Fast & Furious star Sung Kang talks about life lessons, 100-year plans, and the meaning of cars ahead of the release of his new series, The Ride Life with Sung Kang, in Summer 2024. 

One of the first things Fast & Furious star Sung Kang says about his new TV show, marketed as a “multi-country car culture series”, is that it’s not about cars. The six-episode series, The Ride Life with Sung Kang, promises access to “extraordinary car communities”, to get behind “the coolest and rarest vehicles”, and deepen “our understanding about the special relationship between man and machine”.

So it’s about cars? Still no, or not really. “I don’t even go into the cars,” Kang says. “I love cars, but after you’ve seen your 100th car, and are fortunate enough to have access to them in your personal life... really, they’re just a bunch of metal and rubber, it actually has no meaning,” he says. 

That meaning, he explains, is in the people who own the cars, their stories, and “the lessons they have taught me”. Like the Polish tech billionaire who started planting trees to decarbonise the world as part of his 100-year-plan and at last count was at 17 million. Kang loves the idea of a 100-year plan, “things I do today that will last after I’m gone” and “help the world be a better place”. 

The Ride Life with Sung Kang, which Kang says he has been thinking about for 10 years, is part of his plan to share the life lessons he has gathered. “I’m stealing this idea of a 100-year-plan... all the people who were part of the show will no longer be here but the lessons will be, right?,” he says.

Kang’s involvement with co-production partners, Beach House Pictures (BHP), in Singapore came about in the usual way: someone aware of an idea runs into someone else who knows someone looking for ideas, with an intro here and a conversation there... 

“But it was, like, Singapore... and I thought ‘how’s this going to work?’,” Kang says. “But then as soon as I met him [BHP co-founder, Donovan Chan]... I didn’t have to explain or make excuses for my Asianness to them. They didn’t think my face was going to get in the way. They didn’t go, ‘where are you from?’ And I didn’t have to say, ‘I’m from Georgia’. And they didn’t go, ‘but where are you really from?’. And I didn’t  have to go, ‘Do you mean where are my parents from? They’re from Korea’. And they didn’t go, ‘oh, so you’re Korean-American’. I’m used to that in Hollywood; it’s a business. They have to have a product that can sell, an angle... Donovan just sees me as a human, an American. I don’t have to make excuses for myself. It’s like this bag of rocks is off my shoulders.”

Scheduled to air by mid-Summer 2024, The Ride Life with Sung Kang is a co-production between global programmer/channel operator, Insight TV; Singapore-based BHP, Korean-American Bros Studio and Kang’s production venture, Raison D’Etre Stories. 

Production kicked off in April this year, and so far covers car owners in Seoul, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Warsaw. 

The Polish capital was an eye-opener for Kang, he says, admitting to “all these preconceived notions, maybe even prejudices. It was just my lack of understanding about the country”. 

At home, Kang has 14 cars, including a minivan, which he calls his “daily driver”, with 18 cup holders, water, snacks, tissues...  He has a soft spot for cup holders. “I have so many cars that have no cupholders and I don’t like to drive them because it’s so inconvenient,” he says. 

“No one expects me to be showing up in a minivan. Sometimes it disappoints people because they’re expecting the guy from the Fast and Furious movie to be in some crazy car. Valet guys open the door and go, ‘Why, like why? Why do you do this to us?’.”

Beyond everyday life, on the track, Kanag says super-fast racecars “put me to sleep”, in a good way. “Cars are a very safe place for me to get really comfortable, so they’re surprised, like they’re going 200 miles an hour and I just am so relaxed,” he says, listing race-car safety gear such as seatbelts and helmets. “Also, when you give complete trust to a driver... and they’re passionate about what they do. I know they’re not going to go and risk our lives, because they want to wake up tomorrow. It actually gives me this real calm”.  

Some of Kang’s favourite moments on The Ride Life so far are production downtimes with the in-country crews gathered from local production communities.  “When the cameras are off, the local crew gives you a sense of the area and the geography and the spirit of the people,” he says. “If the crew is excited about you coming to their country and sharing the ethos and spirit of the country, then you’re doing something right.”

▶ Published in ContentAsia December 2023 magazine. A version of this article appeared in ContentAsia’s eNewsletter on 6 November 2023