Actor/Comic Jimmy O. Yang Breaks Out Of The Background

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his new Hulu comedy series, Interior Chinatown, Jimmy O. Yang plays a waiter who inadvertently becomes central to a crime story. As an Asian American actor, he says he relates to the character's feeling of invisibility. Yang talks with Ann Marie Baldonado about auditioning for Silicon Valley, working alongside his dad, and feeling like an outsider among other Asians in California.

Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews the Indian movie All We Can Imagine as Light.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial.
0:04.8	When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow.
0:09.8	Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family.
0:13.6	For additional information, visit DignityMemorial.com.
0:17.6	This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.
0:20.2	Today, our guest is actor and stand-up comic Jimmy O. Yang. He co-starred in the HBO show Silicon Valley and the film Crazy Rich Asians. Now he's the star of the new television show, Interior Chinatown, based on the National Book Award-winning novel of the same name. He recently spoke to Fresh Airs, Anne-Marie Baldinado.
0:41.2	What if one of the background characters at the beginning of an episode of a show like Law and Order became the main character?
0:49.7	That's the premise of the new show Interior Chinatown.
0:53.5	Here's the beginning of the first episode.
0:55.8	It's the back alley behind a Chinese restaurant.
0:59.0	Two workers, played by Ronnie Chang, and our guest, Jimmy O'Yang, are talking while they're
1:04.2	bringing bags of garbage to the dumpster.
1:08.4	I'm not saying I want someone to die.
1:10.8	So what are you saying?
1:11.6	Well, I'm saying if someone's already dead, I would like to be the person who find the body.
1:15.6	That's weird, man.
1:16.6	Okay, you know how in cop shows there's usually a cold open?
1:19.6	Cold open.
1:20.6	The first scene before the main titles.
1:22.6	Right.
1:23.6	Okay, so for a couple of minutes, you follow in this random character who you've never met, which not one of leads.
1:28.3	And part of you is thinking, why am I even watching this guy?
	...

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