For background-actor-turned-leading-man Jimmy O. Yang, art imitates life in meta “Interior Chinatown”: 'A project like this is once in a lifetime'

The "Silicon Valley" and "Crazy Rich Asians" star is the true embodiment of "background to main character energy," says series creator Charles Yu.

When Jimmy O. Yang read the script for Interior Chinatown, Hulu’s new series adaptation of Charles Yu’s National Book Award winner about breaking free from the constrictive roles we’re forced to play, “it was a bit unbelievable.”

“There was definitely a sense of connection,” the actor and comedian tells Entertainment Weekly, adding of his character, “I just felt like I knew this person.”

The 10-episode series (out now) stars Yang as Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural called Black & White. A waiter at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, Willis toils away waiting tables and dreaming of a world beyond the only enclave he’s ever known. He gets more than he bargained for when he becomes a witness to a crime, and soon unravels a criminal web in his own backyard — one that just might be linked to the mysterious disappearance of his older brother (Chris Pang). With help from Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet), a supporting detective on Black & White with secrets of her own, Willis steps into the spotlight in search for the truth.

Related: Westworld writer Charles Yu managed to confuse even himself creating meta-novel Interior Chinatown

Ronny Chieng, Tzi Ma, and Diana Lin also star in the series, which counts Taika Waititi as an executive producer.

Breaking out from the background and propelling to center stage is not foreign to Yang, a Hong Kong-American actor who appeared in bit roles on 2 Broke Girls, Criminal Minds, and New Girl before he broke out as tech bro Jian Yang on the 2014 sitcom Silicon Valley. Then came the role of Bernard Tai, the scene-stealing, arrogant playboy in the 2018 blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians, the first major Hollywood studio film to feature an all-Asian cast since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club. “Sometimes when a character is so close to you, it's actually harder to play it because you really have to be vulnerable and open yourself up,” says Yang. “There's a lot of differences as well, but from the experiences I went through, I was able to understand Willis.”

“A project like this,” says the star, “is once in a lifetime.”

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For series creator and executive producer Yu, “Being able to identify with Willis on some level personally was my hope” when it came to finding the show’s lead. Yu was “blown away” by the depth in Yang’s audition. “He brings so much of that cultural and linguistic talent,” he tells EW. “And then on top of all that, the career he's had in Hollywood is so interesting. To play Jian Yang, which literally was a background character elevated to become a recurring character in Silicon Valley, and not just that, but also become an important part of the story because he broke out — literally talk about background-to-main-character energy. He embodies that.”

A TV writer, Yu began writing his novel before he was staffed on the first season of Westworld. “I got thrown into the deep end of that writer's room and was still struggling with the book,” Yu recalls. “But somewhere during that room I kind of had a breakthrough.” Interior Chinatown, released in 2020, was initially conceived as a magical realism story about immigrant parents raising their child. Slowly, and informed by Yu’s time in a TV writer’s room, it evolved into the metafiction it is today, about what it means to be Asian American in Hollywood and beyond. The series, says Yu, largely stays true to the source material, though it also “goes to a couple of unexpected places.”

Yang aptly describes it as “Law & Order meets Twilight Zone.” With Willis particularly, “he starts to see the world unravel,” says the star. “It's not so much just about him breaking out of Chinatown anymore. Now there is a bigger mystery and a bigger world. It's kind of ‘Careful what you wish for’ as he gets [closer and closer] to his goal of becoming someone relevant in the world. There's so much rapid growth throughout every episode, so that was really cool, in a way, to play 10 different versions of Willis.”

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Yu calls the story a universal one. "I don't know many people who walk around thinking of themselves as sort of the main character of life," says the series creator. "There's something relatable about Willis. I identify with him personally. Just watching an underdog enter a totally new world and try to work his way up is the most exciting thing.”

As for how this once-in-a-lifetime experience will inform future roles, “I hope the phone will be ringing,” says Yang, who has gone from Chinese Teenager #1 to No. 1 on the call sheet in the span of a decade. “I’m excited to see what comes next.”

All 10 episodes of Interior Chinatown are now streaming on Hulu.