We recently connected with Dylan Djoenadi and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Dylan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I used to be really interested in legacy after listening to the Hamilton soundtrack, because of that one song where Hamilton ponders his legacy. As a 15 year-old that hit. As a 23 year old, I want to make the stories from my community heard and documented. I’d like to be known as someone who documented important things in the world too. I’ve really enjoyed getting to film interviews for friends’ documentaries and capture moments in life. I hope that I’m remembered as an impactful actor-director-producer who created a lot of opportunities for people to tell their stories along with my own stories that I’d like to get out there.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Dylan Djoenadi, and I’m an actor and filmmaker from Monterey Park, CA. I was born in South San Francisco and grew up in the Bay Area until I was five. I started in the film industry as a child actor after watching Suite Life of Zack and Cody. I saw that Zack’s real name was Dylan Sprouse, and I thought to myself, “His name is Dylan. My name is Dylan, why can’t I do that too?” I asked my mom if I could do what that kid on TV was doing, and she said that I could. My mom put me in acting classes and we started up my career. Looking back, I’m amazed she encouraged me as many of my Asian-American friends tell me how their parents would have never done the same. I’m grateful that my mom let me follow this path. It’s crazy to have a career as a child. I’m sure most child actors can attest to that. I remember growing up that I really wanted a normal life.

It was cool to miss class to go be in a commercial or act in films, but I always came back to school and felt like a bit of an outsider. I wanted to fit in, so I stopped screen acting and did more conventional kid stuff like sports and studying. However, one thing remained constant: my appearances on the React Channel on Kids React and Teens React.

I can’t really explain my fame, and I never really understood it growing up. I was nine years-old. YouTube was in its infancy, and I took this job on actors access that my agent sent me on. I went with my mom to an apartment in the Valley and was greeted by two guys in their twenties. They were Rafi and Benny Fine. I remember going into their room made into a makeshift studio. The lights were pretty bright, and I was told that I’d be watching a series of videos and to just react with my authentic self. I did and left an hour later. I didn’t think that one encounter would turn into hundreds of videos of myself reacting to everything from Filthy Frank to Osama bin Laden’s death. I remember seeing the Fine brothers go from their modest apartment to a shared YouTube studio to Nickelodeon for a few episodes to a multi-floor studio with a few dozen employees. It made me famous from a young age, and maybe I could’ve spun that fame into something bigger now. I am where I am now in big part cause of the show, but like most people who get famous from something they didn’t create, it left a hole in me and my identity.

I felt like Miley Cyrus in Hannah Montana. The show resonated so much, because it was of someone living a double life. I liked the thrill of a double life, but it was isolating too.

Most recently, I have been acting in short films made by friends and going to the Margie Haber Studio as well as the Upright Citizens’ Brigade.

I acted in a short film that I really enjoyed called “Indah and the Spirits” directed by Sophie Whittemore at CalArts. It was around the same time I started working my night shift job. I finished my work by the morning and would go act after work. It was invigorating but at the same time really exhausting. The past year, I’ve been acting in short films and doing 24 hour days, something I didn’t think was possible. One of my goals in the near future is to make a short film in Indonesia about the first and only time I met my father in Jakarta.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I come from a single-parent household, so I’ve always been pretty comfortable with struggle. I saw my mom struggle as we went from house to house when I was younger, so I’ve grown a “anything is possible” mentality when it comes to crazy things.

In my junior year of college, I was really big into the “culture night” scene at UCLA. At UCLA we have these Asian-American culture nights that tell unique stories from each Asian-American group. I like doing things that haven’t been done before and making big events, so I decided to create an Indonesian-American culture night under the Association of Indonesian Americans. This was after making a short film called “In Isolation,” a story about a college student fighting with her mother about being in an Indonesian club, with my club the summer after COVID lockdowns were over. I’d never seen a story about Indonesian-American people and our struggles with our identity, so I thought it’d be refreshing to make one. I thought of the short film as the stepping stone into getting our club a culture night of our own. Because of this short film and my membership of the Lapu the Coyote that Cares Theatre Company, I was called upon by some friends to help coordinate the drama for the Vietnamese Culture Night. I’m eternally grateful for that experience, because it gave me the knowledge and confidence to create an Indonesian-American Culture Night.

I thought of the name first before finishing the script: Noise of Silence. It’s a play on the title Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer, which is a story about a man confronting a perpetrator in the September 30th Movement in Indonesia. Indonesia’s history, like many Southeast Asian histories, is spoken in hush tones and usually through the mouths of white historians. One of my professors, Geoffrey Robinson, introduced me to the topic of political violence in Indonesia during 1965 and that opened the door in my brain of diving deep into the past. Since then, I’ve loved uncovering hard truths about the past.

