Episode #625: “When nobody helps you, what you have to do is go. You know what? I’m just gonna do it myself.” Adrian Zaw, a Burmese-American actor, producer, and founder of Zaw Studios, has turned that refusal to wait into both a business method and a response to cultural absence. His family left Myanmar after the 1988 uprising, when his father’s political involvement made remaining unsafe. His parents had worked as rural doctors, but in the United States their credentials disappeared; they took cafeteria and laboratory jobs while Zaw learned English by imitating television.
Acting gave him a route through adolescence, but Hollywood offered almost no Burmese-American models or roles. He learned producing, photography, editing, and studio management so that he could create work rather than depend on someone else to recognize him. In 2012, he opened a small production space whose rent forced him to work quickly. Speed became a philosophy: deliver what a client needs, revise it immediately, and refuse to hide delay behind artistic perfectionism.
Zaw now passes that discipline to young Burmese-American interns, matching practical training to whatever skills they bring. He tells them to replace “I can’t” with “How can I?” and identify the personal advantage that might open the next door. Yet his method also carries a distance: the access he can provide in Orange County does not automatically reach people inside Myanmar, and after the 2021 coup he has been unable to return.
His larger answer is cultural production. Through Myanmar American TV, he wants Burmese performers to tell sitcoms, dramas, and thrillers shaped by their own humor and family experience. Mainstream roles have often reduced Burmese characters to antagonists; his sketches use fortune telling, in-laws, and generational pressure to make Burmese-American life visible from within. The proof of concept exists, and the studio continues training people through it, but the platform still needs money, collaborators, and an audience willing to act with the urgency he demands. “Opportunity is knocking, and nobody’s answering the door because they’re not being responsive quick enough.”
