Randall Park Forgetting About His Role On The Office Led To Some Awkward Fan Encounters

Before he was making shows like "WandaVision," Netflix's "Blockbuster," or the ABC sitcom "Fresh Off The Boat," Randall Park's most recognized performance may have been as Steve on a Season 9 episode of "The Office."

Steve is an actor friend of Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) who he hires to prank Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), pretending to be Jim at the Dunder Mifflin office while the real man is at the dentist. Steve even remembers Jim's actual sales information and kisses Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer), flabbergasting his "co-worker."

The character is credited as "Asian Jim Halpert," and thanks to Park's viral status on TikTok, "Asian Jim" has become huge on social media (via The Daily Beast). Park told "Conan" he was surprised by this, as he only appeared on the show in one scene during the last season, at which point "The Office" was already fading in terms of popularity. While he found the experience fun, he told Conan O'Brien that his appearance was so brief he eventually forgot about it. 

Unfortunately, the clip going viral did lead to some awkward situations for Park in public.

Part of Randall Park's viral status on social media with hashtag #JimmyWoo is how consistently he's been working in entertainment for years (via The Daily Beast). His IMDb page lists nearly 170 credits as an actor alone as of this writing. As he explained on "Conan," however, this meant Randall Park didn't really remember playing "Asian Jim" on "The Office" considering he shot the scene in only one hour. 

So years later, when a driver saw him on the street and shouted "Asian Jim!!!," he was baffled. Park told Conan O'Brien, "I'm thinking, 'Is this some like racist thing that I don't know about?'"

Similarly, Park said, "People be walking up to me like, 'What's up, Asian Jim?' and I'd be like 'f*** you.'" It was only afterward that he realized fans were recognizing him from compilations of his appearances. The actor told Conan O'Brien that he'd gotten rid of his social media accounts years before. But now that he was "viral" all over TikTok and Instagram, he joked, "Social media's amazing, I gotta get back on it."