Pop quiz: which character from Jurassic Park invented the science that brings the dinosaurs back to life?

If you answered ‘Dr Richard Hammond’ (played by Richard Attenborough) you should be ashamed of yourself. It was Dr Wu (played by BD Wong).

Yeah. A beige guy. Despite his prominent billing, BD Wong has a paltry two minutes of screentime in the film, which sucks, but for an East Asian actor in the ethnic wasteland of 90s Hollywood? Pretty much makes him Marlon Brando.

Let's hear from BD Wong himself:

“Anybody who worked on that movie would probably have to be honest and tell you that they didn’t have any designs for that character at all. They didn’t care about him, they don’t even explain what happened to him at the end of the movie when everyone’s evacuating the island! Clearly, he was not a priority for anyone. And I was very bitter about that for many years. But my good friend Nathan once said to me “Oh, well, you don’t have to worry about that, because that’s going to come back to you. You’ll see. They’ll come back to you.” And I was, like, “I don’t see how that’s ever going to come back to me.”

BD Wong, interviewed by the AV Club

Wong would later return to greater prominence in the sequels, anchoring the franchise with turns in Jurassic World (2015), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World: Dominion (2022).