Best Of: Comedy Writer Michael Schur / Actor Jimmy O. Yang
48:57 Share

This message comes from Hulu. From visionary filmmaker Taika Waititi and author Charles Yu, the Hulu original series, Interior Chinatown, tells the story of an ordinary waiter swept up in a criminal investigation. All episodes are now streaming on Hulu.

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, the co-creator of the TV series Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, who also created The Good Place and wrote for The Office, Michael Schur. He has a new comedy series called A Man on the Inside. Like The Good Place, it stars Ted Danson and draws on philosophy and ethics.

Later, a talk with comic and actor Jimmy O. Yang. He stars in the new Hulu series Interior Chinatown. Yang is known for his roles in Crazy Rich Asians and the TV series Silicon Valley. He's also done stand-up specials and wrote the memoir How to American, an immigrant's guide to disappointing your parents. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

This message comes from our sponsor, Grainger. This is the story of the one. As a maintenance engineer, he hears things differently. To the untrained ear, everything on his shop floor might sound fine, but he can hear gears grinding or a belt slipping. So he steps in to fix the problem at hand before it gets out of hand. And he knows Grainger's got the right product he needs to get the job done, which is music to his ears.

Call, click Grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. This message comes from Capital One, offering commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces unique challenges and opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services that will help you

all tailored to your short and long-term goals. Backed by the strength and stability of a top 10 commercial bank, their dedicated experts work with you to build lasting success. Explore the possibilities at CapitalOne.com slash commercial. A member FDIC.

This message comes from BetterHelp. It's important to take time to show gratitude towards others, but it's equally important to thank yourself. Life throws a lot of curveballs, and being grateful isn't always easy. Therapy can help remind you of all that you're worthy of and all that you do have. Let the gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Try at betterhelp.com slash NPR today to get 10% off your first month.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Michael Schur, is one of the people behind some of the most beloved TV comedy series of the recent past. He wrote for The Office, co-created and wrote for Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and created and wrote for The Good Place. He created the new comedy series, A Man on the Inside. All eight episodes just started streaming on Netflix.

Before we hear from him, our TV critic David Bianculli is going to review the series. David says there's a couple of things that a man on the inside has in common with The Good Place. They both star Ted Danson, who became a star playing the bartender on Cheers, and both shows are entertaining and surprisingly philosophical. Here's David's review. In The Good Place, series creator Michael Schur put an awful lot of trust in Ted Danson. Not only did he put a lot of trust in the show,

not only in his audience appeal, but also in his acting ability. That series was about a woman, played by Kristen Bell, who awakens in the afterlife with Ted Danson as her guide. Its brilliant twist, revealed after a full season, was that Danson's character wasn't who he pretended to be. It required the actor to switch gears significantly in midstream, and Danson was great at it.

And in A Man on the Inside, the new Netflix TV show re-teaming Shure as series creator with Danson as star, the story starts with him pretending once again. Improbably but charmingly, this new eight-episode comedy series is based on a documentary from Chile. Called The Mole Agent, and also available now on Netflix, it was nominated for an Oscar in 2021 and shown on the PBS series POV that same year.

It told the true story of an elderly man hired by a detective agency to go undercover in a nursing home. The client's mother, a resident of the home, complained of the theft of a family heirloom. So the detective agency advertised for an elderly man, hoping to place him in the home temporarily to find the culprit.

Inspired by this story, Michael Schur starts his version by introducing us to Ted Danson's character of Charles in a home movie flashback from his wedding day many decades ago. Then it cuts to Charles in the present day in Oakland, California. He's a widower, a retired professor, and even though his daughter and her husband and kids live nearby, has a rigid and solitary daily routine.

That routine is interrupted one day by a suggestion from that daughter, Emily, played by Mary Elizabeth Ellis. Look, I know that you don't like to talk about mom, so we don't have to, but you know that she would have wanted you to be a person, live your life. Okay, do you remember when I was little and you would give me Charles challenges? Like, find 10 out-of-state license plates or read 20 books before Christmas? I'm giving you a Charles challenge.

Find a project or a hobby, just something that excites you. Okay. It's a good challenge. I accept. To widen his horizons, Charles answers a classified ad in the newspaper, which had been placed by a private investigator named Julie, played by Lila Rich Creek Estrada. It listed a job offer for a male between 75 and 85. Because he could use a cell phone, Charles is hired by Julie to infiltrate the nursing home for a month or so.

a mission Charles feels more optimistic about than his employer. Okay, we are meeting with Deborah Santos Cordero. She goes by Dee Dee. She's the executive director. The whole staff reports to her. I am your loving daughter, Emily. Why can't you be Julie? Well, you're online in a bunch of places as having a daughter named Emily, but there aren't any pictures of her linked to you, so the name is all that matters. Plus, it's just better to keep your cover story as simple as possible. Cover story.

