A background character becomes a star in first Interior Chinatown trailer

At times, haven’t we all felt like a “background character in someone else’s story,” just waiting for our moment in the spotlight? Haven’t we all waited for a beautiful person to randomly show up and hand us a quest, as if we’re a character on a TV show called by destiny? Haven’t we all wanted to find ourselves in a situation where “kung fu could break out at any moment”? Interior Chinatown, a new Hulu series based on Charles Yu’s best-selling 2020 novel of the same name, takes those dreams 100% literally.

According to its official synopsis, Interior Chinatown “follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural called Black & White. Relegated to the background, Willis goes through the motions of his on-screen job, waiting tables, dreaming about a world beyond Chinatown and aspiring to be the lead of his own story. When Willis inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, he begins to unravel a criminal web in Chinatown, while discovering his own family’s buried history and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.”

In addition to writing the source material, Yu is doing double duty as the creator and showrunner of the series. The groundbreaking novel was written as if it were a script for a TV show (complete with stage directions and introductory character descriptions), so this adaptation is something of a no-brainer. The series is also clearly having a lot of fun with its out-of-the-box format. At one point, Willis’ desk falls through the floor into an interrogation room in a highly stylized sequence straight out of network TV. (The character himself seems incredibly confused that this reality-bending event has just occurred.) In another moment, his memory of his brother literally slips through his fingers. It’s a fun little gag that puts tropes under a microscope, one that will likely show up in even zanier ways as the series progresses. 

Yu also serves as executive producer of the series, along with Taika Waititi, who directed the pilot. Interior Chinatown stars Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Chloe Bennet, Lisa Gilroy, Sullivan Jones, Archie Kao, and Diana Lin. All 10 episodes of the series will premiere November 19 on Hulu.