Jimmy O. Yang on 'Silicon Valley' and 'How To American'

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2018

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

The comedian and actor talks to Sam about his immigrant experience and making it in Hollywood, which he writes about in a new book, "How To American: An Immigrant's Guide To Disappointing Your Parents." Jimmy stars as immigrant programmer Jìan-Yáng on the HBO comedy "Silicon Valley." Email the show at [email protected] and tweet @NPRItsBeenAMin with feels.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From NPR, I'm Sam Sanders.
0:07.3	It's been a minute.
0:08.3	Today on the show, Jimmy O. Yang, the actor and comedian, Ladae might know him for his
0:13.5	work on HBO's Silicon Valley.
0:16.0	Jimmy plays Jen Yang on the show, this misfit immigrant programmer.
0:20.7	Besides his work on Silicon Valley, Jimmy is out with a new book.
0:24.1	It's called How to American, an Immigrants Guide to Disappointing Your Parents.
0:29.2	The book's all about how Jimmy grew up in America as an immigrant after moving to LA
0:33.7	from Hong Kong when he was 13.
0:36.2	We talk about how Jimmy tried to make it and stand up comedy, how he worked really, really
0:40.5	hard to kind of not choose the path that his immigrant parents wanted for him.
0:45.0	And we talk a lot about representation and what it means to be an Asian man on screen
0:50.2	today.
0:51.2	Fun fact, Jimmy's in a new movie coming out later this year.
0:53.9	It's called Crazy Rich Asians.
0:56.5	And it's already being called Asian Americans Very Own Black Panther.
1:00.9	So in this discussion of representation, Jimmy also talks about what it means to play
1:05.0	roles with an accent like he does on Silicon Valley.
1:09.0	Here he is playing his character, Jen Yang.
1:11.3	I eat a fish.
1:12.3	I understand you eat the fish.
1:14.3	But when you clean the fish, you can't just leave the fish head and guts and f***ing
	...

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