In Hulu's "Interior Chinatown," Jimmy O. Yang stars as Willis Wu, a "generic Asian man" stuck in the background of police procedural show, whose luck begins to shift when he breaks into a leading role -- a trajectory that resonated heavily with the actor.

Ronny Chieng and Chloe Bennet also star in Charles Yu’s adaptation of his own acclaimed 2020 novel, about an unassuming waiter who gets caught up in a cold case involving his missing brother.

All of that informs the fresh commentary and characterization of Charles Yu’s “Interior Chinatown,” based on his own novel of the same name. What if the people pushed into the periphery were aware of it, and how can they move organically into the main story?