Kelsey Asbille

Actress Kelsey Asbille Chow (A.K.A. Kelsey Asbille or Kelsey Chow) is one of the stars of the (modern-day) western series Yellowstone.

Chow is of mixed European and Asian ancestry. Her parents are Dr. James Chow and Jean Chow. She has two younger siblings: a brother, Forrest, and a sister, Kiersten. Chow has said her father is Chinese, and her mother an American from Columbia, South Carolina. She stated in 2010 that because her father is Chinese, she wanted to be more fluent in Mandarin Chinese, as well as read traditional Chinese characters.

For all of her screen credits up through 2017, she is listed as Kelsey Chow. For most of her roles since that year, such as for Wind River, Yellowstone, and Fargo (when she has portrayed Native American women) she began to be credited only as “Kelsey Asbille”, ceasing use of the last name “Chow”.

In an interview with the New York Times published on August 1st 2017, claimed to be "part Cherokee" and to have a "Cherokee identity." She told The New York Times that she was of "Eastern Band Cherokee descent" and that playing an Indigenous woman was "in [her] blood."

Shortly after the New York Times published their interview with Chow’s claims, actor Adam Beach called for a boycott of Kevin Costner’s forthcoming TV period drama Yellowstone ahead of its 2018 release. He specifically challenged the Native ancestry of Kelsey Asbille Chow, who had identified herself as Cherokee and Asian-American but who, by Beach’s reckoning, was not Native. “What got me jolted by it was that I have a lot of Native female actors that need a job,” Beach, who is Saulteaux, told BuzzFeed News. “I immediately called it out.”

This resulted in further action and research into Chow’s claims, with the tribe eventually issuing a statement on September 6th, 2017 that they have no record of Chow, The tribe also indicated that they did not find any evidence that she is a descendant.

Currently, Native American and Indigenous activists are calling for a boycott of the show “Yellowstone”, commonly citing Chow’s lies as just one of the reasons for the boycott.

Chow dated British actor William Moseley from 2012 to 2018. Her partner now is film director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte.

Series[]

Yellowstone (45 episodes)[]

In this TV series Asbille plays Monica Dutton, a lifelong resident of the Broken Rock Reservation, married to Kayce Dutton with whom she has a son named Tate. Check out the table(s) below to find out in which episodes she made an appearance.

O = appeared in this episode

o = made an uncredited appearance

x = was (only) credited in this episode

- = did not appear in this episode