NEW YORK (AP) – Broadway’s next king has been awfully busy chasing bad guys on the streets of Honolulu.
Daniel Dae Kim, who plays a detective on the TV series “Hawaii Five-0,” takes over in May as the King of Siam in the blissful Lincoln Center Theater revival of “The King and I,” a role he calls “maybe the greatest role for an Asian male in theater.”
Kim, who graduated from New York University with a master’s degree in acting and cut his teeth in off-Broadway shows, said he’s been “looking for a way to get back” to the New York stage but instead found himself in Hawaii doing TV for the 12 past years.
Kim managed to see the current “The King and I” twice – once with Ken Watanabe and once with Hoon Lee – and said “it was treat to be able to watch both of them interpret the role.”
The king, who is both imposing and romantic, will mark Kim’s Broadway debut, but he’s played the same monarch before, at London’s world-renowned Royal Albert Hall in 2009.