Hold on to your potatoes! Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom star Ke Huy Quan has shared the behind-the-scenes story around his viral reunion photo with Indy himself, Harrison Ford.
Nearly forty years ago, the Vietnamese-born child star played the archeologist adventurer’s sidekick Short Round in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel, and the duo crossed paths again at Disney’s D23 Expo in September, where Ford appeared to tease the release of the fifth and final Indiana Jones film next year.
“We’re in this greenroom … and the person who was assigned to assist me said, ‘Harrison Ford is right outside the greenroom. Would you want to go say hi?'” Quan told New York Times journalist Kyle Buchanan, who posted the excerpt of their interview on Twitter. “So I walk out and see him about 15 feet away….And as I walk closer, I’m thinking, ‘Is he gonna recognize me? The last time he saw me, I was a little kid.'”
But even at 80 years old, Ford doesn’t forget a face. As Quan — who was at D23 to announce that he had joined the cast of Loki for the Marvel show’s second season — came into the actor’s line of sight, he says that his former co-star’s “grumpy look” immediately changed. “He looks and points at me and says, ‘Are you Short Round?’ Immediately I was transported back to 1984, when I was a little kid, and I said, ‘Yes, Indy.’ And he said, ‘Come here,’ and gave me a big hug.”
“When I wrapped my arms around him, all those wonderful memories I had on set came flooding back,” Quan continues. “It felt so comfortable. It was amazing and he’s an amazing man — one of the most generous men on the planet.”
Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment earlier this year, Quan shared some of those “wonderful memories” of his time with Ford on the Temple of Doom set in Sri Lanka. “It was my first time [acting], and he was constantly behind the camera helping Steven get that performance out of me,” says the actor, who recently returned to the big screen after a decades-long absence in the breakout indie hit, Everything Everywhere All At Once. “When we were in Sri Lanka, we all stayed in the same hotel and every time we wrapped for the day, I would go swimming. I didn’t know how to swim before, and it was actually Harrison Ford who taught me! To this day, I thank him for that.”
Quan also said that he’d happily reteam for another adventure with Dr. Jones in Ford’s swan song.
“It’d be cool to see an adult version of Short Round, and it’ll be cool if I get to play him!” she said. But even if there’s not a stealth cameo in the offing, he’ll still be in the multiplex to see Indiana Jones 5 next summer. “I’ll be in the first in line to see the next movie. Nobody can play Indiana Jones but Harrison Ford, so I’m going to love seeing him don the fedora again and crack that whip one more time.”
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is currently streaming on Paramount+
