‘American Born Chinese’: Daniel Wu Talks Michelle Yeoh, Season 2 Hopes

TVLINE | Before we get to the important stuff, I’ve got to ask about the hair and makeup. At its worst, how long did it take? At its best, how short did it take?
So, there’s, like, three looks, right? The full monkey look that has the armor and the golden hair and all that stuff, that’s in the opening scene of the first episode, that takes about three hours. And about 45 minutes to an hour to take off. And the least imposing work is the human-form Monkey King where he’s just basically got long hair and a beard. That takes about 45 minutes to an hour.

TVLINE | What’s your go-to way to pass the time for those three hours? Podcasts? Music?
Fall asleep. [Laughs] Usually. Over the years I’ve learned to fall asleep anywhere, anytime when you get a chance. So, yeah, my happy place is just to close my eyes and go to sleep and then wake up transformed.

TVLINE | I can’t be the first person to tell you that the golden-haired Monkey King gives Dr. Zaius-from-Planet of the Apes vibes, right?
Oh, yes. Especially with the kind of angles that they shot me at in that first episode.

TVLINE | What did you find most interesting about your character’s journey?
Well, I think he’s got an interesting narrative in that he’s dealing with something mythological, which is this war in Heaven that was caused by the Bull Demon who now wants vengeance. He lost power to Monkey King, who wasn’t even trying to go for that role, but then Monkey King over the years has taken on that responsibility, quite seriously, and become a protector of Heaven. But on top of dealing with the responsibility and weight of all of that, he’s also got to be a dad, right? He’s got to raise his son. But then his son gets this cockamamie idea that there’s this Fourth Scroll, and that it’s going to save Heaven, but to do that he’s going to steal his dad’s staff. So, the dad’s dealing with a son who’s acting a lot like he did when he was little, and when he realizes that — or when Guanyin points that out to him — he realizes, “OK, should I let him?” And that is a very real-world decision.

TVLINE | You’ve got to let kids make mistakes every now and then.
Yes, yes. I think there’s a tendency nowadays to kind of helicopter your children, to protect them too much. And as as result, they don’t really know how to deal with any kind of adversity, because they’ve been air-bagged their whole life. You have to let them fall down and get up, fall down and get up and eventually learn their way through life. Monkey King is dealing with that kind of situation with his son, but with stakes that are much higher.

WARNING: Spoilers for the American Born Chinese season finale follow….

WARNING: Spoilers for the American Born Chinese season finale follow.

TVLINE | Your character’s looking pretty spry in the finale, showing up on the soccer field after being left for nearly dead after his clash with Bull Demon. I guess Mrs. Wang’s magic herbal remedy powder did the job?
It paid off, yes! The green powder paid off.

TVLINE | I, and apparently a few others, did wonder at times if that green powder — which seemed to turn up in every episode! — was going to somehow be the Fourth Scroll.
Yeah, yeah. But it was surprising what the Fourth Scroll actually was in the end. That was a cool reveal, I think.

TVLINE | Oh, the reveal was great, the way your character got to hint at it and tee up his son to say it out loud to Jin. I guess that moving forward, we’re left to wonder why Jin is the Fourth Scroll and what led to all of that…?
Yes, and it could be related to the legacy of those jade pendants. There’s maybe some family legacy there that we can explore in Season 2, if we’re lucky enough to do it.

TVLINE | What are you hearing about Season 2? Any buzz? Any talk on numbers or streaming performance?
I think it’s early at the moment, but I know there’s some kind of movements towards it. But with the writer’s strike, everything’s on pause, so no clarity on that yet.

TVLINE | Do you think that in a possible Season 2, Ke Huy Quan’s actor character would play some sort of larger role?
Oh, that’d be cool if he did, because I thought it was an amazingly powerful device to use him to play that character. In some ways it’s very meta in that it’s reflective of his [own] life and his career, but also of the character as well. I think that’s why it seemed so heartfelt and earnest.

TVLINE | And I know that subplot was changed a lot from the book.
Yeah, the book is a totally different version of that — and it’s almost even more cringey. But the adaptation that Kelvin Yu did was amazing in terms of taking that storyline and making it apropos to today, while maintaining the essence of what that character is about.

TVLINE | It seemed like a larger point of Jamie’s story was to say that as much as you’re watching and enjoying this American Born Chinese series, you must realize that past portrayals of Asian characters in Western media have often been horrible. And that we’ve come a far way, but have further to go.
It’s also interesting because it shows you the psyche of what it’s like to be one of those actors, because no one really knows what that feeling is like. There’s a couple of actors from that era like that, and one that we cite all the time as Asian-Americans is Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles, played by Gedde Watanabe. It’s like, we hate that character, but at the same time you can’t hate the actor. It’s not his fault, he was trying to get work at that time and that’s what was available. It’s that double-edged sword of “If I take this work on, what does it mean to a whole generation of Asian-American men, being emasculated like that on-screen?

I know that affected me a lot growing up, and I know it affected a lot of people in my business, but also people outside of it all, too. He’s playing a character, he’s playing a role, and he’s trying to make a living at this, but again, he’s hurting the image of our culture, and our people in some ways. So it’s interesting through this Freddy Wong character to see what it’s like for the actor to play a role like that.

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