Yes, cover story. Keep it together, man. You ready? Well, I don't know, but it hardly matters. What matters is you think I'm ready. Oh, I don't think that at all. You're not remotely ready, but we ran out of time. Be that as it may, you put your faith in me, and that gives me confidence. I think you are the best option in a sea of not very good options. That's all I needed to hear.

Once Charles crosses into San Francisco and moves into the nursing home, a man on the inside really comes alive. Stephanie Beatrice plays Dee Dee, the director who oversees things, and she's as clever as she is caring. The roles of some of the residents are filled by some long-familiar actors. Sally Struthers from All in the Family is one, and Susan Rattan from L.A. Law is another.

It's nice to see so many older actors given so much to do in a TV comedy. And it may be the first time it's been done, at least so successfully, since The Golden Girls. But A Man on the Inside isn't just in it for the laughs. It's a comedy, but it's also much more. It uses music very poetically. And poetry, too. And as with The Good Place, there's a lot of talk about life and death and the importance and difficulties and treasures along the way.

Alzheimer's is treated here at length and with dignity. And one reason it all works so well is because Ted Danson is as good at drama as he is at comedy. You can watch all of A Man on the Inside in one self-contained binge, and that's not a bad way to go. It's one of the sweetest TV series since Ted Lasso. And the mystery, Danson's Charles is hired to crack, is neatly wrapped up by the end.

But there's a hint that as with Sherlock Holmes or those podcasters of Only Murders in the Building, there may soon be other cases afoot. David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new series A Man on the Inside. All eight episodes just started streaming on Netflix. Here's the interview I recorded a few days ago with the series creator, Michael Schur.

Michael Schur, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. This series is based in part on a documentary from Chile about a man who goes undercover to solve a crime in an assisted living facility. What did you find moving about the Chilean documentary and why did you see it as having comic potential?

So, in the documentary, the man who answers the ad is named Sergio, and he, like Charles in the show, is suffering from the fairly recent death of his wife, and he answers this ad, and it ends up really not only transforming his life, but the lives of all the people that he meets. He makes friends, and he is part of a community, and he finds a certain kind of purpose in just being around other people. And...

What was remarkable to me about the documentary, among other things, is that everyone I know who saw it had the same exact feeling, which was, I should call my mom, or I need to call my grandpa, or I should hang out with my kids more. Like, it really had this universal effect on people of making them want to reach out to people that they love.

And, you know, it's a rare piece of art, I think, that can cause everyone to have such a warm and positive feeling. So, you know, my longtime producing partner, Morgan Sackett, said we should remake that and have Ted play the main part. And as soon as he said it, I just knew he was right and that there was a –

very good, slightly fictionalized show that could hopefully sort of give people that same feeling. That was the objective. Did you do research going into an assisted living facility? Yes, we did a lot of it. We went into a number of them in the California area, talked to a lot of people toward the memory care units and the rooms and met a lot of really wonderful people whose job it is to look after folks when they check in.

And it was, you know, it was eye opening, I have to say. It was not maybe what you would expect, which is to say, I think your instinct would be that these are sad places because it's folks who are nearing the end of their lives. And a lot of them are suffering from various ailments, physical or mental issues.

But they were places of happiness and joy, largely. They were sort of flourishing communities of people who were very happy to be with each other and to be part of a community that

And that sort of matched up with what I was hoping for. I'm glad that was your experience. I apologize in advance for being Ms. Buzzkill. But my father was in assisted living for a few years toward the end of his life. And I helped him move in. I visited a lot, even though I live far away. But he told me on the phone at the beginning, you know, there's no one I can talk to here. Everybody's like in cognitive decline. And then I felt like, oh, come on, you know, I'm sure it's not that bad.

And so the next time I visited him, a woman came up to me and said, hi, nice to meet you. My name is, and I was a school librarian for many years. And I thought, see, you know, she was a school librarian. She's got to be, you know, pretty smart, right?

And then I met her a few minutes later again and she said, hi, my name is, and I was a school librarian for many years. And every time I ran into her, that's exactly what she said. And I realized, oh, she's having serious cognitive issues. Yeah, well, that is 100% a huge part of the experience of being in these facilities, no question. Like there are folks who have moved in for a very, you know, a wide range of reasons. And one of them is cognitive decline. Right.

But at least in the facilities that we toured, there is another part of it that's just folks who maybe they had a physical ailment or maybe they just were tired of living alone and they wanted to be around other people. And that's at least the part of it that we mainly focused on, although we didn't shy away from the actual realities of assisted living. If we had pretended like that wasn't a part of it, I don't think we would have been giving an honest portrayal of what it's really like.

You know, you've done so much about ethical decisions, especially like on The Good Place and in the book that was almost like a companion to it. And one of the questions in the series is, is it OK for the Ted Danson character to

To go in and video and audio record people without their knowledge because he's there to spy. I mean, he's the John le Carre of assisted living. And I mean, he's even reading a John le Carre book in bed before the plot kicks in, before he knows about this job. Yeah.