I have a confusing identity for Americans and Indonesians since I’m half native Indonesian and half Chinese-Indonesian but have only known Chinese-Indonesian culture.
Noise of Silence became a play about a high school senior figuring out a way to get his mom to Indonesia in time for her father’s funeral. It was my story with some tweaks and dramatizations. For any good production, there requires a great script, and it took me until spring break of that year to put all the pieces together. My girlfriend (of now 2 years) helped me put the finishing touches on the script. It was a labor of love as I had to grapple with things I feared talking about like the May 1998 Riots and immigration issues. I wanted to create an authentic story that resonated (don’t we all?), so I spent a lot of time interviewing my mom, my family and people in the Indonesian community about their own stories. I recently watched Journey from the Fall by Ham Tran, and he spoke to my Asian-American Studies class about how he interviewed a lot of people in Orange County before shooting. I really value people’s stories and making them feel seen on stage or film. It was the first time I had to put myself out there on work that felt so personal to me. I had a very strong vision for what I wanted this story to be about.

The production itself was in May, so we had 2 months of dedicated time to raise the money, get the crew and cast together, and market it to the campus. I had an amazing producer and team who made everything possible. People brought a lot of their experience from different culture nights, and it felt like we were creating something fresh for the first time. I pitched us heavily to different Indonesian businesses and to the Consulate General. We got a lot of support. One of our team members had a contact with Sosro, another had a contact with Indomie, and we got Indonesian restaurants like Simpang Asia in Culver City and Medan Kitchen in Rosemead to support us. Three-hundred fifty plus people showed up. My mom and my family sat in front. The show went on smoothly and brought people to tears. It was one of the most fulfilling days of my life.

Monumental efforts can burn you out, and I was no different. It took a while for me to get off the cloud I was on and know where to go from there. I still had another year left in college, and I grappled with making a sequel or giving it to the next generation to lead. I wasn’t a perfect leader and stressed out my team with impossible deadlines and challenges. That fear of hurting other people’s well-being stuck on me for a long time, and I feared even leading for a while. I decided that I’d let someone else take the charge for the next Indonesian Culture Night, and I focused on creating stories somewhere else. It hurt to realize that I could have kept building on the momentum I created, but it’s informed the way I lead now in my job for money and my creative work.

I still live a double life working my night job as an operations manager for an Amazon building while pursuing my career in acting and directing. Would I want to go full time in the film industry? Well, I wouldn’t want my co-workers to know that. I’ve been listening to Al Pacino’s memoir audiobook, and it seems like having a job to feed yourself and the creative career on the side is the goal. I’m still young in my career, and I’d like to continue making money while building my creative career.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn that things came easy. As a child actor, it seems that life was just a continuous snowball of new and impressive things. That’s one of the pitfalls of early success, and why a lot of child prodigies or child successes get messed up. It’s easy to think that you’ll always be successful and tough to face challenges.

Over this past year, I’ve been working a night job to pay the bills while working on my creative career. I had to learn that goals take time and intention. Throughout my life, I’ve had my creative hustle be the sideline to an academic pursuit. In my head, I’ve always thought that the best people in a craft are the ones who go full throttle into their craft. Maybe I’m yet to make that jump to go fully into my craft, but I appreciate the financial stability that a good job brings. Taking the plunge fully into something creative is daunting. Maybe this will be the lesson I unlearn in the future. However, I plan to continue building my skills as an actor and putting my business skills into making a production company that platforms Indonesian-American and stories from the San Gabriel Valley.

I still fall into the pitfall into the fear of missing out. I see my peers and see how much they’ve achieved and reflect on being in my current position in life. That’s the danger of comparison. I trick myself into thinking, “I’ve got to work in my creative pursuits after work. I can’t take a day off.” I’m young, yeah, but I should remember that constantly putting my energy into projects after work is not going to give me time to sit down and think. I’ve realized that there’s a certain amount of time that I need to take for myself to really express myself creatively.

Goals like becoming a working actor and producing films take time, but it also takes intention. I’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks lately, and I have re-listened to the book Atomic Habits by James Clear several times. One thing I’ve been implementing is creating habits that improve my life just a little bit at a time.

Maybe a few months from now, I’ll quit and really go “all in.” But my deal right now working and spending time on my creative life has been going well. I’ve got to be efficient with my time though. Sometimes I slip into bouts of YouTube/Streaming binge-watching and Instagram doom-scrolling. All part of the process. My job has kept me efficient with my time. Without the growth and habits I’ve built, it feels like the creative dream slips away. We’ll see how it goes!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylandjoen/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-djoenadi/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DylanDjoen

Image Credits

Immanuel Ibon
Brandon Tran
David Chan @davidchanphoto