Ashley Park on Conquering Her Financial Anxiety & ‘Emily in Paris’ Season 3
From heiress of China’s “Zipper King” to working as a nanny and rising singer in France, Ashley Park’s character Mindy in Emily in Paris goes through the quintessential riches-to-rags story. Though Park’s background is much different (she grew up in a Korean-American household in Michigan), the actress tells SheKnows that it doesn’t make thinking about money any less important. In fact, during our candid conversation, the Netflix star opens up about realizing the importance of financial planning, and how it’s changed her relationship with money and her own goals for the future.
“I really didn’t ever have a financial plan,” Park says about her 20s, noting she used to have a misconception that financial planning was only for older people who wanted to retire or settle down.
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Park, now 31, says she’s part of a generation where women were told “you can do anything,” but weren’t “given any of the tools or financial education” to do so responsibly. Most of all, she admits, she’s also a part of a generation that once assumed by the time a woman turns 30, she’d be shouldering those financial responsibilities with a partner. For Park — and many other women out there — that isn’t the case.
By changing those expectations, Park says she’s “rewriting this societal rulebook.”
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Prior to taking the leap of faith and hiring a financial advisor from Northwestern Mutual, Park says she “felt too dumb to ask the questions,” and, honestly, didn’t even know which questions to ask in the first place. Not understanding how to get the information she needed, finances were a constant stress factor for her. She admits, “I felt a lot of financial anxiety…I just didn’t know any of the terminology.”
After “gaslighting” herself into thinking she should know her way around financial planning, Park hired an advisor, learned the terms, set the goals, and finally took control.
Her realization parallels many others who have taken the complicated past few years to reflect and redefine their future. Northwestern Mutual marks the phenomenon as “The Great Realization.”
Now, having gone through the process, Park equates the experience of partnering with the company to hiring a therapist or an agent if you’re an actor. “You want to get an agent, even if you’ve never had a job because they’re the ones who have answers, they know the industry, they have access to things,” she explains. “But then as you get more experience as an actor in the industry, you get to learn more by being in it, and then you can have very productive conversations and feel collaborative with your agent.”
Also in our talk, Park dished on her runaway Netflix hit, noting that season 3 will reveal Mindy’s star sign (for those horoscope fans out there). “I think that we get to see a lot of more of her really figuring out ‘What is my dream? What am I running away from? How do I infuse that into who I actually am?'”
“She needs a financial advisor,” Parks jokes, adding, “I think for both her and Emily, but especially Mindy this season, we really see her start to take ownership of what she wants in life personally and career wise.”
We can’t wait for the next season of the show, which drops on Netflix on Dec 21.
Before you go, click here to see the best TV shows you should be watching right now.
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