So, yeah, and the episode's called Tinkered Taylor, Older Spy. Yeah. A great title. But anyway, so he's, you know, one of the questions is, is it ethical to record people without their knowledge?

Did you think about that a lot? Oh, we did ask ourselves as writers over the course of the show whether what Charles was doing was, strictly speaking, ethical. It's a question that the documentary asks, too. You know, you're creating a pretense, a false pretense, and you're getting to know folks without them really knowing who you are. The way we decided to answer that question, in the documentary, Sergio, the main character, ends up moving out without anyone noticing.

learning what he was really there for. He doesn't get caught. And we decided that what was important was for Charles to suffer the consequences of having been essentially dishonest to the folks that he was interacting with. And so that is a part of our show in the final episodes. He does have to confront the reality of what he did and the circumstances under which he entered the facility. Yeah.

You've worked with Ted Danson on two series. Yeah. On The Good Place and now on your new series, A Man on the Inside. I love watching him. I think he's like fantastic. What is great about working with him? Oh, man. He this is going to sound like a strange thing to say. He loves acting.

And that you would think would be true of any actor, but it's more true for him. He just loves it. He's so passionate about it that even now, you know, decades after he had to seek anyone's approval for anything he's done, he still wants to be good. And he's constantly asking you, is there something else I should do? Did I get this right? Can I try that again? Like he...

Yeah.

you're, you know, writing a script and then just hoping that he'll, you know, that the actor will like want to do it more than once. You're, it's a constant dialogue with him. It's a constant discussion and a experimentation and a poking and prodding at the script to make sure we're getting it right. There's just no substitute for that. And it's, you know, one of the many reasons I love him.

My guest is Michael Schur. After writing for The Office, he co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Then he created The Good Place and the new series A Man on the Inside, which is streaming on Netflix. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Oxfam, a global organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice. Communities around the globe are facing crisis after crisis that have put millions at risk. Oxfam is there when disasters strike, delivering life-saving aid. But they don't stop there. Oxfam partners with local leaders to help communities grow stronger and advocates for lasting solutions to poverty and injustice.

Join them this giving season. Donate at OxfamAmerica.org slash NPR.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Ford. Senior Director Becca Anderson shares one way that Ford is serving their EV drivers. The Ford Power Promise is designed to inspire confidence for electric vehicle owners around charging at home, on the road, confidence in their battery with the eight-year or 100,000-mile warranty, and that they have access to electric vehicle expertise.

To learn how Ford is supporting EV drivers, go to FordPowerPromise.com or your local Ford dealer. See dealer and the battery electric vehicle warranty guide for limited warranty details.

This message comes from Osea. Their limited edition Super Glow Body Set is the perfect gift. It includes three of Osea's best-selling body care products. So luxurious, you'll want to get one for yourself, too. Give the gift of glow with clean, clinically tested skincare from Osea. Get the Super Glow Body Set valued at $106 for $72, plus an additional 10% off when you use code HOLIDAY at OSEAMALIBOO.COM.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Schur, one of the people behind several beloved TV shows. After writing for The Office, he co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He created The Good Place and the new series, A Man on the Inside, starring Ted Danson, who also starred in The Good Place. Your previous series, The Good Place, was...

You know, all about ethical dilemmas and who gets to go to the equivalent of heaven and who gets sent to the equivalent of hell and how your character and your decisions and your actions are measured to determine that. And you wrote a whole book that's part funny, part serious about like philosophy, you know, and the great philosophers, right?

What made you want to do something like a comedy series that's really about, you know, judging behavior and judging, you know, moral and ethical decisions?

Well, it's simply a question that I've been asking myself for a really long time. I used to play this game as I drove around in traffic in L.A. where someone would cut me off on the freeway or we would be in traffic and someone would pull onto the shoulder and speed past me and cut the line.

And as a way of trying to stem off what you would call road rage, I would play a game in my head where I would say that guy just lost 10 points. Like I was imagining a scenario in which there was some kind of omniscient observer of human behavior. And I satisfied my own anger or displeasure with other people by imagining that that cost them in some cosmic way.

And so after Parks and Recreation ended and Brooklyn Nine-Nine was up and running and my friend Dan Gore, who created with me, was running that show every day, NBC very kindly said, "You can sort of do whatever you want and we'll give you at least one season on the air."

So I had been thinking about that game I played in my head about other people and about myself and judging my own behavior and doing things that I knew were maybe slightly iffy and how many points I lost or how many points I gained when I did certain things. And so that became the idea that I just liked the most of the ideas that I had. And I just pursued that and thought, all right, this is going to be weird. I'm going to do a half hour comedy show about moral philosophy and

But I don't know. Maybe it'll work. I just sort of rolled the dice. And I'm glad I did because the experience of working on it was wonderful. And I was a big hit. Yeah. I mean, as far as you can determine anything these days is a big hit. It was at least to show that people people watched and seemed to enjoy and it seemed to resonate with people. Which played a bigger role in your life, religion or philosophy when you were coming of age? Oh, philosophy by far.

