“I think what’s really cool about Interior Chinatown is, of course, it’s an Asian story—there’s a lot of themes about invisibility and what it means to be Asian in this country,” he says. “But at the end of the day, it’s a really creative show, unlike anything you’ve seen. We took big swings. I think it shows the evolution of Asian-American [film and TV], now we’re able to take big swings. We can now take risks, be creative.”
Mike Taing/Courtesy of Hulu
It’s clear just how much Interior Chinatown has emboldened Yang, in his personal life but also in his craft as a standup comedian. Right now, he’s in the middle of a sold-out standup comedy tour, playing major venues like Carnegie Hall in New York and the Kia Forum in L.A., developing new material for a future special. For Good Deal and Guess How Much?, his last two comedy specials, he sold the concepts first, taking the money and rushing to refine the material to meet deadlines; this time, he’s prioritizing his own enjoyment first, going on the road because he wants to. “I feel like it’s a different level I’m doing it at,” he says. “Just being a little more confident, comfortable.”
“So much was riding on every set back in the day,” he continues. “You don’t know—maybe a Fox executive is sitting there, maybe a casting director’s sitting there, so you want to kill it every set. But that’s not the right mentality you should be in when you build material. You should be able to take chances and bomb. I think now maybe I have the luxury—or at least the mentality of [having the luxury] to do that. I’m doing it for myself now. I’m doing it because I love it.”
The whole time Yang and I are talking, I’m distracted by a sculpture on the bookshelf behind him. To me, it looked like a baby elephant tusk on a wooden base—the kind of elegant if seemingly meaningless ornament one might see in a celebrity home tour. Could our boy Jimmy—deliverer of dick jokes, the onetime @funnyasianguy, our Jian Yang—be going all Hollywood on us?
“It’s from Space Force, from the episode I wrote!” he explains. He grabs the sculpture and lets me take a good look at…. a dick? Some things never change.
“It’s a penis,” he confirms, brandishing it like a trophy. “Not mine, though!”
