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Tribune News Service

To help him prepare for his role as an overlooked Asian-American everyman in Interior Chinatown, Jimmy O. Yang bought a US$1,500 used Toyota Corolla and drove it around Los Angeles.
It was, to put it mildly, a lemon.
The driver’s side door did not work. There were no power windows. The brakes were so shot that he once struggled to stop in time and bumped into a Tesla whose owner was irate – until he recognised Yang and asked to get cast in one of his shows.
But the most telling encounter, says Yang, was when he pulled up to the studio gate and the guard on duty refused to let him on the lot.

“I’m No. 1 on the call sheet and she would not give me the time of day. She was like, ‘Pull over, call whoever got you in here. If you can’t, you gotta go’ – she was so rude to me because I was in this car,” the actor-writer-comedian recalls.
The experience gave Yang a sense of how people tend to dismiss Asian-Americans, especially those who exist on the economic margins. “It’s sad, and it informed a lot of my decisions on the show,” he says.

In the surreal Interior Chinatown, which Yang aptly describes as “The Twilight Zone meets Law & Order,” Yang stars as Willis Wu, a waiter at a seedy Chinese restaurant that doubles as the perpetual filming location for a police procedural called “Black & White”.
Willis laments feeling like “a background actor in someone else’s story” and longs to be in the spotlight, “but that’s hard if you look like me”, he says. Then he witnesses a crime, and suddenly finds himself thrust into the centre of the story.
The 10-episode series, streaming in the United States on Hulu and in Hong Kong on Disney+ from November, was created by Charles Yu and adapted from his National Book Award-winning novel of the same name, a moving, inventive send-up of Asian stereotypes in pop culture.
Willis’ journey “is such a metaphor for the Asian-American experience”, Yang says, “because we are the model minority, but at the same time we are invisible. People talk about black and white, but where do we fall? You’re just not seen for who you are.”
He cites the example of a British TV host who approached Lisa Su, the billionaire chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices, for an interview and asked if she spoke English. “He just assumed she was a foreigner.”

Interior Chinatown represents a breakthrough dramatic role for Yang, who is perhaps best known for his scene-stealing turn as Jian-Yang, a quietly menacing Chinese app developer in the HBO comedy Silicon Valley.


It is also a deeply personal project with striking parallels to his own life story, as an immigrant who moved to the United States from Hong Kong as a teenager and spent years toiling away in bit parts – “Chinese Teenager #1,” “Person in Line” – until he attained leading-man status.
“Emotionally, I always connected with Willis,” Yang says. “At the same time, I think it’s a universal story. I’ve never felt like I fit in, not just because I’m Asian – that’s part of it – but also because I grew up in a pretty traditional family that wanted me to get a real job, and I wanted to be an artist.”
Yang relocated to Los Angeles when he was 13 – a delicate age for anyone, much less a recent transplant with a tenuous grasp of the English language. The culture shock was intense.
You just learn so much. There’s no more honest feedback than laughter from a real audience – or lack thereof.
Jimmy O. Yang on what he gets from doing stand-up comedy
His parents wanted him to do something practical, like become an accountant. “I don’t think they were, like, anti-art by any means,” Yang says. “My dad probably wishes he could have been an actor or a musician. It just truly wasn’t a real job for him. He wanted me to be financially stable, and not be homeless.”
As Yang was preparing to graduate from the University of California San Diego, and panicking about his future, he tried doing stand-up at an open-mic night at the Haha Club in North Hollywood. It was a “holy s*** moment,” he recalled. “My material sucked but I was more comfortable onstage than off-.”
He was instantly hooked and started going as much as possible. Stand-up became his informal writing, acting and directing school.
“You just learn so much. There’s no more honest feedback than laughter from a real audience – or lack thereof.”
He worked a string of odd jobs, from selling used cars to DJing at a strip club where, according to house rules, every third song had to be “Girls, Girls, Girls” by Mötley Crüe. The sound of revving motorcycles “still haunts me to this day”, he said.

Yang started doing background work and eventually landed small speaking roles. There were many moments when, like Willis in Interior Chinatown, he was reminded of his place in the Hollywood pecking order.
On the set of the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., when he had a few lines of dialogue as the aforementioned “Chinese Teenager #1” in an episode set in Chinatown, he went to get a drink from craft services and was stopped by a crew member. “She was like, ‘Oh, I thought you were one of the background actors,’ because I was Chinese,” he said.
Yang was eventually cast in Silicon Valley in what was originally written as a one-off guest role but became a series regular. From the beginning he elevated what, in less capable hands, could have played as a one-note cliché.

