In March 2018, Christine Ko canceled an audition for the film “Tigertail” because her adoptive father, who had been sick with cancer for many years, was dying and she wanted to see him.

A few weeks later, the role still hadn’t been cast, so Ms. Ko, an actress, was invited again to audition.

“I remember where I was when I watched her audition video,” said Alan Michael Yang, the writer, director and producer of “Tigertail.” He was so impressed by her performance that he wanted to meet Ms. Ko in person.

Ms. Ko landed the role as the film’s female lead, and she and Mr. Yang spent the early fall working together in New York and Taiwan, with him behind the camera and her in front of it. The film is inspired by Mr. Yang’s parents, Joanne Bian and Peter Yang, and the story of their immigration from Taiwan to the United States. Like Mr. Yang, Ms. Ko is Taiwanese-American.

“It’s so cool that we’re from similar cultural backgrounds,” Ms. Ko said. During filming, she said, they were both “discovering our identity and where our parents are from.”

Ms. Ko, 36, grew up with two sets of parents: her biological parents, Cindy Wen and Frankie Kao, who lived in Taiwan her whole life, and her aunt and uncle, Irene and Richard Wang, who adopted her when she was 3 years old and raised her in Acworth, Ga. She received a bachelor’s degree in communication from Georgia State University, and in 2011, she moved to Los Angeles to become an actress. She worked as a waitress, babysitter and Uber driver until she caught a break on CBS’s “The Great Indoors” in 2016. Since then, she’s been cast on TV shows like “Dave,” “Only Murders in the Building” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”