Jimmy O. Yang Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions

Hey, I'm Jimmy O. Yang

and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.

[upbeat electronic music]

Can't say I've Googled myself.

No, actually I have actually Googled myself many times.

[upbeat electronic music]

Alright, very excited about this.

How did Jimmy O. Yang become famous?

People google this? Like how did he became famous?

It's different for different people.

Usually when white people come up to me,

they say, Oh, Silicon Valley, Jian Yang, hilarious.

When Asian people come up to me, they know me from standup,

they know me from Crazy Rich Asians.

A lot of immigrants come up to me, Chinese immigrants,

Japanese, they're like Your standup special got,

you know, subtitle and translated in Chinese

and that's how I know you.

And a lot of times Chinese people,

they call standup comedy talk shows.

They're like, We love your talk shows.

Oh, and a lot of girls, younger, older

come up to me because of Love Hard.

This rom-com I did with Nina Dobrev on Netflix.

So fame is in the eye of the beholder.

Was Jimmy O. Yang in Patriots Day? Yes.

That was actually one of my proudest projects to date,

based on real life movie about the Boston Marathon bombing,

which was a very dark day in our country.

And I get to play this character, Danny Meng

that kinda became the hero and saved the day.

He was a Chinese immigrant student and he got carjacked

and kidnapped by the Boston bombers and he ran away, escaped

and was able to call the cops, remember his tag numbers.

And that's how they found the two bombers

that led to the shootout in Watertown

and the capture of these bombers.

So I get to kind of talk to

and interview Danny every day had a great time in Boston.

And I thought it was just such an important story

and it was the first drama I did.

And Peter Berg was a great director

and it was good to kind of prove to myself

that I could be a good dramatic actor

and it gave me a lot of confidence in that sense.

But also it was just such a great story to tell.

Jimmy O. Yang dad joke. Who Googles that?

Jimmy O. Yang dad joke.

I do have a lot of jokes about my dad

and those have became some of the most popular jokes.

And yeah, my dad is just naturally like a pretty funny,

charismatic person.

Pretty easy to make fun of.

He started acting after I did

and that is true now he's a full on SAG actor.

We just recently did a commercial together. He loves it.

At times I'm like, is this kinda seeping into my life

a little too much?

Like is he overstepping as a father? But I love it.

I love it.

Jimmy O. Yang oh I don't know.

I think that's a line maybe I said in my standup

or my character Jian Yang has said on Silicon Valley.

I'm not so sure how that became a top search,

but that's a really interesting phrase,

because for every character I play on TV, on film,

I try to have a mantra.

Right before every scene

when I was that Jian Yang character,

I would say, I don't know in Chinese [speaking Chinese]

Either he doesn't care to know

or he doesn't care about these people to know

or he truly is a bit lost.

So that was kind of like my mantra

for the Jian Yang character is, I don't know.

Thank you very much.

Does Jimmy O. Yang, sing in Love Hard? Yes, I do.

That was actually my voice. I impressed myself.

I didn't think I was that good of a singer,

but it all came together pretty well.

We prerecorded the song in the studio.

It is the remix of the lyrics of Baby It's Cold Outside

to a more appropriate lyrics.

And it's me and Nina Dobrev doing a kinda duet.

Jimmy O. Yang economics.

Is it like searching Jimmy O. Yang net worth?

Like I do that all the time. My dad does that to me.

He'll be like, Oh, your net worth went up.

I'm like, I wouldn't listen to any of these sites.

But Jimmy O. Yang economics,

I'm pretty sure it's because I was an econ major in college.

I went school in UC San Diego.

I went in as a Mechanical Engineering major

and I was too much of a slacker, I never went to class.

I was smoking too much weed

and I was like, I'm never gonna graduate

as a mechanical engineer.

So I picked the easiest major

that would still appease my Asian parents,

which was economics.

Jimmy O. Yang. This is a long one, it seems.

Disappointing Asians.

That's not what it seems. Okay?

I don't think I've disappointed any Asians.

I hope I made Asians out there proud.

But this was the subtitle of my book,

which is How to American: The Immigrants Guide

to Disappointing Your Parents.

I think there's a lot of jokes about me

disappointing my parents,

being a disappointing Asian to my parents.

I hope that's what it means.

I hope I'm not actually out there

disappointing Asian people.

I started doing standup and that's not a very Asian thing,

you know, that's not something that my parents considered

as a real job.

