INTERIOR CHINATOWN Key Art | ©2024 Hulu

It is unusual for a novelist to become the showrunner on the adaptation of his book, but that’s what happened for writer Charles Yu with INTERIOR CHINATOWN. All ten episodes of the miniseries based on Yu’s 2020 novel, which won the National Book Award, are now available on Hulu.

In INTERIOR CHINATOWN, Willis Wu is a waiter in his family’s Chinatown restaurant. To his considerable surprise, he discovers he is also a background character in his favorite TV show, BLACK & WHITE, a police procedural that consistently sidelines Asian-American detective Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet). It’s meta and twisty, combining comedy and commentary.

Yu participates in a Q&A panel for INTERIOR CHINATOWN at the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour, then sticks around for some follow-up discussion. This interview combines comments from both.

On being the showrunner, Yu points out how uncommon this is. “Usually, the book writer, [the studio/network] don’t let them near it, and now I understand why. It was really hard, and it was really rewarding at the same time. I think it’s such a different opportunity to get to collaborate with people like this,” he indicates the cast with him on the panel, “and with all the people who made the show. So, it took some time to get used to the idea that this isn’t the book. It can be inspired by the book, we can stay true to what made me want to tell this story. But [getting to] to work with so many talented people and make a new story that hopefully will be surprising for people and make a new story for people, whether or not they’ve read the book, hopefully it will reach a bigger audience.”

Taika Waititi is one of INTERIOR CHINATOWN’s executive producers and directed the pilot. What did he bring to the show?

“He played a huge role,” Yu says. “Getting to work with him is crazy, because I have loved his films since a boy.”

Yu adds that it’s impossible to narrow down Waititi’s contribution to one single thing. In helming the pilot, “setting the tone, [finding] the balance of humor and heart, I think Taika does an amazing job in that. What he also does, in a lot of his films, you fall in love with the characters in the moments that almost seem like they were captured by accident, and I think that’s on some level what this show is about – not the scene itself, but what does someone say under their breath? Or, what does someone say after everyone left the room? How do they show you glimpses of who they are? Taika is a master of that.”

After writing the novel solo, how did Yu feel about having a writing staff on the INTERIOR CHINATOWN series?

“You hire a staff because you want them to think of things you couldn’t have thought of yourself, and they absolutely did that. I love being surprised when they would find something in my book, or something would just come out of the room, that I was like, ‘I never could have gotten there by myself in a hundred years.’

“But it is a balance, because at the end of the day, it has to sound like one story. It can’t feel like too many voices. So, it’s a balance of taking the best of everyone’s ideas. This is every TV show on some level, that has a room, and just telling a story that, again, stays true to the book, but somehow injects the new ideas of the writers on this show. And you’ll see. They came up with some really great stuff.”

What was the development process like for the miniseries, which has shows within shows and stories within stories?

Yu feels it’s important to credit not just the writing/producing/directing staff and cast, but also “those talented people I got to work with, the production designer and the art direction [department]. How do you create a world within a world? Willis goes on this journey, and all of the characters live in these two worlds at the beginning. How do we show that?

“In prose fiction, I can use words to suggest it to the reader, who then does all the work for me with their imagination. In TV, [you are told], ‘You can’t just write a poem and expect us to film it. You have to tell me what color this carpet is going to be.’ And that was an incredible process, to work with really talented people [whose medium is] color, it’s light, it’s sound, it’s all these ways to differentiate the world.”

Yu also has high praise for the cast. “What I really love about all of their performances, what they brought to it was, how do we dive into these characters? How do these characters exist in these different ways? Which is what the show is about. It’s who are you with your family, who are you at work, who are you in your most unguarded moments?

“I think there’s something funny about that, that’s why we have funny people, but they’re also great actors. And the drama is what is exciting to me, watching these characters grow.”

“And so, I’m excited for everyone to see it. What does it look like to have the world that Willis lives in and what does it look like to show the world that he wants to be part of?”

This is accomplished by having INTERIOR CHINATOWN visibly exist on different levels of reality. “You want people to get the ‘verse,” Yu explains. “You want them to get lost in the details of the inside of the room, but there are times on the street where you’re like, ‘This is a backlot.’ So, the safety valve is, ‘Yeah, it’s supposed to be’,” he laughs. “It’s a copout, but it’s also fun. I highly recommend doing something so meta that you can always just pretend that you did that on purpose.”

One reason to do INTERIOR CHINATOWN part real, part meta is that it allows for extremes of comedy, absurdity and straight drama.

“I think I probably will confuse myself if I try to parse through all the levels, but on some level, you just want it to be as fun and complicated as life is.”

Since BLACK & WHITE, INTERIOR CHINATOWN’s show-within-a-show, is clearly a sendup of the LAW & ORDER shows, especially LAW & ORDER: SVU, it has to be asked – does Yu really love that NBC franchise, or does he hate it?

“I love LAW & ORDER,” Yu acknowledges with a laugh. “I love it.”

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Article:  Interview with INTERIOR CHINATOWN creator and showrunner Charles Yu on new miniseries

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