Charles Yu’s Mind-Bending “Interior Chinatown”

Charles Yu: It’s real but in a physical and mental sense. The show explores Willis’s trouble leaving at first. He has trouble entering the new world that he wants to get into, which is the world of Black and White—this cop show. There are these kinds of invisible and visible barriers. The idea of Interior Chinatown is that we’re in this world of Willis Wu, trapped in a role, trapped in the background. We’re watching as he tries to escape.

CY: In the book, it’s more the question, “is this real, or is it not real?” I know from reading many internet comments that some people love that ambiguity, and some people do not like it. The challenge with a show is determining what it looks like. In a reader’s mind, you can hold two ideas at the same time: the idea that this is real and also a show. But literalizing that for the screen was very tricky. How do we create the feeling that Willis lives in a reality where a cop show is part of reality? The trick is making the cop show [Black & White] feel convincing enough that you could understand that there’s this thing that Willis wants to be a part of, but he doesn’t know how.

CY: It feels scary. It feels inspiring. I learned a lot from it. They’re all directors, so they think visually. They’re also storytellers as well. I sometimes would come into a meeting with one of those directors and ask, “How are we going to do this?” And they already have several ideas. I learned so much about thinking in pictures instead of thinking in words.

You mentioned four amazing directors. They’ve all got different styles. Taika directed our pilot, so he helped set the look for the whole show. But John Lee, our producing director, was really instrumental in shaping the show and helping me understand what a viewer is thinking or not thinking: “We have a gap here. You need more information in this part. This is why this cut isn’t working because it’s confusing. You need this shot, or we need this little interstitial scene.” Ben Sinclair created his own TV show, High Maintenance. He brings his own flavor, heart, and humor. It’s incredible to work with those directors and more. Alice Wu, an amazing feature director, is also on the show.

CY: I had to learn how to structure and build a world through Westworld. I learned from my brother, both an actor and a writer, and I learned from our cast. They bring so much intelligence and experience to create the performances to make their characters into real people. When working with someone like John and Taika, it’s learning how to both shoot what you need, then realize what you don’t have, shoot more, and then shape all that in a cut.

CY: I appreciate that. It’s an astute observation because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do: convey the idea of Willis being invisible while Lana is a [mixed-race Asian] woman with the ability to pass, have more fluidity to her portrayals, and slip across boundaries or straddle boundaries. What’s tricky about her is that she then has to negotiate different worlds. Both Chloe as an actor and then Lana as a character have this very singular status where they have to understand one side of the story and then also understand the other side of the story—then figure out who they are at any given moment. Meanwhile, someone like Ronny Chieng’s character, Fatty Choi, only lives on one side of this story. Basically, Lana has to do it all.

CY: I think you already articulated it better than I’m going to: ambivalence over being pigeonholed. It could be easy for one version of the conversation to say, “Well, there is Asian representation now, so what’s the problem?” I think it’s more like, “What kinds of things could be relevant in a world where we have Everything Everywhere All At Once?”

We do have representation, but there’s still many more stories to be told, including ones about representation, about being pigeonholed, or being reduced, not just on screen but in our lives. Whether you’re Asian American or not, I hope people can take away that there’s more under the surface. Interior Chinatown is about getting under the surface.

CY: Jimmy’s been telling the story about playing “Chinese Teenager #1” on Agents of SHIELD, which starred Chloe Bennet [as Daisy Johnson/Quake]. Even on Silicon Valley, Yang was not supposed to have more than a line or two, but he was so good that he kind of blew up into this thing [a bigger role]. [He’s] the ultimate background actor to consult. And it’s kind of meta to chat and get to know the second unit who basically play the doubles of Willis, Lana, and Fatty… There was just something really special about hanging out with the cast and the background.

CY: I’m so glad you asked because they are the emotional heart of the book. Their roles are “Old Asian Woman” and “Old Asian Man,” and to see them played by Diana Lin and Tzi Ma is pretty crazy because they both are such talented actors and have so much experience. They have a number of scenes together as the season progresses, and you see their relationship change. You get a sense of their history. You get a sense of their struggle that they wanted to make a better life for their sons and themselves.

CY: The big one for me was *Sixteen Candles *and Long Duk Dong. I feel like it was junior high when I saw that movie. It definitely stuck with me because it was a pretty big role in a very big movie that I otherwise loved. It’s uncomfortable to watch this thing about these wonderful people in this love story, and then you’ve got a character [an Asian stereotype] like that in the middle of it.

Early on, you understand you don’t have any kind of reference to Asia or Asian Americans. It’s all sorts of the Asian Other [on television and film]… It’s hard, growing up and sort of never seeing that on TV. That really shapes your perception as not being and not mattering. I think that’s how you end up being in your 40s and wanting to write a book about an invisible background actor.

CY: What I’d like to see, personally, is more opportunities and less pressure on being BIPOC. We have made a lot of progress, but I don’t think we’re “there.” But the idea of just telling a story about people, and it being incidental to their background is the ultimate goal–that you could have the same assumption that you would have about white characters in an American story and that they’re nuanced, complex, dimensional people worth a story. For instance, I love the movie Didi, and I think that it is a great coming of age story about an Asian American kid. It speaks on many levels, and I think that’s an amazing thing that was made and got distributed and may not have existed a few years ago.