They wanted me to be in finance,

to be a lawyer doctor, like real jobs to them.

So me being a standup and actor,

I disappointed them for many, many years.

But like I said in my book, to me,

it was better to disappoint my parents for a couple years

than to disappoint myself for the rest of my life.

So I had to take a risk, take a chance

and try something that I love.

Jimmy O. Yang jacket.

This became a thing the kinda light blue jacket I wore

on my second special, Guess How Much?

It was a really cool jacket

and a lot of people start Googling where I got it from.

I don't even know where I got it from.

It was a brand that my stylist, at the time,

hooked me up with.

And I think it was a Chinese brand

that has since went out of business.

Of course, if there's enough demand,

I think there's now a site that sells the Jimmy O. Yang,

Guess How Much? Jacket, Like a bootleg one.

Let's see. When did Jimmy O. Yang start comedy?

I started standup comedy when I was 21 years old.

Junior year of college.

This is when you could go into the Comedy Club.

Anybody usually under age of 21, you have to wait outside

of Comedy Club and then get in your set when it's your turn.

So it's been two years.

I've only been doing comedy for two years. I'm 23 years old.

[chuckling] When did Jimmy O. Yang start acting?

I started acting maybe a couple years

after I started standup, probably like 15 years ago now.

Yeah, there's a lot of things that are similar.

You know, the charisma stage, the command of the stage.

I think that translates often time on camera.

Standup is a stage act and it's a vocal act.

You wanna project, you wanna touch the audience

in the balcony, right?

Whereas acting oftentimes, especially TV film acting

is very close on your face

and it's about what's going on inside.

It's a little more internal.

And one of the things I noticed for me

and many standups, the hardest part to learn,

and maybe in life, is to listen to your partner.

Because standup, it's all you,

you're one person by yourself,

whereas acting it's about the connection

with you and your partner.

So I learned to be a better listener,

which is probably good for my life in general.

Where was Jimmy O. Yang: Guess How Much? filmed?

My second comedy special called Guess How Much?

it was filmed in Austin, Texas.

And it was actually a really interesting and fun thing

because Austin is not as Asian as most of my crowds.

It leaned more white and the cool part was

the jokes still hit.

You know, like my jokes weren't just for the Asian people.

So that felt good. I knew if that was gonna work in Austin,

it was gonna work for most people in America.

And of course it ended up working not just in America,

like around the world, a lot of it got translated to Chinese

and it's played in China and Hong Kong and Taiwan

and a lot of places in Asia.

I got people telling me from China,

that's how they started learning English

from my standup special.

So that felt pretty special to me.

I'm breaking lights over there.

Jimmy O. Yang I love you.

Is this just a fan hoping they'll get to me?

It says Jimmy O. Yang I love you.

That's very sweet. I appreciate that.

But I think it's actually based on one of my jokes

where I say Asian, we don't really say I love you

to our parents.

The joke goes that one time in college I got high

and I called my mom, I was like,

Mom, I just wanna tell you that I love you.

And then she started crying.

She was like, Jimmy, are you okay? Do you have cancer?

Jimmy O. Yang improv.

I improvise a lot on Silicon Valley on Space Force

and a lot of comedy projects I do and even dramatic stuff.

You know, we find rooms to improvise,

which is fun and it's cool

and it gets you into the character, into the story.

But also The Improv is one of my favorite comedy clubs

in L.A. and all over the world.

I try all my materials there before I take it on the road.

And big shout out to Rita at The Improv,

who's been the Booker there for a long, long time

and she has made a lot of people stars

and given them the opportunity.

Jimmy O. Yang Jian Yang, that was the character

I played on Silicon Valley for six seasons.

I started off as just a very tiny part,

two lines in one episode.

And it became two lines in three different episodes.

And by the second season I became a series regular.

And it was a whole like villain arc with Jian Yang.

At first he started off as kinda just like a random person

that lives in the incubator, played by T.J. Miller

and his character Erlich Bachman.

And I start standing up to Erlich

and we had this very cool Laurel and Hardy

kind of comedy duo.

And it was a lot of improvisation, a lot of fun,

a lot of great scenes that is still very fond in my memory.

[whistling]

Jimmy O. Yang Interior Chinatown,

that is the new show I'm gonna be on.

I feel like everything I've worked on,

I've worked for in my career, it's all in the show.

It's really interesting.

