Charles Yu, the author of “Interior Chinatown” and showrunner of its Hulu TV adaptation, admitted he didn’t think his 2020 novel could be adapted to screen when he was first approached with the idea.
“Honestly, I did not really think that it would be adaptable, which is probably something I shouldn’t admit,” Yu told TheWrap. “But [Hulu] was interested … they approached me and acquired the rights of the book and I started to work on the script … It was really a big challenge, because I knew … what works well in the book won’t necessarily work in a TV show — It’s a completely different medium.”
As Yu adapted the novel — which centers on Chinatown restaurant worker Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang) who is stuck in the background of police procedural series — into a TV series, “Interior Chinatown” became even more meta. Yu, who has TV writing credits for a handful of series including “American Born Chinese” and “Westworld,” leaned into traditional TV conventions — from lighting to commercial break cues — to underline how the series depicts a TV show inside another TV show.
“In the book, Chinatown, where Willis lives, is both an actual place, but it’s also a kind of state of mind — it’s an interior space, subjective, psychological place, and a reader is willing to accept that, or not,” Yu said. “As a show, we had to play with that ambiguity in a different way.”
Below, Yu breaks down some aspects of adapting the series, talks casting Jimmy O. Yang and reveals whether he’d be interested in another season.
TheWrap: What were some of the more seamless and easy aspects of the book to adapt into the series?
Charles Yu: Not many things were seamless and easy to adapt. Willis’ mom, Lily, her room in the SRO, which we get to see in the show, was an important setting within the book. It’s a part of Willis’ memories his childhood and it’s described in detail in the book. It’s one thing to type a bunch of words and and use the reader’s imagination conjure all of that …. one of the really amazing things was how to see it come to life, to see the production designer and the art director and their teams do the research [and] create this really rich, textured world of things, where it feels like Lily lives in this room. She raised her boys there. It felt very emotional to see that when Diana Lin and Jimmy O. Yang have their scene in the pilot — there’s a kind of texture to that that was really, really special to see it come to life.
TheWrap: Crafting a TV show within a TV show makes “Interior Chinatown” even more meta. How did you grapple with the new medium while staying true to the story itself?
I learned so much from Taika [Waititi] and so many people who said “it’s got to be clearer — you do have to bring the viewers in and give them a way into this world and help them buy in to the concept, even if you don’t always know exactly what’s going on. Once they’re in emotionally, then people will go on the ride with you. That was the north star — Can you hook people in so that once things get a little bit more complex and even confusing … that’s okay if you care about the journey and if you understand the basic idea. The show, as much as it is about these meta things and about TV, is at its heart about people who feel defined or trapped in their roles and … that’s just a human thing of being more than one thing, but not necessarily being able to show that or not people not seeing you in the complexity and messiness that we have.
How did you decide to cast Jimmy O. Yang as Willis and how did you work with him to infuse the role with some of his own experience in Hollywood?
For a long time as I was developing the pilot, I had this pit in my stomach of, like, “who can play this?” There’s so many aspects of Willis and he has so many contradictions and and I think when Jimmy came in, it was a revelation. I knew he was funny, I didn’t realize how good an actor he was, dramatically. And then you layer on top of that, his actual career story starting on “Silicon Valley,” or at least that being his breakthrough role. It just added so many layers to it … now I can’t see anyone else doing it.
The show also discusses a lot of stereotypes working against the Asian American community especially being in the background. Could you elaborate on that discussion?
Starting from a place of stereotypes of people in very flattened roles — Willis is background, he doesn’t even really have a role in the show … you have Green and Turner, who are the leads of the show, and they’re these kind of glamorous heroes, but they’re also pretty much just stereotypes. What the show really is about is people trying on these different roles, and it’s the things are set in motion with Willis, when he basically wants to create a role for himself, because one doesn’t really exist. That’s, to me, a story of Asian Americans in Hollywood, but I think it’s also a story of outsiders who aren’t necessarily part of any narrative. There’s something really relatable about Jimmy and him as a way in and then Willis, when he does break into the show, that really sets in motion changes for everybody. So you see other characters reacting, because now that he’s shaking things up, everyone’s role starts to feel a little bit like it doesn’t quite fit.
Are you open to potential future seasons? How did you expand the season’s end beyond the book?
The show definitely diverges from the book, but it has the same DNA and it plays in the same world. There’s plenty of story from the book left if you know, we got so lucky to get to do more. I think the season, as it stands, is a complete thing, but it does leave doors open and I’d be excited, because, for me, it’s really about these characters and their relationships getting deeper through the season and … once you have that much investment, you hate to see them go.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
All episodes of “Interior Chinatown” are now streaming on Hulu.