I say that only because I had no religion really to speak of. My father's side of the family are Jewish, but my grandfather, his father, renounced Judaism when he was very young and became a devout atheist. My mother's side of the family was raised vaguely Methodist, I would say, but I had no religious upbringing at all.

When I got to college, I took a couple of philosophy classes and really liked the way that philosophy was able to talk about ethics and morality and other topics without

Yeah.

When we were coming up with posters and advertising materials for the show, no harps, no puffy white clouds, no halos. This is not a show about Christianity. This is a show about philosophy.

Oh, one thing I thought was like very clever in the good place when you're in the part that people think is heaven, you're not allowed to use four letter words. You're not allowed to use expletives. So if you want to use the F word, you end up saying fork. Right. Now, since you can't use the F word on network television, I thought like that is so clever because everybody will know the intent of the word because it's explained to you.

why somebody is using a word and then they just keep using it, you know, as necessary. So you're not saying the word, but everybody knows the word that you intend. Like, for instance, when you say fork, everybody knows exactly what you mean. So is that in part a way of using the language that you wanted to use without having to use it?

Yeah, absolutely. The show is appearing on NBC at probably 830 on Thursday or something. And, you know, you can't say those words. So let's come up with a reason why you can't say them within the context of the show. It wasn't just that it was on NBC. Like, I wanted that show on.

Ideally to be able to be watched by people of all ages. And it was I'm happy that that show was on NBC and not, you know, behind a paywall on a streaming service, because I think that ultimately my bet, which was just a conjecture at the time, but my bet was that kids would like it.

And I it turned out to be true when when we entered the COVID era and everybody was having to, you know, go to school from home. My wife said, you know, everyone in in William, my son's class is watching The Good Place right now. Like you should do like a fun extracurricular like Zoom class where you watch episodes of The Good Place and talk about philosophy. And I was like, ah.

Like, I don't know. Like, it feels those kids are on poor kids are on Zoom like six hours, eight hours a day. And she was like, I think they would like it. So I sent an email to the parents and were like, if your kids would be interested in this, is this like a thing that, you know, we're all desperate for ways to occupy our kids time these days. And immediately like 30 kids showed up. And so I ended up teaching this kind of like fun sixth grade class on philosophy where we watched episodes of the show. And then I talked about, you know, Aristotle or Plato.

Kant or something. And it was really fun. And the kids were really into the show. And they really liked talking about that stuff. So a very popular moment on Parks and Recreation is when two Fresh Air critics were name-checked.

Our TV critic David Bianculli and one of our music critics, Ken Tucker. And I want to play that clip and I'll just set it up briefly. So Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, is on the local public radio or community radio station getting interviewed by one of the hosts. And here he is promoing what's coming up.

Coming up after the break, movie reviews with Ken Tucker, who is filling in for David Bianculli, who is in New York filling in for Ken Tucker. Leslie, would you like to introduce the next segment? Okay. Now it's time for Jazz Plus Jazz Equals Jazz. Today we have a recording of Benny Goodman played over a separate recording of Miles Davis. ♪

Research shows that our listeners love jazz. I love it. So do you remember who came up with that and why? And also I want to know, like, didn't you think like no one's going to get this?

Like 1% of your audience is going to get the joke. It's a little rarefied, but I'll bet if you did a Venn diagram of Parks and Recreation watchers and NPR listeners, it's a pretty big intersection. Like it's not the craziest thing in the world, right? Yeah. And also the joke works whether you know who those people are or not. If you've never heard their names, it still is funny. It's a funny little MC Escher logic loop that we wrote out there. But I...

You know, we, there were a number of times that Leslie went on the local NPR station over the years and it was just our chance to like make little jokes about the reality of listening to NPR. And that one, I don't remember who, I wish I remembered who pitched that. I, my guess would be that it was Ayesha Muharra, who was a writer on the show the whole time who loved NPR. And she, um,

Always loved writing those scenes and pitching jokes for those scenes. She's a wonderful writer. She writes on Hacks now, which is another show that I executive produce. But it was always fun to do NPR jokes. It was always a favorite exercise. We had to kind of stop ourselves from having her go on too much because we could have done it in every episode and had plenty to make fun of.

Lovingly, lovingly, I should add. I should mention the voice of the public radio host was Dan Castellanata. Am I saying his name right? Castellanata, yeah, from The Simpsons, yes. Yeah, I see his name in credits all the time, but I never knew how to pronounce it. He's the voice of Homer on The Simpsons. Anyways, thank you for that. You're quite welcome. What's the TV that meant the most to you when you were growing up? Monty Python and Monty Python's Flying Circus, Saturday Night Live, Letterman.

