CSULB propels actor Raymond Lee '08 to leading roles on stage and screen
As soon as Raymond Lee ‘08 saw his first theater production at Cal State Long Beach, he knew The Beach was where he wanted to go.
“It was bonkers. It was incredible. It lit my brain on fire,” said Lee, recalling his impressions while seeing “Titus Andronicus” by William Shakespeare.
With the “three-quarter thrust stage” inside the campus’ Studio Theatre, where the audience surrounds the stage on three sides, “it was wholly immersive,” Lee said. “I felt like I was in the play.”
Lee transferred to CSULB and earned a degree in Theatre Arts, with an emphasis on performance.
Thanks to those formative years at The Beach, Lee has excelled as an actor and has contributed to the small but growing circle of Asian American theater artists making a national impact.
He has since become one of Hollywood’s up-and-coming stars of the big screen, TV and streaming.
He played the lead role on NBC’s “Quantum Leap” for two seasons (2022-24). At the time, he was the only Asian American male topping a cast on a prime time, network TV series — and he’s been the only since.
Lee also starred in “Top Gun: Maverick” alongside Tom Cruise and currently appears in “Sugar” and “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” on Apple TV+.
And he is preparing to play the title role in a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic “Hamlet” next year at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.
“Cal State Long Beach gave me the space to search and find the artist within myself,” he said. “Long Beach taught me how to be involved with projects that had nothing to do with my own. It really allowed me to find my creative path as an artist, to fill out the occupation of an actor.”
Lee cites theater arts professors Hugh O’Gorman, Orlando Pabotoy and Craig Fleming as being instrumental in his development as an actor and a student of theater.
“Hugh was great,” Lee said. “He knew how to get into the mindset of hard work, and nothing is given. He came from a sports background, and I could relate to that. At the same time, he taught me to be unafraid of allowing myself to be vulnerable.”
Lee also credits Pabotoy, who specialized in movement and clowning, for teaching him how to be physical, and to fill the space you’re occupying, even if you don’t have a line. Pabotoy is now head of physical acting at Juilliard.
“Orlando had a profound impact on me. He changed the way I looked at performance for the rest of my life.”
After graduating, Lee co-founded the award-winning Four Clowns theater troupe with some theater classmates from The Beach. That led to a stream of small roles on TV shows and at South Coast Repertory, including the lead in “Vietgone” (2015), for which he won the 2016 Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. He also starred in “Office Hour” (2016) opposite Sandra Oh, and in the world premiere of the musical “Cambodian Rock Band” (2018).
But it was his role as Dr. Ben Song in the remake of “Quantum Leap” that was a breakthrough — for him and for Asian Americans on television. The revival of the 1989-93 show was an NBC science fiction series that placed Lee front and center as a physicist who travels through time and “leaps” into the bodies of different people, trying to solve mysteries and ultimately, return to the present.
“Quantum Leap” had respectable viewership numbers and received critical accolades but was canceled after two seasons.
“Throughout the entire run, I was always looking for ways to say or do things that were positive representations of Asians, Koreans, men; but I don’t know if I ever fully got there,” he said. “I was reminded every now and then that there had never been a solo Asian American male lead on a network show, and I was always at a loss for words. I wasn’t responsible for that.”
As he prepares for “Hamlet,” Lee is also auditioning for new roles and just finished motion-capture acting in an upcoming video game.
“Because I went to Long Beach, I’ve been able to live in all the in-between moments, the upside, the downside. I can find meaning in anything, really.”
