A Marvel Superhero Shatters the Asian Male Inferiority Complex
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Yssamei Panganiban
Yssamei has a degree in Performing Arts with a focus on acting from American Musical and Dramatic Arts Academy in Los Angeles. She is the youngest of five siblings. Her two brothers and two sisters were born in her father’s Province of Cavite. They emigrated to Glendale, California before she was born. She doesn’t know much more about her father, Alex, since he died when she was 18 months. Many flights to the Philippines while growing up made her the exceptional second-generation Fil-Am who speaks fluent Tagalog with an American or Filipino accent.
Panganiban’s family: (Left to Right, Back Row): Yuro Garcia (brother-in-law), Mae Garcia (sister), Rigett Ramos (sister), Raius Ramos (brother), Jyra Ramos (sister-in-law), Mayett Panganiban (mom)
(Left to Right, Front Row): Jeremy Ramos (brother), Yssamei Panganiban
As for a contemporary, non-Bard play, she covets a part in “The Heart Sellers,” written by Lloyd Suh and last staged in April 2025 at Theatre Works in Mountainview, California. Positively Filipino is happy to serve as a launching pad for Yssamei’s campaign to play Luna in the next production of “The Heart Sellers.”
Now that PF is issuing shameless plugs, Yssamei yearns for a second chance to audition for the HBO series, “Peacemaker”. “James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) directs it. And then there’s John Cena.” Yssamei incants Cena’s name like a talisman that wards off bad luck forever. “I think he’s awesome and so cool. I went out for a role for them and was heartbroken when I didn’t get it. It must be so amazing and fun to work on a set like ‘Peacemaker’.”
A Black Widow in the Marvel Universe
In the “Hawkeye” miniseries of 2021, Yssamei played a Black Widow named Sonya. The Marvel assassin generated a smaller death toll than the body count attributed to the Steel Butterfly and her disciples, but Yssamei’s Black Widow is still spellbinding. Filipinos in the audience can appreciate an authoritative aura to her character that’s founded in the matriarchy of a Filipino household.
It was the Los Angeles native’s version of a Filipino accent that won over the American casting team. She has a husky voice that complements a strapping physique. “They requested different accents when I auditioned. I did one in Filipino, and then I did one in Russian,” recalls Yssamei of her early belief that the show would demand a Russian accent like Scarlett Johansson’s in the Black Widow movie. “They were looking for more international Black Widows at the time, so they asked me to do the Filipino accent again a couple weeks later in the callback. I won the part though they weren’t originally looking for a Filipina.”
Too bad Italian designer Giorgio Armani died in early September without having the opportunity to deconstruct pillared shoulders of the Filipiniana dress. Unaided by padding, Yssamei’s musculature could have rebranded the traditional outfit with a powerful femininity that abets the historic role Filipinas have filled in defense of freedom against all colonists.
“Hawkeye” didn’t require a martial arts background to play a clandestine killer, but she knew how to mix it up as an alumnus of the wrestling team at Verdugo Hills High. “I always lost,” she admits of her matches yet suggests the journey is more important than the result. “I wasn’t good at it, but I did it, and it was fun.”
Acting is something she did for love. “I joined the theater company because I had a crush on a guy in my last year of high school,” Yssamei recalls. “We were in ‘The Laramie Project,’ which is a play based on Matthew Shepard (a young man who was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming because he was gay).”
Alas, she didn’t get the boyfriend, but she discovered her vocation. While she says she has a singing talent “like every other Filipino,” she prefers dramas to musicals. If she could play the stage role of her choice, she says, “I’ve always wanted to play Hamlet.” There’s no tempting her with a female part, such as Ophelia, and she’s too young for Gertrude. “With my deep voice, it would have to be Hamlet.”
A Woman in a Man’s Universe
Credit for the toughness Yssamei exudes doesn’t go to her weight training routine. A strong will is de rigueur to become a successful Fil-Am woman in Hollywood. “I think women of color, in general, are objectified. I still experience the exotic stereotyping,” she observes. “You learn how to navigate through it. Sometimes, it does feel frustrating.”
Here in AD 2025, Asian actors are still sent on auditions to play prostitutes. “I’ve gone out for a lot of chippies in my day.” She looks back without anger since she never won those demeaning jobs. “I’m lucky that the roles that I’ve gotten were multidimensional. They can feel empowering when an Asian woman takes control of the narrative and embodies her full femininity.
