‘Interior Chinatown’: Its cast has faced Hollywood struggles uncannily like its characters

By TERRY TANG

Jimmy O. Yang once played “Chinese Teenager #1.” He’s now No. 1 on the call sheet in “Interior Chinatown” — despite playing downtrodden background actor Willis Wu in the new Hulu series.

There’s no escaping the layers of meta around “Interior Chinatown,” an adaptation of Charles Yu’s award-winning satirical novel that jabs at how Asian American men have been treated by Hollywood — and in life — one trope at a time.

“I feel like I have gone through every single number on the call sheet now,” Yang told The Associated Press. “And I’ve learned from a lot of other great No. 1s, you know? To carry yourself a certain way. It’s not just about showing up when you work, but it’s also about leading by example.”

The dramedy, premiering Tuesday, is told from the view of Willis, a Chinatown restaurant server stuck in a police procedural show whose perspective starts to shift as he looks into the yearslong disappearance of his older brother. The 10-episode season has a mostly Asian cast including Ronny Chieng, Chloe Bennet, Archie Kao and Tzi Ma. There is also plenty of Asian talent behind the scenes, led by Yu, who serves as creator and executive producer.

The episodes are full of nods to cop dramas such as “Law & Order.” They also evoke scenes from ’80s and ’90s U.S. action-comedies structured around one of the co-leads being Asian and knowing martial arts — think “Rush Hour” and “Martial Law.” But it wasn’t a youth spent watching these movies and shows that inspired Yu’s book, which is structured like a screenplay.

“More what informed the book was the experiences of my parents, who are immigrants, and of their community and seeing how they and their friends had built lives here, were trying to be Americans, were succeeding at it in a lot of ways, but still were feeling like outsiders — and wanting to just tell their story,” Yu said.

Taika Waititi, the director of “Jojo Rabbit” and two “Thor” movies and the first person of Māori descent to win an Academy Award, also produces. He’s no stranger to promoting underrepresented voices on television, co-creating the Emmy-nominated “Reservation Dogs,” the first series where every role on and off-screen was held by someone Indigenous. Growing up in New Zealand, he saw similarities in “Interior Chinatown” with how Indigenous Māori like him were treated even in daily interactions.

“I remember working in a convenience store and I was always out the back of the convenience store. There were people who got to come in — and I’d been working there for six months — and they went straight to work on the till,” Waititi told The Associated Press. “One of the big draws to me was to be able to be involved in something that highlights those issues.”

The series’ episode titles reference different archetypes that have shadowed Asian American actors for decades. These include “delivery guy,” “tech guy,” “kung fu guy” and “Chinatown expert.” There has been a reclaiming in recent years of “kung fu guy,” particularly. Marvel’s “Shang-Chi,” the CW’s “Kung Fu,” and “Warrior” on Max all have protagonists with martial arts prowess who also deal with personal baggage. All three stories happen to take place in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

The show’s commentary on stereotyping seems more relevant in a post-coronavirus pandemic era, Ma said.

“In every major city, you know, the Chinatowns are going through hard times particularly after the pandemic,” Ma said. “I hope that people who come to Chinatown realize that Chinatown isn’t just a place for you to eat food. It’s a community.”

Chieng, who plays curmudgeonly restaurant server Fatty Choi, memorably stuck up for Chinatowns everywhere in 2016 when he used his “Daily Show” gig to put Fox News’ Jesse Watters on blast for a racist segment about Manhattan’s Chinatown. (The Malaysian-born comedian says that takedown helped get him his part in “Crazy Rich Asians,” alongside Yang. Unlike the characters in “Interior Chinatown,” he says, he has since been very fortunate. In fact, he didn’t even have to read for Yu and other producers.)

A third of “Interior Chinatown’s” main cast has been in projects set in a Chinatown, which Yu says affirms the story’s examination of how Hollywood limits the range of roles available to Asian Americans.

“You don’t have to look too far down the IMDb listings of some of our cast who are really successful actors, but a few years ago could have easily been — you know, Jimmy likes to still tell the story of how he was ‘Chinese Teenager (#1)’ on Chloe’s show, ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,’ which is 10 years ago,” Yu said.

Bennet, who is half Chinese and half white, has spoken out before about struggling to be considered for roles when she used her actual surname, Wang. For so long, Bennet felt like her whiteness was what people saw at work and her “‘Asian-ness’ was always reserved for home,” the former “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” star told the AP. So, just walking onto the “Interior Chinatown” set was emotional.

“I’m viewed as white and so I’ve never really been a part of something where being Asian was so much at the forefront on and off-screen,” Bennet said. “And so being surrounded by our incredible crew, who was also very diverse, was something I didn’t realize I’d seen and that it was the immediate power of representation. I felt so much more comfortable.”

Yang, though, was too embarrassed to tell his frequent scene partner about his nameless part on her show.

“The journey that Willis was going through was the journey that I went through. I just have to zoom back 10 years,” said Yang, who also has his own production company. “I had a phase where I was fighting for the same kind of roles. … Even I had to fight to get Chinese Teenager #1.”