After years of working at odd jobs, Yang has found his first lead role and left Yu knocked back in tears during his audition.
A Lemon. The $1,500 Toyota Corolla with no power windows, a busted side door, and poor brakes is what Jimmy O. Yang rode around Los Angeles to prepare for his role as Willis Wu, an overlooked Asian American everyman in the series “Interior Chinatown.”
The result? “Pull over, call whoever got you in here. If you can’t, you gotta go…” A rude remark from the studio’s guard as Yang recalled in a Zoom with the Los Angeles Times (LA Times) even though he was No.1 on the call sheet.
The experience reminded Yang of his life story as a Hong Kong immigrant moving to the United States. Yang stated in the interview, “Willis’ journey is such a metaphor for the Asian American experience because we are the model minority, but at the same time we are invisible. People talk about Black and white, but where do we fall? You’re just not seen for who you are.” In an article by SCMP, the actor-writer-comedian further exemplifies, “Willis laments feeling like a background actor in someone else’s story and longs to be in the spotlight, but that’s hard if you look like me.”
At the age of 13, Yang relocated to Los Angeles feeling the intense culture shock. “My goal was to just assimilate so I don’t get made fun of,” Yang recalled. In the school’s locker room, he was mocked for wearing whities instead of boxers. During 8th grade, his peers had mustaches and dunked basketballs while he barely hit puberty. Using a fake address, he enrolled in Beverly Hills High School and immersed himself in American pop culture. Unable to rap, Yang learned to incorporate his violin into the hip-hop beats he made through a software named Fruity Loops.
Despite his parents’ harsh opposition, Yang acknowledges, “I don’t think they were, like, anti-art by any means. My dad probably wishes he could have been an actor or a musician. It just truly wasn’t a real job for him. He wanted me to be financially stable, and not be homeless.” Yang started working at a string of odd jobs from selling used cars to DJing at strip clubs. Stand-up comedy, which Yang has now become notorious for besides acting, became his informal acting, writing, and directing school.
Persistent in his passion, Yang landed small speaking roles in series like “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” where he was misunderstood as a background actor for his ethnicity, and “Silicon Valley,” originally a one-off guest role or a one-note cliché. Yang’s fame finally came in Crazy Rich Asians. Yang claims, “If I botched an audition, I never blamed the fact that they weren’t looking for an Asian actor. It didn’t deter me. But looking back, we had very limited opportunities. Since ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ I think there’s more.” The success has made Yang’s father, Richard Ouyang, proud – even helping him with commercial and acting gigs with his son.
The series “Interior Chinatown” became an immediate connection to Yang. According to the LA Times, Charles Yu, creator of the series which was adapted from his National Book Award-winning novel of the same name, was inspired by, “people who have these backstories, but they don’t get to tell those stories”. He was astonished by Yang’s performance as he felt a connection between Yang’s multicultural background, multilingualism, and his natural ability for acting.
Despite the grueling six months of shooting, doing comedy, drama, and Kung Fu every week, Yang happily states, “It was very grueling. But of course, it’s a beautiful story worth telling.” At the end of the day, whether it is for better or worse, Yang’s days of being a sidekick are finally over.
Featured Image Source: Mike Taing from The Wrap