Cheers. So, you know, early to mid 80s comedy shows were the ones that I...

was raised on. My mom only let us watch, when we were kids, only let us watch an hour of TV a week. So I had to really choose carefully. And then as I got older, obviously those rules were lessened in severity. So I started watching more and more and more comedy. But those are the main influences on me were Letterman, Monty Python, SNL, Cheers, and then later Conan, I think, as I got into high school.

Do you think TV meant even more to you than it otherwise might have because it was kind of taboo at home? I don't know. It's a good question. I mean, possibly. I mean, I kind of respected the choice to limit the amount of TV that we watched. You know, it's funny to think about now when everyone is carrying a phone in their pocket that can show them any piece of video that has ever been created anywhere in the globe before.

But at the time, there was still this kind of vague sense for people in my parents' generation that like TV rots your brain. And I've had this conversation with a lot of folks my age is like – a lot of writers my age is like some people gorge themselves on TV and watch hours and hours and hours a day. And some people were like me, were like their parents are very restrictive. I don't think there's any discernible difference in how people turned out, which –

Kind of gives me a little bit of hope when, you know, my son is watching TikTok all day and my daughter is, you know, watching YouTube tutorials about how to apply makeup or whatever. And my wife and I get worried, but it's like, well, this is the same stuff that people said about TV when we were kids. And the truth is, you know, I've talked to Amy Poehler about this. Amy Poehler watched tons of TV and was obsessed with TV. And I know a lot of writers and performers who felt like that and watched a ton of it and loved it.

I don't sense any real difference in the way that people's personality is developed based on how much TV they watch. So I'm kind of hoping the same applies to the modern era. What are some of the most consequential changes you've seen in the world of creating television series? And I think in some ways you came in just on the cusp of a big change because The Office is really a game changer in terms of TV sitcoms.

Yeah. I mean, the biggest change, obviously, is just the shift to the streaming model. The Office, we did 28 episodes one year, I think, or maybe 30. The typical season was 22 episodes or 24 episodes. And now a season of TV is eight half hours, usually. Yeah.

And that just completely changes the way you tell stories, right? The advantage TV always had over movies was you could, in success, watch a set of characters live and change and grow over many, many, many years. And now you're talking about, you know, maybe two seasons of eight episodes and then you're done. So...

TV writing is much closer to movie writing, I think, than it was when I was first breaking in. There's nothing you can do about it. That's the world we live in. But I do mourn a little bit the loss of the old system. I think during COVID-19,

People revisited old shows that had 200 episodes, like Friends and Cheers and whatever. The Office. Yeah, and The Office, right, because... It's still on Comedy Central. Yeah, and you could sit during COVID and watch an episode every night for five or six months, and that was incredibly valuable and I think brought people a lot of comfort. That's what we're losing, and that's what I mourn the most about the new system is we're just sort of losing what, to my mind, was the...

the inherent advantage that TV storytelling had over movies or anything else.

I would imagine you have a lot of money. No, I'm not going to ask the question you think I'm going to ask. At least I don't think it's the question I'm going to ask. The timing of that was so perfect, though. Terry, comedic timing was A plus on that statement. Thank you very much. So a lot of people might be wondering, like, why are you still working? You have money. You don't have to work. So what is the meaning of work to you? What does work mean in your life?

Well, just by asking the question, you're sort of answering it, right? Because the work that I do is incredibly fun. Like, why wouldn't I work? It's sitting in a room with a dozen really funny people writing stories and making jokes. Like, that barely counts as work to me. It's not that it's not hard, and it's not that it doesn't come frequently with anxiety or disappointment in the way that any job would.

But my goodness, if you can't enjoy yourself with the job I have, there's something deeply wrong with you. And by the way, there are many people who can't enjoy themselves with the job I do. And there are things that are deeply wrong with them. And that's why, you know, that's why there are a lot of therapists in Los Angeles. But I can't believe I get to do this. It's a miracle. It's incredible. And I...

you know, I do it because I love it and because it's so fun and not doing it. It's, it's not like you're saying you've dug a lot of ditches in your life. Why do you keep going back and digging more ditches? It's like the things I do are inherently enjoyable and collaborative and, and wonderful. So why wouldn't I keep doing it? It wouldn't make any sense to stop. Michael Schur, it's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much for this interview and for your shows.

Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here. It was forking great. Michael Schur created the new series, A Man on the Inside, which is now streaming on Netflix. Coming up, we'll talk with actor and comic Jimmy O. Yang. He co-starred in the HBO series Silicon Valley and in the film Crazy Rich Asians. Now he's starring in the new Hulu series, Interior Chinatown. This is Fresh Air Weekend.

