For Chloe Bennet, Interior Chinatown Was Therapy

When actress Chloe Bennet first read Interior Chinatown, it was as if author Charles Yu had access to her innermost thoughts.

"I could not have identified or understood it more," she says. "It felt like someone had scooped out the inside of my brains and, beyond my ability, was able to verbalize these thoughts and these emotions and these feelings that I've had for such a long time. So I freaked out about that. It did feel a bit like someone was reading a weird diary or something of mine, or I had written it and I didn't notice."

When Yu's novel introduced Karen (in the Hulu adaptation, Karen becomes Lana; "we changed the name for obvious reasons," Bennet jokes), Bennet says she had to physically put the book down and stop reading. She knew, instantly, that Interior Chinatown was going be adapted for television, even though there was nothing in the works at that point. Bennet felt like the role was her destiny, and now she recalls thinking, "I have to play this character and if I don't, I should quit acting because if I can't play it, then I can't do my job."

In both Interior Chinatown the book and the television show, the character is a new detective on a satirical Law & Order parody called Black & White. She is brought on to the team as a "Chinatown expert," only, she doesn't feel like an expert. (In the first half of the season, Lana seems to be the only one aware she's working on a TV show.) The plot mainly centers on a waiter, Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang), who is searching for his missing older brother. Lana serves as a bridge between the multiple different realities in the show: Black & White; the SRO, a single-room occupancy apartment building in Chinatown where Willis and his family live; and the Golden Palace, where Willis worked as a waiter.

To switch between the worlds, production used different camera work, and different lighting cues, for all three, to signal to viewers. "I did have the job of having to—and it's a beautiful metaphor—but I did have to go back and forth between these [worlds]. I did have to code switch as Lana. Production had to code switch with me, but I had to maintain the pulse of the show, with giving this exposition while playing this person pretending to play an actor pretending to play a Chinatown expert. And then with Willis, she has an entirely, completely different agenda."

When viewers are first introduced to Lana in episode one, it's through Willis's perspective as he watches TV in the back room of the Golden Palace. Lana is first perceived through a stereotypical male gaze, Bennet says, one that often fetishizes Asian woman. "It was interesting to explore that kind of type of internalized understanding of yourself: What does it mean when your worth is about your proximity to men or how men view you and immediately you put you on a pedestal for being sexualized," she says.

Mike Taing

Lana Lee is to Interior Chinatown as Laura Linney's Meryl is to the Truman Show. She's an actress playing a detective pretending to be a Chinatown expert.

Bennet describes Interior Chinatown as The Truman Show meets Everything Everywhere All At Once, a genre-bending series about what it's like to be Asian in Hollywood. "It's a weird show!" she says, smiling. "The world is so fun, you just have to let it wash over you and enjoy it for what it is." All ten episodes drop at once, so when viewers get to the finale of Interior Chinatown, Bennet hopes they just start over again. It rewards repeat viewing, she says. "What I love about the show is it's like a Taylor Swift album in that the more you kind of dissect it, the more fulfilling it is. There's Easter eggs all over the show. There are answers about the finale in the first episode."

Creating the world of Interior Chinatown was a collaborative pursuit, one that began with Yu himself. Back when Bennet heard the author was adapting his novel, she jokes, "I became a big freak. I stalked Charlie [Yu], I called my team, I called anyone I knew surrounding the project." The experience, Bennet says, was akin to dating: "You have to be active, but you can't be too eager." She continues, "I was constantly being aggressive about getting a meeting, or getting to talk to someone, and then being really chill about it—until I got in, and I had no chill while we were shooting. But I really feel like I went out and fought for this one in a way that I hadn't before."

She fought for it so hard because the role felt deeply personal—Lana's arc mirrored her own experience an actress. Having starred on ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which follows special agents in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for seven seasons, she says she was "raised in procedural TV." Interior Chinatown allowed her to begin to process her time on that show. As a mixed race person with a Chinese father and a white mother, Bennet says she was often cast in roles—such as on S.H.I.E.L.D.— to serve as a link between different cultures. She explains, "I was raised in this particular landscape of television where I was often used as a bridge—being a mixed race young woman that is often serving the male characters, who is often a brought on for 'cultural reasons.'" As Lana literally acts as the connection between worlds in the series, "it was fun to get to play into that as a metaphor for things I'm unfortunately a little too used to," she says, because "when you're constantly the bridge, you're not really a destination. You're just a vessel."

Mike Taing

Lana with Sarah Green (Lisa Gilroy) and Miles Turner (Sullivan Jones), the main cops on Black & White. "She's playing some failing at playing someone, playing someone she's not. It didn't feel too foreign!" Bennet says.

Working on Interior Chinatown was cathartic, and her performance came wholly from within. "It was all definitely something that I didn't know that I needed to get out and communicate," Bennet says, emotional. "It was therapy going to work every day. It was really close to home for all of us."

Before, work meant "being around white people," but Interior Chinatown was totally different, with its predominantly Asian cast."That was never something I ever thought I would ever see," she says, to have a Chinese community, and an Asian American community, overlap with work for her. "Sometimes you don't realize that there's an absence of something until you see it, until you're in it." Being on the set made her reflect on what she was missing throughout her career. "I wonder what it must be like for other people to always see themselves behind the camera, always see themselves in front of the camera, and how much confidence that breeds in you throughout your life," she says. "That's the power of representation. It always felt like a pinch me moment on set."

Mike Taing

Filming in the show's version of Chinatown, where the "details were unbelievable, and it felt really emotional to see that every day."

But it wasn't always easy. Making this show was a "really intense labor of love" for everyone involved. "You're addressing these things within yourself in a creative way; it will always bring up things that you didn't really know were there."

Ultimately, Interior Chinatown is "what happens when you see yourself differently than how the world sees you and how do you break out of that." For Bennet, playing Lana Lee was critical in breaking out of how Hollywood has defined her, and will hopefully change how the industry treats Asian Americans. A big task, but one the show is ready for.

All ten episodes of Interior Chinatown are now streaming on Hulu. Watch now