Inevitably, intrusive and poignant thoughts will ask each of us to question our role in life. This internal monologue often leads to breaking out of the role that was initially prescribed to us based on factors like race, gender, and socioeconomic status. In Hulu’s new series, Interior Chinatown, this idea is explored through the lens of Willis Wu, a waiter at a Chinese restaurant in the heart of Chinatown.

“It's someone who is crawling his way out of what society and his family expects,” Jimmy O. Yang says of his lead character. Willis grapples with these expectations in Interior Chinatown’s metafictional story that sees him oscillate between his real job at Golden Palace and his role in a crime show solving a mystery.

“Based on Charles Yu’s award-winning book of the same name, the show follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural called Black & White,” the show’s synopsis reads. “Relegated to the background, Willis goes through the motions of his on-screen job, waiting tables and dreaming about a whole world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web in Chinatown, his family’s buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.”

The action comedy show outdoes itself with fight scenes, laugh-out-loud moments, complex family drama, and hopeful romance — all while highlighting real Asian stereotypes that persist today. Fans of the beloved book will not be disappointed in the on-screen adaptation. All 10 episodes of the series are streaming now on Hulu.

I had the great privilege of speaking with Jimmy O. Yang, Tzi Ma, and Archie Kao about the show. Here are edited and condensed excerpts from our conversations.

Click here to watch the show.

Click here to purchase the book by Charles Yu.

Tell me how you’re feeling about the upcoming launch of the show, and for fans of the book, what can they expect? Not to add too much pressure, but there are high expectations for the show given how popular the book was.

[Jimmy O. Yang] I am very excited about the show. When I first read the script, I hadn’t read the book yet, and I'm not the fastest book reader. I love reading books but I always get distracted. I think I have some mild ADD. But I read that book in one sitting in half a day. It just really spoke to me as an Asian American. The experiences that Willis goes through parallel mine as an Asian American. That so often he feels like he's invisible in the background. In my own acting journey, I started as a background character. I kind of felt like I had to sneak in to get a couple lines here and there. I don't wanna give too much away but you know his journey is very much like mine. It's someone who is crawling his way out of what society and his family expects, which is what I had to do. And many people, Asian or not, just love a great underdog story.

I think it was such a blessing to have Charles Yu, the book writer, also be the show runner and the writer of the show. So we're there to ask him any questions about his vision for the show. I think it's grander and it almost exceeds the book in the same way he's able to make a lot of the metaphoric stuff and symbolic things very visual in the show. I'm really excited for people who are fans of the book to check it out. But also people who haven't read the book, that's also okay because it's just an exciting entertaining show. We are saying it's like Law & Order meets Twilight Zone.

Are there any specific themes from the show that you hope resonate with viewers?

[Jimmy] Yeah, for sure. I think, especially for the Asian viewers, the invisibility of our community in American culture and the ceiling of certain things that we can't push through. The poster of the show is me getting thrown out of a window. It seems painful and interesting but at the same time Willis is someone that's been stuck in a rut in a loop. His family expects him to just be a good son, whatever that means, and to stay out of trouble. And society expects him to just be in the background but then he has to break through these windows to even get a couple lines. To be a delivery person. To be the tech guy. And then grow in that. So at the end of the day it's an underdog story but I think for the Asian audience out there, hopefully, you know deep down, we can really relate to it. Seeing Willis's journey it's almost like a wish fulfillment but it's also not without its pitfalls. At certain times I think he gets a bit selfish. He has his own hangups as well, and of course, a lot of internalized insecurities within himself that a lot of us are so used to or even forgot about.

The show does a good job of talking about racial stereotypes without being too preachy. Can you talk to me more about that?

[Jimmy] There's definitely sprinkles of that, and some of it for comedic purpose. But at the same time it's very real. These are sometimes the micro aggressions that we hear. In the context of the show it's like a Law & Order show with Asian people. I think it's important to have those nuggets and those things that are relatable from our lives and are poignant. But at the same time the show is just entertaining, you know it's funny, it's different, it has action and has real emotional family drama. A love story but the same time there's also martial arts. Sometimes in an ironic way. But yeah I just think it's an entertaining show, and that's sometimes the best way to get any message across.

