Jimmy O. Yang once played "Chinese Teenager #1." He's now No. 1 on the call sheet in "Interior Chinatown" — despite playing downtrodden background actor Willis Wu in the new Hulu series.

There's no escaping the layers of meta around "Interior Chinatown," an adaptation of Charles Yu's award-winning satirical novel that jabs at how Asian American men have been treated by Hollywood — and in life — one trope at a time.

"I feel like I have gone through every single number on the call sheet now," Yang said. "And I've learned from a lot of other great No. 1s, you know? To carry yourself a certain way. It's not just about showing up when you work, but it's also about leading by example."

The dramedy, premiering Tuesday, is told from the view of Willis, a Chinatown restaurant server stuck in a police procedural show whose perspective starts to shift as he looks into the yearslong disappearance of his older brother. The 10-episode season has a mostly Asian cast including Ronny Chieng, Chloe Bennet, Archie Kao and Tzi Ma. There is also plenty of Asian talent behind the scenes, led by Yu, who serves as creator and executive producer.

The episodes are full of nods to cop dramas such as "Law & Order." They also evoke scenes from '80s and '90s U.S. action-comedies structured around one of the co-leads being Asian and knowing martial arts — think "Rush Hour" and "Martial Law." But it wasn't a youth spent watching these movies and shows that inspired Yu's book, which is structured like a screenplay.

"More what informed the book was the experiences of my parents, who are immigrants, and of their community and seeing how they and their friends had built lives here, were trying to be Americans, were succeeding at it in a lot of ways, but... Read More