“Sometimes, it’s just a game,” she says of sexism in Hollywood. I’m learning to use it to my advantage so that it’s not always weighing on me.” She offers hope. “It is becoming safer as we see more female productions.”
Panganiban with Fil-Am friends (left to right): Steve Soria, Alpha Faye, Alex Benjamin, Shea William Vanderpoort
A Filipina Nurse on ‘St. Denis Medical’
Even though French parents still name their sons Denis with one “n” and Catholics everywhere honor his feast day of October 9th, a fictional hospital named after St. Denis would have to be a comedy. In paintings and stained-glass depictions of St. Denis, he isn’t holding a palm to symbolize his martyrdom. He’s holding his head. After the Third Century Bishop of Paris was decapitated, legend says, he walked 12 miles head in hand while preaching to passersby.
Panganiban with Nico Santos on St. Denis Medical
For all Fil-Ams whether religious or secular, “St. Denis Medical” is an answer to their prayers and thoughts.
Yssamei’s sister, Rigett Ramos, happens to be a hospice nurse. While she wore her sister’s scrubs to the audition, she never impersonated her sister’s brassy charm before or after she accepted the role of Sharice. The character was meticulously shaped by Fil-Am staff writer, Emman Sadorra.
“My sister is quite the opposite of Sharice, but I didn’t have to add my vision to the role. It was well scripted,” she recalls. “Emman and the other writers did a good job in terms of collaborating to create the role. I just had to show up on the day of shooting.”
The second Filipino nurse on the show is played by Nico Santos of Crazy Rich Asians fame. In the first season episode “Salamat to You Too”, we learn that the medical staff has nicknamed the pair the Filipino mafia.
The name, “Filipino mafia,” tests whether Filipino viewers can take a joke. Either Filipino nurses in America are too busy healing patients to bother or they embrace a term of endearment for a group of nurses who are united by language, culture, and a kind of snobbery that’s founded on competence amid a confederacy of dunces consisting of their medical colleagues.
Asians Dating Asians? Go Figure
“Shoot your shot, Buddy.” Those words come from the lips of a striking actress to encourage single Asian men who’re nervous about asking out a modern Asian woman. It’s no longer the norm that Asian women ignore Asian men even if they resemble a 21st Century version of dear old dad.
Yssamei points out that the rubber band of romance snapped back from interracial to intra-racial with the theatrical release of Crazy Rich Asians in 2018. The movie with a predominantly Asian cast sold almost $240 million in tickets and topped the box office for three weeks.
The romcom centered on an Asian couple whose families come from different sides of the ocean. Throughout the story, Asians play against type. When the groom’s scoundrel of a best man cheats on his Asian girlfriend, his mistress is also Asian. A better resolution of a social conflict awaits the lovebirds, but along the way, ample moviegoers become convinced that an Asian man and woman could form an entertaining union six centuries after Marco Polo and Kublai Khan linked East with West.
To dispel doubt whether Yssamei lives her truth, her actor-boyfriend is Chinese American. She urges Asian men and women to captain their destiny because she cares about everyone’s mental health. When asked what her backup would be if her film career hadn’t blossomed, she answered, “Therapist.”
Panganiban with partner Eric Banh at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
What’s in the Crystal Ball
Season 2 of “St. Denis Medical” is in the can and will debut on NBC and stream on Peacock on November 3, 2025. Yssamei isn’t resting on her residuals.
Kidding aside, Yssamei sympathizes with the plight of Asian men. In recent years, men in the mainstream have complained about being emasculated by successful women.
It’s not all work. She recently visited a brother in Seattle. The vacation is one of her few Instagram posts @ohmeigawd. There’s another show in the works, but it’s too early to disclose the title.
Someday fans will be clamoring for every particle of information on Yssamei. “One more thing.” Steve Jobs immortalized that phrase as he closed Apple conferences with a last reveal from the product lineup. One more thing about Yssamei is she has two cats. One is named Goose after the doomed Anthony Edwards portrayal in Top Gun. The other is Boba. They’re house cats with no claws in the rapid extinction of bird species. That’s news all living organisms will cheer.
Anthony Maddela has a master’s in professional writing from USC. He’s married to Susan, and they have two adult children in Charlotte and Gregory.