Background player Jimmy O. Yang has main character energy in Interior Chinatown

LOS ANGELES – Asian-American stars Jimmy O. Yang and Chloe Bennet have not forgotten what it is like to struggle in Hollywood and be stereotyped because of their ethnicity.

So they strongly connected with their characters in Interior Chinatown, a satirical comedy series debuting on Disney+ on Nov 19 and is based on the award-winning novel of the same name by Taiwanese-American author Charles Yu.

Directed by Oscar-winning film-maker Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, 2019), it follows Willis Wu (Yang), a background character on a police procedural show who dreams of being the hero.

Then he witnesses a crime and is asked by police detective Lana Lee (Bennet) to help solve it.

At a press event in Los Angeles earlier in 2024, Yang says that the part hits close to home.

“This guy is a background actor, but he’s really the lead,” says the Hong Kong-born stand-up comedian, whose breakout was a small but scene-stealing turn on acclaimed comedy series Silicon Valley (2014 to 2019).

“It really drew a lot of parallels to my own career,” adds the 37-year-old, who headlined the romantic comedy film Love Hard (2021) and starred in the comedy show Space Force (2020 to 2022).

But Willis’ story is universal too.

“He is like a young adult – still fighting with his parents and kind of stuck in his life.

“I felt that when I was graduating from college with an economics degree – that part of my life definitely didn’t work out for me,” says Yang, whose family immigrated to Los Angeles when he was 13.

It is also a common theme with the children of immigrants.

He tried to be an engineer to please his parents, but found it too hard. So he ended up doing economics, the “easiest major” that would still appease them.

“And it’s been a long and hard journey of finding what I want to do and admitting to myself that I’ve always wanted to be an artiste,” says the actor, who is dating Ukrainian-American venture capitalist Brianne Kimmel, 36.

In that sense, the show is “a great metaphor for what it means to be Asian American in this country but, at the same time, it’s a universal story of someone longing to be more and finding themselves in their career, which I guess I did”.

Bennet, who has a Chinese-American father and a white mother, says her own early Hollywood experiences were similar to Willis’.

“I was in an audition and the casting director was like, ‘You’re just not white enough to be the lead, but you’re not Asian enough to be the Asian’,” says the 32-year-old, who starred in the superhero show Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013 to 2020).

“I remember thinking that was true, and I absorbed that as a young girl in the industry, which is extremely confusing as someone who is mixed race and looks different to other people.”

This is why Bennet – who changed her stage name from Wang to Bennet in order to sound less Asian – strongly identified with Yu’s 2020 novel Interior Chinatown, she says.

And so when she first heard about the making of the television adaptation, she “stalked Charles to get the part”.

The series also reflects the feeling of being relegated to the sidelines in one’s own story – an idea that Yu, who is also the showrunner, thinks will resonate with viewers.

“I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s and I just never saw Asians on TV,” says the 48-year-old.

“It’s as if they didn’t exist. So that sort of shaped me in wanting to tell this story, the idea that ‘how come I’m not part of this story?’”

And this is explored not just through Willis but also Lana, as well as Willis’ friend Fatty Choi, played by 38-year-old Malaysian comedian-actor Ronny Chieng (Crazy Rich Asians, 2018).

“Anyone can feel like they’re not the main character of a story,” Yu says.