In the first episode, there’s a pretty epic fight scene. I’m used to humor from Jimmy O. Yang, so I didn’t expect the kung fu. How did you prepare and train?

[Jimmy] When I first read the script, I'm like man, I get to do all this — I get to cry on a Friday, fight on a Thursday, and still be funny on a Tuesday. It was very taxing but it was very exciting for me. It was tricky because in the book and in the show, Willis is supposed to have trained in kung fu all his life but he's not supposed to be good. So that's the tricky part — I don't wanna look too good but the same time I gotta know what the language of Wing Chun and this martial art is. I trained with this trainer Daniel Ma who's amazing. I trained with him like twice a week for a few months. I told producers I wanna be really good and know the language of martial arts and hit the wooden dummy and know every single form of it. And then I can pair it down and look bad and get my ass whooped at some point. So I think that was pretty interesting in the exercise, and I've never done martial arts before, even though I grew up in Hong Kong. So that was pretty cool to finally know the physical language and the moves but also get into that mentality of what it means to be a martial arts practitioner.

I actually rewatched that scene in the first episode and I thought this looks pretty good he must have had this background already.

[Jimmy] Hey man, that little spinning kick? That was all me! I was pretty proud of that kick.

Interior Chinatown’s trailer uses the song “Learn Chinese” by Jin, which many people are excited about. What’s the importance of music choices for the show?

[Jimmy] The music supervisor did a great job. There is hip hop, there is classics, there's DMX, there's I think Cindy Lauper, and of course Jin. And actually funny enough, I was hanging out with Jin last night in New York. He's like a Cantonese Hong Kong brother and we've been in touch for like 10 years. I was such a fan of his growing up when he was on 106 & Park Freestyle Friday and things like that. I reached out years ago and we’ve just been friends since. It was really exciting for me too to hear his song in the trailer. I can talk about this in retrospect, he's popping into my Carnegie Hall show as a surprise guest. So when this interview has come out, that has already happened and I couldn't be more excited. I think the crowd's gonna be electric, and he's got a brilliant, genius mind even when we're just hanging out yesterday. I'll just ask him, “How do you get into these freestyle mindsets, do you think about the rhymes…” It’s so foreign of a thing to me but he just did it, he can just do it, just like that, and he’s still got it. The man's an absolute legend, and “Learn Chinese” of course was a big big song, especially in our community when I was growing up.

The cast of Interior Chinatown is stacked. Tell me what it was like to have this mostly Asian cast of revered actors.

[Jimmy] It was awesome, and I think everyone was cast in it perfectly. Like Ronny is so funny in the show, and I've worked with him since Crazy Rich Asians. He's like one of my best friends in the industry, and it was just automatic chemistry. With Chloe, I haven't really hung out with her but I was actually on an episode of her show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Chinese teenager No. 2 like 10 years ago. So it's kind of very serendipitous for us to work together again. And of course, Willis has a crush on her character Lana, and I mean come on, who doesn't have a crush on Chloe. She's amazing, incredible, and so good in the show. And then of course, Tzi Ma and Diana Lin who play my mom and my father. They're such great legendary actors, and it was just such an honor to be in the same scene and in the same space with them. Everyone came from different disciplines: Ronny’s a stand up, Chloe came from her space and TV, Tzi and Diana are very classically trained. So it was really cool to be able to pull from and work with everyone. Sometimes there was some improvisation with me and Ronny and some jokes. Sometimes there's the subtleness with Chloe like maybe just some eye movements and things like that. That's how you know one is intrigued or is flirting with someone. And then with Tzi and with Diana, we would talk about the scene work, we’d talk about the emotion, and let them affect me. It was just such a joy. I was kind of able to use all my skill sets and of course absorb everyone else's skillset to make every scene alive. It felt like every scene was really a piece of a heart that we put in there.

I think it’s a real treat for the audience to see you and Ronny in a series like this together. My hope is that we get to see more of your work together.

