Interior Chinatown is built around a genuinely funny, pointed conceit: what if, for once, one of the many Asian background characters in TV could finally become the lead?
It’s a role seemingly made for Jimmy O. Yang, a gifted comedian whose own, real-life screen credits include “Person in Line” and “Chinese Teenager #1”.
Based on the award-winning 2020 novel of the same name, this Disney+ series places Yang in the role of Willis Wu, a Chinatown waiter with unrealised dreams of kung fu glory. Unbeknownst to him, Willis’s entire life is actually lived within a network TV show: a hacky crime procedural named Black & White (on account of its cop leads being an African American man and a white female).
In the Law-and-Order-inspired show, he exists purely as anonymous bystander, the last witness of a missing woman who comprises the latest case of the week. Things go off script when Detective Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet; Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), a cultural consultant for the cops, enlists his help to sniff out a conspiracy involving local gangs, the police and his missing older brother (Chris Pang; White Fever) — a kung fu legend revered by his own family.
Lisa Gilroy and Sullivan Jones play detectives on cop drama Black & White in Interior China. (Supplied: Disney)
Willis soon finds himself bumping up against the invisible barriers of his world. Doors literally close on him, his dialogue is silenced, and even the sleek, coolly tinted aesthetic of Black & White rarely shines in his rundown corner of Los Angeles.
True to the spirit of its source material – its author, Charles Yu, is also the show’s creator – the overt deconstruction of Interior Chinatown intentionally prods questions about the inadequacies of Asian American representation in the entertainment industry.
But while comparisons with meta genre exercises like WandaVision and The Cabin in the Woods are inevitable, they only expose the show’s shortcomings. Both antecedents played coy about their characters being confined to a work of fiction, but Interior Chinatown does away with the pretence of a fourth wall from its first episode; Willis is left to play catch-up to the viewer.
“It almost sounded like the book was based on my climb and struggle in my career,” Jimmy O. Yang told NPR. (Supplied: Disney)
The show quickly loses itself within its own mise-en-abyme framework. Is it a laborious mystery or just a dull satire? Are these stock characters deliberately flimsy archetypes, or just poorly written?
Interior Chinatown offers few answers in its absence of thrills, laughs and any meaningful commentary that its novel premise gestures towards. It’s ultimately a navel-gazing exercise that makes poor use of an appealing ensemble, which comprises Ronny Chieng (Ronny Chieng: International Student), Tzi Ma (Tigertail) and Diana Lin (The Farewell). Chieng, in particular, is relegated to making rote jabs at white people and Chinese food.
There’s no denying the show’s broader point: that Hollywood continues to be plagued by the lack of robust A-list opportunities for Asian actors, as well as a limit to the complexity afforded to such characters.
Chloe Bennet was happy to do as few stunts as possible in Interior China, saying she was “still aching” from her work in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Supplied: Disney)
Henry Golding’s star-making turn in Crazy Rich Asians never gained momentum. Shang-Chi the first Asian superhero to land his own MCU movie (played by Simu Liu), is currently adrift in franchise limbo. Manny Jacinto’s recent villainous turn in The Acolyte, a flagship $230 million Star Wars series, rivalled Adam Driver in terms of smouldering screen presence and emotional nuance – but failed to receive the kind of attention that a theatrical release would’ve entailed (and was summarily cancelled after its first season).
Jacinto is another actor attuned to the indignities of a background role; despite being credited in Top Gun: Maverick, one of the top grossing movies in history, his dialogue scenes were all but edited out of the final cut.
Where the depressing state of Asian stardom is ripe for a scathing critique, Interior Chinatown mostly offers an uninspiring affirmation that such problems exist, mistaking an identification of media tropes with genuine engagement.
Taika Waititi directed the first episode, which showed promise, but it was unfortunately the exception to the rule. (Supplied: Disney)
More than one episode is dedicated to Willis’s attempts to infiltrate a police station, which the broader meta-fictional narrative initially locks him out of. When he manages to inveigle his way past the reception with offerings of Chinese takeaway, he’s then tasked with replacing the cop show’s IT consultant, a stereotypical South Asian computer geek.
It’s an awful lot of screen time dedicated to a couple of basic points: that a little self-orientalising can go a long way in the industry, and that Hollywood demands promising Asian actors ruthlessly compete against one another to land roles that are beneath them. Such observations would’ve been trite 20 years ago.
At the very least, it could’ve been funny. Its promising first episode (directed by executive producer Taika Waititi, a veteran of genre pastiche) is the exception to the rule, teasing a series teetering on the edge of absurdity, such as a slick nightclub scene that seamlessly merges into an advert for hard seltzer, or the random eruption of a kinetic kung fu brawl.
As the episodes go on, the disappearance of that cheeky, genre-bending spirit becomes its own cold case, ensuring the show is never more than the sum of its themes.
Interior China is streaming now on Disney+.