This message comes from Energia. Looking to make an impact with your investments? With Energia, you can invest directly in solar projects that reduce carbon emissions. Since inception, Energia investors have averaged a 12% annual return, all while contributing to a more sustainable future. Make your money do more and create an account today at Energia.com slash NPR. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investments carry risk, including the potential loss of principal.

Support for NPR and the following message come from Chevron. The Anchor Offshore platform is utilizing breakthrough technology to enable us to produce oil and natural gas in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico at pressures up to 20,000 PSI, a new industry benchmark.

Anchor is part of Chevron's plan to produce 300,000 net barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2026 in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, home to some of Chevron's lowest carbon intensity producing operations. That's energy in progress. Visit Chevron.com slash anchor.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Our next guest is actor and stand-up comic Jimmy O. Yang. He co-starred in the HBO series Silicon Valley and the film Crazy Rich Asians. Now he's starring in the new Hulu series Interior Chinatown, based on the National Book Award-winning novel of the same name. He spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado.

What if one of the background characters at the beginning of an episode of a show like Law & Order became the main character? That's the premise of the new show Interior Chinatown. Here's the beginning of the first episode. It's the back alley behind a Chinese restaurant. Two workers, played by Ronnie Chang and our guest, Jimmy O. Yang, are talking while they're bringing bags of garbage to the dumpster.

I'm not saying I want someone to die. So what are you saying? Well, I'm saying if someone's already dead, I would like to be the person who'll find the body. That's weird, man. Okay, you know how in cop shows, there's usually a cold open? Cold open. The first scene before the main title. Right. Okay, so for a couple of minutes, you follow this random character who you've never met, who's not one of the leads. And part of you is thinking, why am I even watching this guy? Why are you watching this guy? You're watching because either he's about to get killed, or... Or...

You've seriously never seen a cop show? How is that even possible? Video games and weed. Okay, what was I saying? Somebody's about to find a dead body? Yes, that's the rule. The person in the first scene of a procedural is either a victim or a witness. Holy s***! Somebody threw away an entire Peking duck with the sauce and everything. You're a d***, man. I'm the d***. You are the one who's hoping it was a dead person.

Jimmy O. Yang's character, Willis Wu, then does witness a crime, and that launches him into the center of the story. The show takes place in an off-kilter version of Chinatown, both real place and the setting of a TV police procedural called Black and White.

Thank you.

He was born in Hong Kong. His family immigrated to Los Angeles when Jimmy was 13. He found comedy while still in college and started performing in clubs almost every night. His big acting break came in 2014 when he was cast in the HBO comedy Silicon Valley. Roles in the films Crazy Rich Asians and Patriot's Day were to follow.

He has numerous stand-up specials, and he wrote a book called How to American, An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents. Jimmy O. Yang, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much, Anne-Marie. First of all, I'm a big fan. And second of all, I think you should introduce me at every single one of my shows from now on. Okay. I'll be there. That was wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to start by talking about your new show, Interior Chinatown. I read that when you heard about this project, you felt like you had to get the role of Willis. Why did you feel so strongly about this story? Well, first of all, when I first got the script, I knew that it was based on a book. I love reading books, but I get distracted very quickly. And I'm like, oh, man, I got to read the script and the book. That's a lot of pages.

But then I rifled through the book in like half a day. It was just so engaging. And I really felt like it spoke to me as an Asian American, as an actor, as an artist. And I think just as an outsider, as someone who felt like I was always in the background of my life. And I always have to find a way to sneak in. And I'm like, man, that's...

It almost sounded like the book was based on my climb and struggle in my career from Willis being a background guy, which I was, from Willis having a bit part, which I was. I was Chinese teenager number two. I was person in line. And to Willis becoming the tech guy, which I was on Silicon Valley. So I just really connected to the role. And of course, the book and the script were so well written by Charlie Yu.

I felt really passionate about it. Rarely a script or something laying on my desk where I felt a personal connection with. And from then on, I was like, man, I got to get this. I got to do this. There are all these ways the show sets up Asian-American stereotypes and then subverts them. Like one example is, it's a small example, but at one point, you know, Willis's character isn't able to enter the police station to work on a case. And

He tries and you just can't get in. But then he gets this idea of pretending to be a delivery guy and that gets him in so he can start working on the case. And that keeps happening. He becomes all of these background characters, delivery guy, tech guy. And that's just one example. But can you talk about how the show plays with stereotypes like that and tries to invert them? Yeah, I think, first of all, like that scene, it really made me smile when I think about it.

It's almost like an old school physical comedy scene where Willis, me, I was trying to get into this door in the police precinct and I can't. Like a Monty Python or something, like a sketch. So it made me laugh and I had a lot of fun doing it. But there's such a deeper meaning on, hey, you don't belong here. And then he had to find a lot of ways to sneak in, which in a way I kind of felt like that in my career.

I didn't go to Juilliard or NYU, like a fancy acting school or something like that. I had to do open mics where I pay $5, five minutes of stage time, and then kind of snuck in by doing some commercials.

