BD Wong

Bradley Darryl Wong was born on October 24, 1960 and raised in San Francisco, California, to Roberta Christine Wong (née Leong), a telephone-company supervisor, and William D. Wong, a postal worker. He has one older brother and one younger brother. He is of Chinese descent, with family from Hong Kong.

Wong attended Lincoln High School, where he discovered his love of acting and starred as the lead in numerous school plays.

He went on to attend San Francisco State University in the 1970s, where he was the only Asian American in the theater department, and there were no roles for him.Wong gained wide attention as a result of his Broadway debut in M. Butterfly opposite John Lithgow. The play won multiple awards, including several for Wong, who at that time ceased using his full name in favor of his initials. He has since ceased the use of punctuation in his initials.

He is notable as the only actor to be honored with the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Clarence Derwent Award, and Theatre World Award for the same role. In addition to his stint on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as FBI psychiatrist Dr. George Huang, he has had recurring roles in All American Girl and played Father Ray Mukada on all six seasons of Oz, with guest appearances on The X-Files and Sesame Street.

On the big screen, he has appeared in The Freshman (1990), the 1991 remake of Father of the Bride and its 1995 sequel, Father of the Bride Part II, Jurassic Park (1993), Executive Decision (1996), and Slappy and the Stinkers (1997). He also provided the voice of Captain Li Shang in Disney's Mulan (1998), its direct-to-video sequel, and the video game Kingdom Hearts II. He returned to Broadway as Linus in a revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, alongside Anthony Rapp, Roger Bart, and Kristin Chenoweth, and the 2004 revival of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures.

Wong narrated a public television documentary, "Maxine Hong Kingston: Talking Story" (1990) about the life and work of the ground-breaking Chinese American novelist.

In 1990 Wong objected to Actor's Equity that the plan to use Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce in the role of The Engineer in the Broadway run of Miss Saigon, which Pryce had played since the beginning of the show's 10-year extended run in London, would take jobs away from actors of Asian descent. Although the union barred Pryce from acting the role in response to Wong's complaint, vociferous opposition from Charlton Heston and a threat by the musical's creator and producer, Cameron Mackintosh, to cancel the American production entirely, induced the union to reverse course. Pryce went on to win a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for the role.

In 2008, Wong starred in the one-man show Herringbone, in which he portrayed 12 roles, at McCarter Theatre at Princeton University. He brought the show to the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego the following year. In 2012, Wong starred in Herringbone to benefit Dixon Place in New York for two performances. The production, recorded live for a 2014 CD release, was his first appearance in New York of the material, timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the original New York production.

In 2014, Wong starred in the U.S. premiere of James Fenton's acclaimed adaptation of The Orphan of Zhao, a classic Chinese legend that has its roots in the fourth century BC, directed by Carey Perloff at American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). The Orphan of Zhao is an epic story of self-sacrifice and revenge. In the aftermath of a political coup, a country doctor is forced to sacrifice his son to save the last heir of a noble and massacred clan. The Orphan of Zhao was a co-production with La Jolla Playhouse.

Wong announced his departure from the cast of Law & Order: SVU in July 2011, to join another NBC police drama, Awake, in which he portrayed Dr. Johnathan Lee, a confrontational therapist of an LAPD detective (portrayed by Jason Isaacs) who lived in two realities. Wong guest-starred in a thirteenth season episode of Law & Order: SVU titled "Father Dearest" (which aired May 2, 2012).

In 2015, he was named Artist-in-Residence at La Jolla Playhouse. Wong guest-starred on NCIS: New Orleans Episode 1.13 titled "The Walking Dead" (which aired February 3, 2015), where he portrayed Navy Lieutenant Commander Dr. Gabriel Lin.

Wong also played the enigmatic Whiterose, head of the hacker collective Dark Army, who lives a double life as Zhang, the Chinese Minister of State Security, on USA Network's Mr. Robot. He was credited as a recurring role for the show's second season and promoted to main cast for the third season, which debuted October 11, 2017.

On August 13, 2017, Wong began hosting the new HLN series Something's Killing Me with BD Wong. The documentary explores strange and unexplainable, real medical ailments and attacks that may be gradual or descend rapidly. But in either case, if a cause and cure are not found immediately, these real-life patients will die.

In 2022, Wong was featured in the book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, with a profile written by theatre scholar Esther Kim Lee.