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21 Jump Street Jumps to the Big Screen—What Have the Original Cast Members Been up To?
Although the big-screen debut of 21 Jump Street is going for comedy, the original Fox series was more dramatic. If you've forgotten, or never saw it, you can watch the original 21 Jump Street online for free via Hulu. It's all very '80s—the clothes, the hair, the drug dealers that look like extras from a Michael Jackson video. The show, which debuted 25 years ago as the first hour-long series on the fledgling Fox Network, comes across as a mixture of after-school special, music video, and character-driven drama, with plenty of mild humor thrown in. We all know what happened to some of the original Jump Street cast, such as Holly Robinson Peete, and Mr. Johnny Depp. But what about the rest of the squad? Read on to find out! By Brett Singer
GLOBE PHOTOS INC.
Dustin Nguyen as Officer Harry Truman Ioki in 21 Jump Street, 1987
Dustin Nguyen’s Officer H. T. Ioki had a joke of a name—literally. “Guess what year his parents moved to the States.” Get it? Okay, it’s not that funny. In real life, Nguyen came to the U.S. with his family from Vietnam in 1975, fleeing Saigon; Nguyen’s experiences found their way onto the show. According to a 2006 article in Asian Week, Jump Street producers sought input from the young actor and changed “the ethnicity of Nguyen’s character into one more reflective of his own personal origins,” which led to “an incredible turning point for Southeast Asians.”
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