On Sanyee’s first family vacation to Disneyland as a kid, she made a wish during the “Believe…There’s Magic in the Stars” Fireworks Spectacular that she would live and work in Los Angeles someday, bringing people joy through storytelling. She left her hometown of San Francisco to create her own major at Harvard College in Narrative in Rhetoric & Performance, then booked her childhood dream job as a Disney Channel Movie Surfer. Since then, she’s worked as a red carpet reporter — covering events including Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys, and Comic-Con, and sitting down one-on-one with the likes of Tom Cruise, Sandra Bullock, Chris Pratt, Jim Carrey, and the two Ryans: Gosling and Reynolds, making all of them laugh (yay!). In addition to acting and hosting, Sanyee’s original coming-of-age and romantic comedy screenplays have been finalists for the Sundance Labs, Rom Com Fest, Harvardwood Annual Writers’ Competition, Zoetrope, and BuzzFeed/IGTV VerticalU, and she’s worked as a Story Analyst reviewing scripts and novels for film/series/streaming adaptation for Amazon Studios, The Black List, Rideback, and Welle Ent.
On Joining King Trivia: After taking the leap of faith from my full-time job at NBCUniversal in the West Coast Page Program to full-fledged and full-force freelancing as an artist within my first year in LA, I was grateful for the work opportunities that filled my calendar on a weekly basis, year after year. However, I consistently had little time for a social life — and felt the stirrings of cabin fever when I was spending my nights writing until sunrise. I felt enticed to host trivia because I wanted to make new friends in LA and expand my community — and I thank all the teams who have ever invited me for a drink after a game to get to know me and share their stories about themselves!
Round of Trivia I’d Dominate: I can — and have dominated — any and all movie-related trivia! I even played a game of Hot Hands with Ellen on her St. Patrick’s Day episode to name movie posters w/o their titles within a time limit. I won a one-week all-expenses-paid trip to Ireland and brought my mom and sister on Mother’s Day as my plus two’s for our first time there, in return as a thank-you to my mom for taking us to Blockbuster every Friday night for weekend movie marathons together while growing up!
If I were a drink: Someone would most likely describe me as ginger beer — bubbly and sweet with an unexpected kick! Zesty, spicy, and super versatile — able to be paired up easily with any flavor of personality. Ready to add excitement in any set of circumstances. Prefers to live a bright colorful life just as much as ginger beer embraces a vibrant spectrum, swimmingly complementing grapefruit to guava, pomegranate to passion fruit, cranberry to strawberry (+ mint), jasmine to hibiscus lavender, white peach to blood orange, pineapple to watermelon, cane sugar to cucumber. Bold or subtle, depending on the occasion. Inimitably refreshing. Always a surprise to those who’ve never met me, and still one for those who have.
Most Interesting Thing About Me: I can read 100 pages per hour. I used to be (near) heart-stoppingly shy up until I turned 12 and would get extreme anxiety whenever I was called on in class and preferred reading and writing by myself on the playground. I am half-Taiwanese, quarter-Vietnamese, and quarter-Filipino (#panAsian), raised by my phenomenal immigrant single mom who always encouraged me to dream big and sat front-row to all of my performances and poetry readings, speeches and sketches, songs and screenings. I love writing — novels, scripts, songs, poems, letters, texts, emails, IG stories, trivia recaps (see GOAL Sports for more!), answers to personal questions from King Trivia. I guess the most interesting thing about me is that there is an infinite plethora of interesting things about me!
