Brenda Song was recently spotted shopping in Los Angeles with her mom Mai and younger brother Nathan.
The trio hit a mall in the trendy Woodland Hills neighborhood on Friday. Onlookers said Song and her mother bought beauty products at the MAC store.
Song, 26, appears close to her family, with photos of them peppered throughout her Instagram feed.
The actress was born in the Sacramento, CA suburb of Carmichael. Her parents met in Sacramento, but were both born in Asia.
Her father is Hmong and was raised in a tribe that traveled the mountains of Thailand and Laos. Song’s mother was born Thai, but adopted into a Hmong family.
Song has said that her father insisted that she and younger brothers Timmy and Nathan speak Hmong growing up so they could communicate with their grandparents and retain a piece of Hmong culture.
Song’s favorite part of that culture is the food:
“There’s a chicken drumstick dish where they stuff it with noodles … It’s my favorite dish.”
Song’s father was in the military and at one point the family lived on an army base in Germany. They traveled extensively throughout Europe while he was stationed there. Song did professional theater on the American base.
When the family returned stateside, she told her mother she wanted to become a full time actress.
“My imagination, as a child, was huge,” she recalls. “It’s all I wanted to do.”
Song landed her first big role in Disney’s The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. After appearing in every episode of the show’s three-season run, she moved on to the spin-off The Suite Life on Deck, which also ran three seasons, from 2008 to 2011.
From there Song went on to appear in more grown up roles on series such as New Girl and Scandal. In 2013 and 2014 she starred in Fox’s sitcom Dads opposite Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi. In May the network announced it had canceled the show after just one season.
Image via Wikimedia Commons