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'I FEEL LUCKY'
It’s a miracle I made it onto Emily in Paris after leukaemia & sepsis battles… my boyfriend saved me, says Ashley Park
Ashley reveals she initially laughed off her symptoms, instead focusing on her love of drama
AS aspiring singer Mindy Chen in Emily In Paris, actress Ashley Park has proved a huge hit with viewers.
But as the Netflix series returned this week, the star reveals her showbiz success is a “miracle” after she was struck down by TWO life-threatening illnesses.
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At 15, Ashley was diagnosed with an aggressive form of blood cancer that left her covered in bruises and without her beloved long hair.
Then earlier this year, while on a romantic holiday with her boyfriend, co-star Paul Forman, she developed sepsis from an infection.
Ashley, 33, credits 30-year-old Paul with saving her life.
She says: “It’s so crazy to be the woman I am now, it’s very full circle.”
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Now she is back for the fourth series of the show, which follows Emily Cooper, played by Lily Collins, and her life in the French capital with her friend Mindy.
Ashley recalls how she was at high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when she discovered she had acute myeloid leukaemia.
She said: “It was right before Christmas that I was diagnosed.
“I danced and I did a lot of extra-curriculars and was late to all my classes because I couldn’t climb the stairs in time.
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“I had bruises everywhere and I had lost so much weight. But everyone is changing when you are 15. I was like, ‘Great, my growth spurt, I’m losing all my baby fat’.”
Ashley reveals she initially laughed off her symptoms, instead focusing on her love of drama.
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She explains: “I was doing High School Musical and I loved theatre so much. I was starting to get very sick and we put off going to the doctor for a while.
“I remember laughing about my bruises with friends. We finally went to the paediatrician after school and they took some blood and said, ‘You need to go to the ER right now’.
“I said, ‘I’m going to go to rehearsal first’. They said, ‘You should call your dad’. We went to the ER that night and I didn’t leave hospital for eight months.
‘Blessing in disguise’
“At that time, my world stopped and everyone else got to keep going with their lives. At a young age, I was like, ‘I really can’t see past this. I don’t ever imagine a world where I’m not in this hospital bed alone’.”
On the My First Time podcast, she adds defiantly: “But I’m here, past it — I’m much more hopeful now.”
After recovering, Ashley feared her leukaemia ordeal, along with being from a family of Korean migrants, would derail her career before it started.
She told the K-Pod podcast: “I was the girl who had cancer, and I had spent my whole life trying not to be the Asian girl.
“I want to be the smart girl, the nice girl. I love being Asian, but I don’t like that it’s the first thing people are going to see.
“All of a sudden I was the sick girl, and I’m bald and look a certain way.”
While undergoing cancer treatment, Ashley was given a “wish” by the Make-A-Wish Foundation charity.
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She chose to visit New York City to watch her first Broadway shows, and seeing so many talented actors and singers on stage inspired her to chase the same dream.
At 16, Ashley — who shaved her head at the start of her cancer treatment — regained her strength in time to play Millie Dillmount in her high school’s production of Thoroughly Modern Millie.
She explains: “Once I left hospital I decided, ‘I don’t want this to define me, and one day I will have long hair again and people will have no idea’. But it is something that has defined me, despite me not wanting it to.
“I had the adult form of leukaemia, which is more intense and spreads faster.
‘I’m supposed to be doing musical theatre’.
“But I see it as a blessing because, instead of a three-year treatment protocol, it was really vigorous.
"I never thought theatre was a career possibility but, because I survived cancer, my parents were like, ‘You can do whatever you want’.
"Millie was the show I did when I came out and I believe I was not supposed to return to school.
“It was insane. No wonder my parents were so worried. I was this bald girl and I wasn’t supposed to be walking and I’m doing Millie. The wigs I wore in that show are all from my own hair.”
Ashley admits she related to Millie’s character as she headed down the path into showbiz.
She says: “I don’t think there was an ‘Aha!’ moment where I thought,
“But since then, to this day, I am constantly in the present moment and thinking, ‘Cool, let’s keep going’. Millie is such a survivor, too, and that was impactful.”
In Emily In Paris, Mindy is a singing hopeful from Shanghai, China, who forms a bond with American marketing exec Emily as they both struggle in a foreign city.
I was this bald girl with cancer. I wasn’t supposed to be walking or doing musical theatre. But I left hospital thinking: ‘This will not define me. I will have hair again’
Ashley Park
In real-life too, the women from different backgrounds have formed a close friendship.
Lily, 35, is the daughter of rock great Phil Collins.
She was born in England but grew up in the US with her mother after her parents split.
‘We are so in love’
She has starred in several films and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her 2016 role in Rules Don’t Apply.
Ashley has appeared on Broadway in Mamma Mia! and in the Mean Girls musical.
She says: “Lily comes from the film world and I come from the theatre world and we met in this TV world.
“And there are some scenes in Emily In Paris where we would be in these costumes and doing these scenes and our banter and everything, we would click. We would find these different rhythms and different ways in and out.
“And then they would say cut for the final time and we would say, ‘I can’t believe we are never doing this again. This is so crazy’.”
The pair now share such a bond that it was Lily who noticed Ashley had feelings for French-English actor Paul, who plays dapper Nicolas de Leon in the Netflix series.
'Noticed the chemistry'
Ashley had previously been linked with Broadway actors Zach Adkins and Benjamin Tyler Cook, though she had vowed not to date anybody else in the business.
She also admits that she knew her future boyfriend was “eye candy” who looked “impeccable”, but Lily “noticed the chemistry” between them — which Ashley vehemently denied at the time.
The actress says: “She was like, ‘Ashley, what is going on?’. And I replied, ‘Nothing. I told you I wasn’t dating actors’.”
But after a trip to Poland, where she was moved by watching London-based actor Paul “play chess with children who did not have a home”, she told Lily and the cast: “We are so in love.”
Paul, who has been in the BBC One series Father Brown and Austrian film Nevrland, was constantly by her side when, in January, a case of tonsillitis while on holiday in the Maldives developed into septic shock.
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She had to be taken to a hospital in Dubai for treatment and posted photographs on social media of the actor at her bedside, with tubes and wires draped across her body.
Ashley says: “I feel lucky, actually. It’s been kind of a miracle how I have recovered. I don’t think I would have made it without him. Everybody else was on the other side of the world.”
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