Originally published April 6, 2015 as a brief announcement about Paul Kwo's appearance in God's Not Dead. Substantially rewritten and expanded July 2026.
In 2014, a film called God's Not Dead came out, and I was in it. Our front desk put up a congratulations post — the kind of thing a proud studio does — and that little post has quietly outlived almost everything else on our old website. People still find it. So it seems fair to replace it with the version only I can write: what playing Martin Yip has actually meant, on set and back in the classroom.
Who does Paul Kwo play in God's Not Dead?
I play Martin Yip. Martin begins as a student from China, encountering questions about faith that are unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and increasingly difficult to ignore — questions his family didn't send him abroad to ask. I first played him in God's Not Dead in 2014, returned to him in God's Not Dead 2, appeared again through an archival scene in God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, and stepped fully back into his life for God's Not Dead: We the People.
Returning to a character across so many years is a strange gift for an actor — characters usually end when the shoot does. Martin kept going, and I got to grow him up.
What I love about playing him is that his arc is a student's arc. He listens, he resists, he asks one more question than is comfortable, and he changes slowly and then all at once. I've been teaching since 1998. I know this kind of student, because I've had the privilege of watching that transformation many times.
What did returning to Martin feel like?
The second film was the most thrilling experience I've had as an actor to date. It had been about three years since we shot the first one, and I never expected a sequel — but it came, and people loved this character, and getting to return to someone an audience already cared about is a rare thing.
It also took a minute to find him again. That first day back on set was a shock, and not only creatively. We'd shot the first film in Baton Rouge; the second was in Little Rock, and my first scene up was the last scene of the movie — me walking outside. Filming had slipped from April to June, and it was humid in a way I wasn't built for. I was sweating like a faucet somebody turned on and couldn't shut off. They had two portable AC units under a tent blasting me between every take and two people from makeup trying to dry me off, and I remember thinking, what is happening to my body. We survived.
But what made that film matter to me wasn't the sweat — it was the depth. In the first film, Martin is a student, listening. In the second, he's in real emotional conflict with his father, and that was something I could finally sink my teeth into. There's a particular gift in playing a character with actual history — a history the audience already knows.
Then came We the People, and by then it had been years again. We shot it during COVID, which was its own new world: the protocols, the distance, learning how to be on a set safely. But the character had aged with me. Martin wasn't a college kid anymore; he was in a different phase of his life, and getting to play that evolution — to genuinely grow up alongside a role across a decade — is something even most experienced actors never get to do.
What Martin taught me about our students
Each time I returned to Martin, I was reminded that transformation is slow, then sudden, and that someone has to stay in the room with you through the slow part. That is the job. That is what we built in Temple City: a room where the slow part is safe.
Why does it matter that your teacher still auditions?
Because I still hear "no." I audition. I book some, and I don't book far more — a rhythm familiar to working actors, including the ones our students hope to become.
When I tell a student that rejection isn't a verdict, I'm not reciting a poster; I'm reporting from last Tuesday.
That's the standard we build our faculty around: artists and educators who remain active in their fields, keep training, and bring current professional experience back into the classroom. Our acting teachers don't have to describe the industry from a distance. We're not describing a mountain from a postcard — we're still climbing it, a few switchbacks ahead, close enough to reach back.
How does my acting work shape what we teach?
Live action taught me about marks, continuity, waiting, and returning to a scene after the emotion has cooled. Between films I've continued working in voice-over, on projects including Turning Red and Kung Fu Panda 4 — a discipline I love enough that we teach it as its own program. Voice-over strips away the visual scaffolding: the performance still has to live, but now it has to live entirely in timing, breath, intention, and sound.
And for the youngest performers in my life, I wrote a children's book, *Nervous Nelly's First Recital*, about the thing I've spent my career helping kids through — walking onto a stage scared, and doing it anyway. I read it to our little ones myself. These look like separate parts of a career; in the classroom, they keep feeding one another.
If your child is at the beginning of their own slow part, our doors are open. [Fundamental Acting](/programs/acting/fundamental-acting) is where I'd tell my own younger self to begin — and from there, students grow into on-camera work, [voice-over](/programs/acting/voice-over-acting), auditions, and film production without being rushed past the foundations. [Answers to frequently asked questions about PopRock Academy classes are here.](/questions)
By [Paul Kwo, founder of PopRock Academy](/about#faculty)