So in a way, I think that's very true to my own experience. And I think to the Asian American experience, where a lot of times we feel invisible and that invisibility has been internalized. That we don't think about it every day, but we just accepted it. And in a way that's even more dangerous. Right. It's like accepting that you're only good for the background. Yeah. Like the tagline of the show, the poster of the show is me getting kicked out of a window. Right.

which is a fun scene. I'm not going to give too much away. But it's break out of your role. That's the tagline of the show, and I thought it really is that. It's breaking out of the role that society expects you of,

It's breaking out of a role that your family expects you of, you know, and we all have that Asian or not, you know, like my family expected me to be an engineer, a good student, definitely not a comedian, you know, and an actor. And society expects me to be the model minority, you know, and then I have to prove to myself that this is possible.

I want to ask you about your childhood. You were born in Hong Kong, but your parents were from Shanghai. Can you talk about what that was like, what you remember about being a kid before you moved to the U.S.? There's so much nuance within Chinese culture. With Shanghainese parents, I grew up speaking Shanghainese to them. I still speak Shanghainese to them, which is a local dialect.

In Hong Kong, it's its own place, especially when I was growing up. Um...

It spoke Cantonese and Cantonese people love making fun of people speaking Cantonese with an accent, whether it's Shanghainese accent, a Mandarin accent, whatever. So I grew up even in Hong Kong, like somewhat foreign because my parents were from Shanghai. Like my dad would show up to school, pick me up and they'll come. Which in Cantonese means, you know, the Shanghai guy, you know, they're making fun of him as a foreigner, although he's also Chinese, of course.

So there's cultural differences, even when I was born in Hong Kong. But I think it helped shape my, I don't know, maybe linguistic skills to have to learn Shanghainese at home, to have to learn Cantonese in school, and to have to learn Mandarin in between when I was watching Chinese TV shows. Maybe that eased my transition when I moved here to America to learn English.

Now, your family, your parents, and you and your older brother immigrated to the U.S. when you were 13. Your grandparents, I think, and other relatives were already living in the L.A. area. What was it like when you first got there and your grandparents lived in Beverly Hills, which you thought would be way fancy? You thought it would be fancy. I think there's many sides of Beverly Hills. They lived in like an apartment in Beverly Hills, right?

that wasn't very fancy at all. It was like one block away from not being Beverly Hills. And eventually my dad actually used that address

as a fake address to get me into Beverly Hills High School. So I think, I'm telling you this now, I think the statute of limitations is up. I don't think he'll go to jail. Yeah, they won't revoke your deport. My Beverly Hills certificate? I don't think so. But yeah, you know, it was culture shock because Hong Kong is a big metropolitan, very vertical city, much like New York. You can walk anywhere. There's life on the streets. There's subways.

You don't need a car. Whereas LA is the opposite. Everything is six lanes wide. Everything is concrete, strip malls. You can't walk.

I think sometimes when immigrants or people of color are growing up, they end up overcompensating. Like in order to fit in, they become like uber quote unquote American. Yes. Or try to be extremely mainstream. I think that happens with immigrant kids, kids of immigrants. I know it happened with me at points when I was a kid. Did this happen to you like in the interest of belonging or assimilating? Absolutely.

The one thing that I really loved was hip hop when I first came to this country. It was so foreign to me in a way, but I was like, wow, this is the most American thing ever.

And in high school, I really got into hip hop. I got into rap. I started making beats. I thought that would like make me instead of like the weird foreign kid into like the cool kind of hip hop kid. But of course, it's weird, you know, for me to try to rap like, you know, but I really kind of dove into that. And then in college, I went to UC San Diego. It was a big Asian population, but there's also like a stoner surfer culture.

So I remember I was like, I really got into like the stoner culture thinking that was mainstream America college kid that I want to get behind. And even now, I think inadvertently, like inadvertently, I can't even talk to it. Inadvertently? Sorry, English is my fourth language. No, we learned that. Yes, you're fourth or fifth. Inadvertently, I'm still doing that.

where I am the commissioner of my fantasy football league. I watch every single NFL game. I love drinking a Coors Light on the weekend with my buddies or five or six, you know, just to be like really American. You know, I love very American things. Like I went to shop for like a Yeti cooler the other day and it made me felt like I fit in, man. Yes. Yes.

What kind of TV and movies did you love as a kid? A lot of the American movies. Growing up in the 90s, it was a lot of action movies. Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bloodsport. That was the go-to Hong Kong movie because they shot part of that in Hong Kong. Still one of my favorites. And of course the big movies like Forrest Gump.

And my dad was kind of a cinephile, an American cinephile. I remember him watching Shawshank Redemption, and that had a lasting effect on me. But it's also a lot of local films. For me, it was the comedy of Stephen Chow, Zhao Shengqi, who later found a lot of international fame with Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer. But I grew up watching him, and he had a deadpan kind of delivery. And it's just so, so funny.