It's kinda like Truman Show.

It's about a background actor played by me, Willis Wu,

he's stuck in a show that's similar to Law and Order,

but he doesn't know it.

He just doesn't know

how to get out of his role in Chinatown.

And there's like a ceiling, there's a glass window,

he just can't get out of it.

At the same time he's dealing with a lot of stuff

with his family, his disappearance with his brother.

So he starts uncovering the mystery,

by doing so he has to sneak in

to the actual Law and Order show.

So episode by episode, he goes from a background actor

to a guy having two lines to actually the tech guy,

which is like my journey in my life too.

It's kinda like Law and Order meets Twilight Zone.

Was Jimmy O. Yang in Crazy Rich Asians? Yes, I was.

I played this character, Bernard Tai,

the crazy kinda billionaire playboy.

And I had so much fun and we're still all best friends.

I actually just went out to dinner with Awkwafina and Ronny

and we still have a hundred people group chat on WhatsApp.

Jimmy O. Yang love languages.

My best love language is acts of service.

You know, I love cooking.

That's what my parents did for me, you know?

And I love, you know, just doing things, fixing things

and words of affirmation.

I didn't think it was important to me, but I think it is.

You know, that's why I think I'm a standup.

You get the live audience reaction.

Every laughter is a word of affirmation for me.

And sometimes if I don't do standup for a prolonged period

of time, I don't get the immediate feedback, the accolades,

I start to wilt a little bit.

And I think that's every artist,

we want our work to be seen and to be loved.

But at the same time, I'm also learning to be a little,

a little self-love.

That you don't need the external validation.

You do a lot of these projects,

these art projects for yourselves.

And if it's good enough for me, I had a great time.

That's the most meaningful part of it.

Jimmy O. Yang LinkedIn.

[laughing breathlessly]

I don't think I have a LinkedIn account.

I never had a real job.

My first high school job was

I worked at Big Five Sporting Goods,

a discount sporting goods store.

I loved it. I worked there for many summers.

I was a waiter for a Chinese restaurant.

I was a used car salesman. I was once a strip club DJ.

So I don't think any of those things go on LinkedIn.

I don't think my LinkedIn says

strip club DJ at Fantasy Showgirls in San Diego.

Jimmy O. Yang chicken wings.

Oh, I know what this is about.

During the pandemic, I started a little cooking show

called Jimmy's Kitchen on YouTube.

And it was really cool actually.

I get to learn how to cook with the people

and then teach people some things that I learned.

And I also got really into the food space.

I wrote a quarterly column on Bon Appetit.

I wrote about my hate for boneless wings.

How they're not wings, they're just little cut up pieces

of white meat, chicken lies.

Chicken wings, if you really go for the chicken wings,

get the bones, get the flavor,

not just little chunks of meat.

That's for babies.

And then years later, recently,

I did a commercial for Popeye's Boneless Wings.

So for the right price, I'm ready to sell out at any time.

That's the moral of the story.

No, it was actually, they let me try their wings

and it was actually so good.

I was like,

Yeah, sure, this is actually legit boneless wings.

Jimmy O. Yang Kumon.

As you know, Kumon's an afterschool kinda tutoring

a thing a lot of Asian people go to.

I don't know if you guys have seen the Kumon logo,

but even the logo itself looks miserable.

It's just an emoji, like a two dots in a line,

but it's not even like a happy face.

You're just like, Oh, I guess I'm at Kumon

and my life sucks.

Jimmy O. Yang, TikTok.

I didn't really know about TikTok.

And then people start telling me about it

and we started uploading just some clips of my standup on it

and it blew up.

Now I got like 4 million

or maybe 5 million followers on TikTok

and it's just been a great space,

great outlet for my standup comedy.

I would argue that maybe more people saw my comedy special

on TikTok than on Amazon Prime when it came out.

And it's really cool.

It's reaching a younger generation also.

There'll be kids coming up to me, little 12-year-old kids

like, Oh my God, I love you.

You're the TikTok comedian. I love you on TikTok.

And I don't know how I feel about that.

A TikTok comedian somehow sounds kind of weird, but sure.

And that's all the boards. It was kind of interesting.

I didn't realize people would Google

Jimmy O. Yang I love You

and maybe I will start typing in my own Google search.

Jimmy O. Yang I love you.

And that's how I practice self-love.

So till next time, thank you very much Wired.

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