AFTER years of commercial work and background parts, Sue Ann Pien takes on the first major lead role of her career in Jason Katims’ new Amazon series “As We See It,” following three 20-something roommates on the autism spectrum. She stars as Violet, who works a fast food job while dreaming of having her first boyfriend and navigating a complicated relationship with her brother Van, played by Chris Pang. “The first time I read the script, I actually cried. One, I had never seen a character like Violet and, two, I knew exactly who she was; it was like Jason wrote that part for me,” says Pien, who like her fellow leads Rick Glassman and Albert Rutecki is on the spectrum herself. “There were just so many parallels between us: being young and trying so hard, feeling like I wanted to be like everyone else.” The connection was so strong that situations Katims wrote for the character before meeting Pien actually happened to her, like when Violet goes on a Bumble date and the man quickly makes an excuse to go to the bathroom but really leaves while she waits hours for his return. “To be able to play Violet, it was finally being able to be seen and understood,” she says. “It took away a lot of this loneliness I had from my youth.” Pien — an L.A. native born to Taiwanese parents, with an aerospace engineer father — recalls struggling to make friends growing up, which led her to pick up on the mannerisms and clothes of other girls at school as a way to fit in: “Out of that, I realized I’ve been acting my entire life.” As the actress detailed in a 2016 “Medium” piece, she and her family knew she was different growing up, but she was unaware it was autism until significantly into her adult life. Now her career has led to “As We See It,” with a set that Pien says allowed her to express herself in ways she hadn’t been allowed to in the past — like when she’d get in trouble in acting school for behaving “out of line” where “people don’t have a lot of tolerance for that.” (SD-Agencies) | 