emmy Awards nominee for best supporting actor in a movie or miniseries. As a person of color, he said, he’s faced the daunting challenges of any actor — and then some.
“How do I ingratiate myself into this industry that has, historically, just not been thinking about us? How do I infiltrate myself, get noticed and get valued?” Queypo said.
An Emmy nomination would deem his portrayal of a complex Native American something “to sit up and pay attention to,” he said.
The Hawaiian-born Queypo, who traces his mother’s side of the family to Native American roots, said his career experience and determination have given him reason to hope for more good fortune.
He worked in “The New World” (2005) with director Terrence Malick, appeared in TV series including “Nurse Jackie” and “Mad Men,” and has been cast in the upcoming drama series “Jamestown.” He wrote and directed the independent film “Ancestor Eyes.”
Queypo also is a stage actor, including a decade-plus working with Native Voices at the Autry, which develops and produces new works from native playwrights and is connected to the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles.
From the start “he was fantastic to have in a room because he brought so much immediacy and life to a character. … He was always prepared and had good questions, so the playwrights adored working with him,” said Jean Bruce Scott, the theater’s producing executive director.
Queypo has been consistently cast in plays and workshops since then, and in a variety of roles, said Scott and Randy Reinholz, producing artistic director with Native Voices.
For the actor, it’s all a far cry from his previous life in Hawaii that, superficially, sounds idyllic: As a child in Waikiki he danced in a hula act with his two sisters (“I was adorable,” he confirms, smiling), and his father was in a band called the Tikis.
But his dad’s death left the then-9-year-old Queypo and his family struggling to survive, an experience that he’s developing into a screenplay about “growing up in paradise, but in poverty, and the juxtaposition of that existence.”
