‘Interior Chinatown’ Review: A Very Meta Take on Asian Representation
It was inevitable that Charles Yu’s searing novel Interior Chinatown would be adapted for the screen. The book, released to rave reviews and a series of awards in early 2020, takes the form of a screenplay, using often-repeated tropes to skewer how Asian stories are told in Hollywood. Yu himself created the 10-episode Hulu series and acted as its showrunner, with Taika Waititi helming the pilot. The onscreen version maintains the shrewd storytelling of the novel while augmenting its delivery with a literal cinematic quality.
Jimmy O. Yang plays Willis Wu, a Chinatown waiter and so-called “Generic Asian Man.” He’s stuck in his prescribed role, always a background player in a fictional police procedural called Black & White: Impossible Crimes Unit and never the star. As he complains to his best friend and hapless co-worker Fatty Choi (Ronny Chieng), guys like him never get to the hero the story. Instead, he waits tables and takes out the trash and occasionally gets wasted with his friend, hoping that something else will happen to him. Suddenly, it does. He’s witness to a crime, even though the police won’t listen or even acknowledge his existence. Willis wishes he could be more like his brother, who died, and trains himself in kung-fu hoping he can be recast in a more prominent role.
Yu uses cliches and stereotypes to point out obvious flaws in how these types of tales are told. The local detectives, Miles Turner (Sullivan Jones) and Sarah Green (Lisa Gilroy), treat Chinatown like an exotic locale full of mysterious crimes. They enlist the help of fellow detective and Chinatown expert Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet), who describes herself as a recurring sidekick, to get to the bottom of things. But their investigation is a lot of jargon and performative cop behavior, which Willis sees through immediately. There’s great ongoing gag in the second episode where Willis, try as he might, can’t enter the police station until he goes in a Chinese food delivery man. It’s only in that role that the police will acknowledge his existence.
There’s a meta angle to everything, which offers pointed commentary on the way Asian characters have been represented onscreen, particularly in ‘90s films and TV series. Yu and the director use lighting cues and the sets to visually showcase how Willis is experiencing various moments of the story. The show subverts many of the expected tropes, while also ensuring the audience recognize the prevalence. It would hard to watch Interior Chinatown without considering the many, many pieces of media it’s undercutting, although Yu is cautious to do so in a way that’s entertaining rather than didactic.
It helps that Yang is an actor who should be a movie star, but somehow isn’t. Despite playing the romantic lead in Netflix’s Love Hard and showcasing his comedic skill in Crazy Rich Asians, Yang is a leading man on the cusp—exactly proving Yu’s point. Chieng is just as good and Bennet spins the expectation of a token Asian character, who hilariously explains that before being a detective she was a bar back and the second mate on a ship. Tzi Ma recurs as Willis’ dad and Diana Lin plays his mom with a palpable sense of empathy. She, too, has been pushed to the fringes of her own story and just wants a chance to be its lead. And isn’t that what all characters deserve? One TV series won’t change Hollywood, but Yu and his collaborators certainly make some important points here that studio executives could take onboard. Who are they telling stories about? Who gets relegated to the background? And why? By asking these questions in his novel, Yu astutely made space for us to see characters like Willis, a guy you really want to root for, onscreen.