TORONTO — The casts of CBC’s “Kim’s Convenience” and ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat” will do live online table reads of their pilot episodes this weekend to celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage Month.
The one-night special Saturday evening will help raise funds for non-profit Asian arts organizations in Canada and the U.S.
Those organizations include the East West Players theatre company, the media arts collective Visual Communications, and Reel Asian.
The event will be streamed on the Facebook and YouTube pages of the crowdfunding platform Seed & Spark.
The special will feature back-to-back table reads of each comedy series, which have both broken ground with their focus on Asian families.
Viewers who donate at least $10 (Canadian or U.S.) to the fundraising campaigns by the close of the second table read will receive an invitation link to participate in a Q-and-A with both casts.
“Kim’s Convenience” recently completed its fourth season and has been renewed for two additional seasons.
The series is based on a Toronto stage production by Ins Choi and features a Korean-Canadian family and their convenience store in Toronto.
“Fresh Off the Boat” came to an end after six seasons in February.
The sitcom about a Taiwanese-American family in the 1990s was inspired by the memoir by chef Eddie Huang.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 26, 2020.