And then when you moved to the U.S., what kind of stuff were you watching? I think on TV, I really gravitated towards comedies at first. The Chappelle show was a must-watch. You know, if you don't watch it Wednesday, you got nothing to talk about in high school on Thursday. And I think through Chappelle, I got into stand-up comedy.

Now, when you were watching comedy when you're in high school, you didn't think, though, that you wanted to do it yet, did you? Absolutely not. No, I didn't even think that was a possibility. I just thought these are what these funny people do on TV. I will probably just go on to be an engineer, a doctor or something like that. You know, the roles that the society has assigned you. But I've always had

an inkling, like an artistic drive to me. I remember when I was a kid, I would go to restaurants and like with chopstick wrappers or like disposable spoons, I would like build little art pieces. You know, it sounds really silly now. And then my mom would be like, you're messing up the table. Look at how messy your table is compared to everyone else. But then now looking back, I'm like, I'm trying to make something. I always want to create something. Whether it's with chopstick wrappers or a pen drawing on my arm.

And then when I went to college, I studied economics. Well, first I studied mechanical engineering and then I switched to economics, which was much easier. I just wanted to graduate.

I think your joke is that economics is the easiest major that you could do that's still acceptable for Asian parents. Yeah, that was still appeasing Asian parents. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That was the joke in my first day, which is true. You know, I couldn't do like, I don't know, archaeology. I don't know. I don't know what is like communications. I don't think my dad would like that. Economics, at least it sounded real, you know, not to disparage any communication majors out there.

So I did economics, but I secretly had a minor in theater and music. It never came to fruition. I think you need seven classes, but I took like six classes on each of those. And I remember those are the things I got A's at and those were the things I did the best at because I was passionate about it. And then later on, you know, after I graduated, when I was like trying to figure myself out,

Stand-up was just one of many things that I've tried, and it just spoke to me. You know, you can literally create something out of thin air without anyone's permission, and I thought that was very liberating. In the first episode of Interior Chinatown, there's a fight scene. Yeah.

a huge fight scene, and the trope of Kung Fu guy, that kind of character that Asians play in pop culture, that's also part of the show. But what was it like training to do those fight scenes, to be an action hero? It was interesting because in the book and also in the script of the pilot, Willis is supposed to have trained in Kung Fu all his life, but he's not supposed to be very good. So how do you play that?

So then I don't I wasn't sure if the producer was going to have me train in Kung Fu, but I'm like, guys, in order for me to look bad in Kung Fu, I have to be pretty good to at least understand the language of Kung Fu. It's like learning a new language in a way. Right. I've never done martial arts in my life. So, yeah.

I had a trainer, Danny Ma. He was awesome. And I trained with him two, three times a week in Wing Chun, hitting the dummy, doing the basics. So at least I can look right in the form. And also martial arts is a language, it's a culture in itself. You want to get in that mentality. It's like driving the Toyota Corolla. I want to get into Willis's mentality, somebody who is trained in martial arts, Oz life.

And then I can still not be very good when it comes to the fight, you know? So that was how I was able to make it real. But it was also very interesting. Growing up in Hong Kong, Kung Fu was so...

and such a thing that you see on TV in real life. And of course, being Asian American, people almost expect you to know how to do Kung Fu and I don't know how to do any of it. So this kind of filled up a big void in my life and in my culture. Now, at least I can say I can hit a wooden dummy Wing Chun style and I'm pretty okay.

Finally. Finally. You know, in middle school, kids used to make fun of me when I first came to the country. And they'd bully me and talk trash, whatever. But that's how I learned to defend myself with comedy. I would talk back. But one time, this kid got to me. And I don't know what got into me, right? I just...

full on, did turn around, did a roundhouse kick to his stomach, jumped up, karate chopped him in the back of the neck. And this is me with no martial arts training and 13 years old. And I just watched enough martial arts films growing up. And then all his friends got so freaked out. And they're like, yo, don't mess with him. That's Bruce Lee, man. And I was like, hey, you know, if that's a stereotype and that's a stereotype that's going to save me from getting bullied, I'll take it. I will be Bruce Lee for you.

Jimmy O. Yang, congrats on the TV show and thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Jimmy O. Yang spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. His new TV series, Interior Chinatown, is streaming on Hulu.

Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Bodinato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Siewert.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Crown, publisher of The Demon of Unrest, a saga of hubris, heartbreak, and heroism at the dawn of the Civil War by Eric Larson. The Demon of Unrest is available wherever books and audiobooks are sold.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Merrill. Whatever your financial goals are, you want a straightforward path there. But the real world doesn't usually work that way. Merrill understands that.

That's why, with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. Go to ml.com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of America company. What would you like the power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, registered broker-dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify, the global commerce platform that helps you sell and show up exactly the way you want to. Customize your online store to your style. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash NPR.