“Put that guidebook away! It’s for tourists!” tour guide Sinh (Scott Ly) tells Amanda Riley (Rachael Leigh Cook) in the new romantic comedy A Tourist’s Guide to Love. When she points out that here in Vietnam, she is exactly that, he corrects her: “A tourist wants to escape life. A traveler wants to experience it.”
Sinh’s approach to travel is the opposite of Amanda’s. Where she loves guidebooks and itineraries that allow her to check items off a list, he wants to help people truly experience what the country has to offer. Unbeknownst to him, though, Amanda is more than just the average traveler: She’s an undercover travel executive and in Vietnam on a mission to assess whether her company might want to acquire Saigon Silver Star, the small operation run by Sinh’s uncle. But on the heels of an unexpected breakup, Amanda’s trip turns out to be equal parts business and pleasure, and with her whole life up in the air, she discovers the joys of throwing caution (and itineraries) to the wind. As Sinh shows her a new way forward, she must choose: She can stick with what she knows, or take a leap of faith and discover a country and a culture in ways she never could have imagined — and maybe even find new love in the process.
Ironically, Ly was the one facing a career crossroads when he got the call to audition for the film. At the time, he’d taken a step back from acting to spend time with his two kids, and was working as a personal trainer. “Acting was kind of on the passenger seat,” he tells Tudum. “Not the back seat — the passenger seat.” So he thought, “Why not go for it?” During a five-minute break from work, he called his wife for a quick practice run. “She said, ‘That was pretty good.’ She’s a critic, dude.”
“It was effortless,” Ly says about stepping into character as the unpredictable tour guide. “[He’s] outgoing, spontaneous, loves life, full of energy — he’s kind of like me.”
Personality isn’t the only thing they have in common. In the film, Sinh has only recently returned to Vietnam, where he was born, after growing up in the United States. That feeling of being called back to your roots after a long time is another way Ly felt connected to the character. Born in Houston to Vietnamese parents who left the country during the war, Ly says filming on location in Vietnam “was like coming home.”
Cook first met with Ly for a chemistry read soon after his initial audition — you can watch the two of them get to know each other in the video above. “Scott’s parents created a movie star,” she says, and she found his vibes every bit as immaculate as Sinh’s. “The way he does life, the way he walks into a room, his perspective on things, he’s just such a character,” she previously told Tudum. “You [can just tell], ‘Oh yeah, I believe that guy owns a backpack.’ ”
The two quickly bonded, on-screen and off. “She just mentored me,” Ly says, adding that he constantly felt challenged to match his co-star’s skills. While filming a scene where Sinh and Amanda visit Sinh’s grandfather’s grave, Ly remembers looking away for a split second. “I turned back, and there’s a tear coming down [out of] her eye,” he says. “I was like, ‘Dude, level up.’ ”
In return, Ly shared some of his best workout tips with Cook. “She said her goal is to do a pull-up,” he says.
Theirs is exactly the kind of rapport that writer Eirene Tran Donohue, who wrote the script based on her own real-life rom-com experience in Vietnam, originally envisioned. “Sinh is passionate and adventurous and proud of his culture and country,” she says. “He’s a good balance to Rachael’s character and her tendency to go ‘by the book.’ [Scott] gave Sinh the quiet strength and easygoing confidence that was essential to the character.”
But Ly’s casting was significant for other reasons, too. “It was very important to me that Sinh be a strong and desirable love interest,” she adds. “In this industry and in American culture Asian men are not often given the chance.”
Ly took his mission seriously, prepping for a scene where his character emerges from a swim in slow motion with the same dedication Sinh brings to his tour groups. “I remember [in] the days leading up to the beach scene, he was just constantly doing push-ups and crunches to get ready and only eating hard-boiled eggs,” Donohue says.
If a tourist is just taking a break from their life, Ly has always been traveling toward this destination. Playing Sinh feels meant to be. “My mom and dad had a vision of coming to America for their kids to have freedom, and here I am,” he says. “I’ve always felt like a leading man.”