“Jimmy quickly showed himself to be a really great comedy actor. He understood the joke but played it very real and never seemed like he was reaching for the comedy or trying to be funny,” Silicon Valley creator Mike Judge said.
Other opportunities soon followed. In 2018, Yang published a memoir, How to American: An Immigrant’s Guide to Disappointing Your Parents. The same year, he played the extravagant Bernard Tai in Crazy Rich Asians, a film that marked a watershed for Asian representation in Hollywood.
“Looking back, we had very limited opportunities. Since Crazy Rich Asians, I think there’s more,” Yang says.

Success has meant that Yang has made his father, Richard Ouyang, proud – and even helped him score some acting gigs, including a recent car commercial starring both of them. “They always say ‘nepo baby.’ I like to think he is the nepo daddy in this family.”
When Yang got the call to audition for Interior Chinatown, he felt an immediate connection to the role. “I was like, ‘I gotta get this. This means so much to me,’” he says.
Yu says both the novel and series were inspired by “people who have these backstories, but they don’t get to tell those stories”.
When it came to casting Willis, Yang was an intriguing choice because he had followed such a similar journey. “There honestly aren’t many people out there that have had that kind of career path, to start as a featured extra and grow into a phenomenon on Silicon Valley where people were quoting his character’s lines,” Yu says.

Yu recalls being “knocked back” by the emotional weight – and the tears – that Yang delivered in his audition.
“I was – I don’t want to say surprised, because it sounds like I wasn’t expecting him to do well – but it’s not something you expect from this guy who just made you laugh for years,” says Yu, who sees a connection between Yang’s multilingual, multicultural background and his natural facility for acting.
For Yang, finally being No. 1 on the call sheet was a challenge – albeit a welcome one.
“It was six months of shooting. I was basically in every scene. I had to be funny on Tuesday, do kung fu on Wednesday and cry on Friday. It was very gruelling,” Yang says. “But of course, it’s a beautiful story worth telling.”

another one with interior chinatown cast
chloe bennet's hug tho 🥹 pic.twitter.com/JnpQ6q3xfM
— fansnyachloeb (@fansnyachloeb) July 13, 2024

He admits there were moments he was jealous of his friend and co-star Ronny Chieng, who provides comic relief as a hapless busboy named Fatty Choi.
But for better or worse, Yang’s sidekick days seem to be over.


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Jimmy O. Yang gets personal in his first lead role as Interior Chinatown’s Willis Wu

Jimmy O. Yang as Willis Wu, his first lead role, in a still from Hulu series Interior Chinatown. Photo: Hulu

Jimmy O. Yang recalls getting a reminder of prevailing attitudes towards Asian-Americans when he arrived at a Hollywood studio to film Interior Chinatown and the guard refused to let him in. Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images/TNS

Jimmy O. Yang (left) with co-star Ronny Chieng in a still from Interior Chinatown. Photo: Hulu

(From left) Interior Chinatown stars Ronny Chieng, Jimmy O. Yang and Chloe Bennet, and executive producer Charles Yu, author of the book on which the Hulu series is based, on the red carpet at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Photo: Instagram/@shtanlee

Jimmy O. Yang and Alyss When in a scene from the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Photo: ABC

Jimmy O. Yang and T.J. Miller in a still from HBO comedy series Silicon Valley. Photo: HBO

Jimmy O. Yang as Bernard Tai is a still from Crazy Rich Asians. Photo: Warner Bros

Jimmy O. Yang as Willis Wu and Chloe Bennet as Detective Lana Lee in a still from Interior Chinatown. Photo: Instagram/@chloescereal

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Monkey King (voiced by Jimmy O. Yang) and Lin (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) in a still from “The Monkey King” on Netflix, directed by Anthony Stacchi. BD Wong co-stars. Photo: Netflix


Monkey King (top, voiced by Jimmy O. Yang) and Dragon King (Bowen Yang) in a still from “The Monkey King”. Photo: Netflix

Monkey King (left, voiced by Jimmy O. Yang) and Lin (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) in a still from “The Monkey King”. Photo: Netflix

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Yang is a co-founder of the Crab Club production company. Photo: AP

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From left, Yang, Gao and Cheng, co-founders of the Crab Club production company. Photo: AP

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Interior Chinatown’s Yang, a migrant from Hong Kong as a teen who worked his way up via bit-part roles, says he connected with his character


Interior Chinatown’s Yang, a migrant from Hong Kong as a teen who worked his way up via bit-part roles, says he connected with his character.


Jimmy O. Yang gets personal in his first lead role as Interior Chinatown’s Willis Wu

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Interior Chinatown’s Yang, a migrant from Hong Kong as a teen who worked his way up via bit-part roles, says he connected with his character

Interior Chinatown’s Yang, a migrant from Hong Kong as a teen who worked his way up via bit-part roles, says he connected with his character