Jamie Chung’s Career Break Down; ‘The Real World’, ‘Grown Ups’ to ‘Dexter: New Blood’

After jumpstarting her career on reality TV, Jamie Chung moved on to find a career in acting. One might even argue that she is the greatest reality TV-to-working-actor success story in all of Tinseltown, and for good reason. 

Chung made her on-screen debut with The Real World: San Diego, the 14th season of MTV's groundbreaking and long-running reality show. Her career in reality TV bloomed during her time on the spin-off series Real World/Road Rules Challenge.

Soon after, she transitioned near flawlessly into the world of acting and had landed some pretty prominent roles over the years. Big Hero 6, The Gifted, Grown Ups, and most recently Dexter: New Blood come to mind.

Jamie Chung Started Off with Reality TV

During an appearance on Build, Chung described her experience of being on The Real World as the strangest experience. The extreme lack of privacy was such that they were under surveillance with night-vision cameras in the dark.

As soon as someone woke up and said one word, the crew would light up the whole set and come charging in with cameras. Finally, she did admit that she wasn't in the realty business for the long haul.

She signed up for the show in her sophomore year of college when she was working two jobs. And being on the reality show for a quarter meant that her three months of rent was covered, and that was that. 

Later on, in the same interview, she also explained her interest in fashion and how it came to be. Apparently, she was working on the pilot season for a series called Belief in New York when she was invited to the New York Fashion Week. 

Chung on 'Lovecraft Country'

During her time in NYC, she also caught on to how everyone had their own sense of style and trends. Chung simply caught on, unlike the failure of that series she was shooting. It got canceled after the pilot season. 

Earlier in the year, Chung made quite a few headlines for her role in the acclaimed TV series Lovecraft Country where she played Ji-Ah. She admitted in an interview with In Creative Company that, for her, one of the major highlights of the show was that there were episodes in Korean — her native tongue. 

Additionally, the script offered up a chance for her to perform with Korean history and mythological ideas from a time before the missionaries came to the land. Needless to say, she was absolutely hooked from the get-go.

Chung Plays a Podcaster in 'Dexter: New Blood'

She is also a part of Showtime's Dexter limited sequel titled Dexter: New Blood. In the series set to unfold in upstate New York, Chung would be presented as a true-crime podcaster, Molly Park, originally from Los Angeles. 

During an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, the actress opened up about her ideas about the titular character and her experience of being able to share the screen with him. 

"Dexter having this person in his peripheral is like — it's another threat to his identity," Chung said, "And so I really love that they wrote this character. It's so fun dropping in, playing the character, popping out."

She also pointed out that podcasting wasn't quite as mainstream and pervasive during Dexter's original run, making her somewhat of a new wrinkle that the serial killer has to navigate around.