Interior Chinatown

Interior Chinatown is a 2024 Hulu limited series created by Charles Yu, adapting his own National Book Award-winning 2020 novel of the same name. The show stars Jimmy O. Yang as Willis Wu, a struggling actor trapped in the recurring role of Generic Asian Man in a long-running procedural drama filmed inside his apartment complex in Chinatown. Willis dreams of graduating to the coveted role of Kung Fu Guy, but finds himself pulled deeper into a conspiracy that blurs the line between the TV show within the show and his real, precarious life in an immigrant community on the edge of erasure.

The series is a formally inventive and emotionally resonant exploration of Asian-American identity told through the lens of Hollywood's history of marginalizing and stereotyping Asian actors. Creator Charles Yu uses the conceit of a show-within-a-show to expose the mechanisms of typecasting and the psychic toll of performing a diminished version of yourself for the entertainment of others. The supporting cast is stellar, with Ronny Chieng and Chloe Bennet delivering sharp, funny, and deeply felt performances alongside Yang.

Interior Chinatown received strong critical acclaim for its originality, its performances, and the courage of its formal ambitions. The adaptation earned Jimmy O. Yang significant recognition as a dramatic actor capable of anchoring a prestige project, and it was widely praised as one of the most inventive and overdue pieces of Asian-American storytelling in the history of American television.