[Jimmy] I love working Ronny! He's the comic relief of the show. In a way, I'm very serious in the show, so it's kind of nice to take that off my shoulders. I don't necessarily have to try to be funny in every scene, Ronny would do that. I just have to focus on the storyline and Willis’s emotions, so that was that was pretty cool.

In the story, there’s this idea that Asian guys can’t become the lead or the hero of the story — and that belief has historically been upheld by Hollywood. In what ways have you both seen that changing?

[Archie Kao] Well, we’re sitting here talking to you about it.

[Tzi Ma] I think it's a journey, right? I mean, it wasn't always that way. Because if you’re talking about very early on in Hollywood it was always the tall, dark, handsome guy, right? So there's always an ethnic that is actually in a very romantic situation. Even with some Asians at that time but the geopolitics changed. So all of a sudden, we start to see an influence that's kind of a Eurocentric view of who we are. Like we were the Fu Manchus, we were the dragon ladies, and all of these things. All of a sudden, it started to take hold. We don't want to give Hollywood too much credit because sometimes you can only produce things that you think is gonna be successful. So they continue to pigeonhole us and took us away from the romantic leads and they said, “Hey, it's easy to do yellow face.” You know put whatever his name was in The Good Earth. I just hope it doesn’t go to the other extreme. The other extreme is to be ethno-specific. I keep on reminding producers that are willing to listen, and casting people who are willing to listen: why are we actors then? Why is it that Forest Whitaker can play Idi Amin Dada? He's not African. So why are we all of a sudden so special? That we have to be Chinese to play Chinese? Korean to play Korean? I think that is unacceptable, and I said do not go the other way. Come and understand that we are actors. It is our responsibility to play the character in the ethnicity and the culture convincingly. And you as a producer on the other side have to have the ability to recognize whether or not that is believable or not. We're all in this together.

[Archie] Tzi Ma! I was saying before, he’s my spirit animal — Tzi-ger!

The story is beautifully set in Chinatown, and I wrote down this quote from the script as I was watching the first five episodes. “For too long, Chinatown has been seen as an afterthought, as second class.” Do you think that sentiment still exist today?

[Tzi] Yes. Simply put. Chinatown, particularly if you look at L.A., it's almost like a set. It's giving authenticity to something else. So we're never the main story. We're just in the background. We're lending something to make something else authentic. We're never the story itself. So somehow that paradigm has to change, and we continue to make progress. Hopefully, this show will continue to open the audience's eyes and think, “You know what, we want to see more of this!” That's something that we have to strive for.

Tzi, you’ve so often played the role of a father. Even in your Instagram bio it says, “Hollywood's favorite Asian dad” — which I would agree with. What excited you about this role and how was it different for you?

[Tzi] Every dad is different. Either we open the mirror and say, okay this is the dad that you see or is there something that we can do to change and be a little more flexible or do you want this dad that is more supportive, more understanding, more uplifting? We continue to explore these different shades of color that we bring to this role as a dad. Dad is a very important person in your life, and we continue to grapple with how that relationship between father-son, father-daughter and how it affects our adult life, and we constantly have to make adjustments and try to figure out how we get over that part of our young childhood. Those are the times decisions cannot be made on your own. Those decisions are made for you, so I think it's important, and I I take that seriously.

Archie, you play Uncle Wong who manages the restaurant in Chinatown. The restaurant, although a setting, is almost like a character. Talk to me about the role the restaurant plays in the show. 

[Archie] Wow. How do I talk about this without being too revealing? Yeah, that's the challenge of this because I know that the media got up to the first five episodes. So it's midpoint of the narrative and so we see that there is a fulcrum of other things to come. I do feel like in that regard Golden Palace kind of serves as sort of a safe house of the the greater picture. Uncle Wong is very protective of the restaurant, obviously, from a financial perspective because he's running a business. But the in the larger construction of it all Golden Palace represents something bigger for the community. A safe haven.

[Tzi] Well, it’s a gathering place. We have to have somewhere to congregate. Somewhere to share our stories. Somewhere to share a drink.

[Archie] The Asian Central Perk.

[Tzi] Absolutely!