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Hey, this is Roy Chang. The Daily Show is off this week, but don't worry. We put together some of our favorite moments from the show in case you miss them. We'll be back with brand new shows on September tenth. Until then, enjoy today's episode. Welcome back to The Daily Show. My next guest tonight is an OSCAR nominated actor who starts in the new film The Instigators. Please welcome Hongtown. Oh what's this? Hey? You on time? Thanks, you'll be
on the show. You're the first Oscar nominated actor. I get an interview.
Really yeah, that's really shocking.
Well, it's pretty hard to get nominated. I mean you have like a I feel like you're in a great place in culture right now because you're in all these shows that, uh, like I.
Wake up every morning and think I'm a great I'm in a great place in court.
No, I think you got you got. You're in the You're nominated for your work in The Whale. You are in ASTROI City, Wes Anderson, You're in the Menu, You're in Watchmen. They're all these kind of like really oddy, like uh creekly acclaimed films, and TV shows, And I mean I feel like, are you publicly going a little bit under the radar or is the system suppressing agents? Like which one is it?
What?
What is?
I try not to wake up every morning thinking that the world is against me and because I'm Asian, But uh, no, I I I honestly wish that I knew that I had more control over what I did. But all of the work that comes to me, it's come really organically.
Uh.
Every job that I've gotten has been because the director has seen me in something prior. I got Watchman because Damon saw me and Downsizing, and you know, those two characters are very different. I was in Kinds of Kindness, which came out recently because your goot saw me in Kelly Rei Khart's movies showing up again, two very different movies.
So just by being super talented and hy you just yeah, clout through. Yeah, it's amazing, it's super cool. Because I say that just because I feel like you're non social media really or you're not.
You know who has the time. I mean a lot of people have the times.
Nothing but time for social media. No, I agree with you. I think it's different, Like it's so nice to be able to pull yourself into your craft. I feel that's that's my impression of you. It's my first time meeting you, but just based on how you conduct yourself, you know, like the I feel like you you devote someone all to a craft and like the show the show business side of things. I mean, is that a conscious decision? No?
I mean, I guess it's because I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I saw myself in front of the camera. I was very introverted. I'm I'm still kind of introverted, if I'm being honest, and so I just always whenever I do my work, I just show up and I just want to be of service.
You know, you're so introverted you decided to become the greatest actor of all time for millions and millions of people in hit films and as No, I believe you. I'm not I'm not saying you know. I'm not saying you're lie. I believe it's just funny that like, how do how do you reconcile you know, being introverted? And I believe that you're genuinely like that with you know,
being with Matt Damon. You know, you're messaging him, you're in his films, and you're this for an Oscar and all the press that goes with that.
Like, how does that well, Matt suggested me for the instigation, you're.
On flirst name basis of this guy. Inter Us don't do that. Inter Uts don't know my friend, Brad. I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, like I think you're of like getting out of your show or what made you.
Yeah, I I took I took improv classes in public speaking classes after work. After I graduated college as a full adult.
I was doing this and.
It was just something that I did because I knew it would you know, I would be standing in.
My own way, right, So you like you force yourself to kind of overcome it a bit.
Yeah, I felt nauseous before every improv class, like really sick to my stomach.
But obviously you something over it. I don't know how, because I wasn't you know. I'm again, I don't know you that well, so I don't know how much you're exaggerating how introverted you know. No, it was bad.
It was bad.
It's very bad. Yeah.
So I'm sure you could find some people that I used to work with or went to school with, and they.
Would tell you like, oh she's so quiet. Yeah, and the next you know, you're gegn So what is it like? What can you talk about process a little bit? Because I think it's very interesting, Like when you being so shy and introverted, how does that translate.
Into into I think I just really love movies. I love films, I love directors, and so whenever I'm working on something, it really excites me who the director is and what the script is. And my preparation is just reading the script over and over again. That's really all it.
Is, right, Yeah, Okay, Well it's easier for some people. Then all I do is just I was just shy and I read a script and Matt Damon and put me in a more and then next thing I know, I got nominfoin in Oscar. That's it's just easy. Just it's like you, it's like you tripped and fell into the best career of all time. Yeah, and it truly does, like your what kind of speaks for yourself, which is
really nice. You know, like you don't have to I feel like you don't even need to promote it that much because everyone knows the face and the name and the book, and that's.
Good because I've been doing a lot of promoting all week and I wish I had known.
I wish I know. Can you t talk a little bit about your background because I just find it very interesting you.
Yeah, I'm Vietnamese and my parents left Vietnam after the war in seventy nine. They left by boat, part of the whole boat people boat exodus, and my mom was actually six months pregnant with me and my dad got shot that night as they were leaving, and so they were on a boat for three days. My brother was five, my older brother, and somehow they landed up. They ended up at a refugee camp in Highland and that's where I was born, and we had a sponsor family in
New Orleans. And now I'm here talking to you.
That's a goal from Hun's refugees to New Orleans residents to to no.
I know, I'm very scary, aren't I?
And my wife's family is she's Vietnamese. Yeah, she's dodingnames. The same thing happened to the end they escape self Vietnam. So I gone and went to Australia instead. And my wife always tries to like reconnect with the Vietnamese culture, and she bakes these cakes. And she baked this when she found out. My wife Hannah, when she found out that you were on the show, she was like, can make her Vietnamese cake? And she made you a traditional Vietnamese bumble. Okay, yeah, look at look at my wife
Hannah's bumble. Okay, okay, would you try something to her? I got just going to her. Okay. I hate to go into the stereo type of this is.
This is one of my worst nightmares is eating on camera.
It's okay, are you you got not me for an Oscar? You can You can pretend like this.
This could be like your thing, like what's the chicken wing show? The yeah, yours could be like r Hannah could do a Vietnamese.
She got this featured in the New York Times. This is the New York Times. Bubo, Wow, can you tell her how delicious it is?
Reclangue, come on, come.
On, Okay. The Instigators will debut with select theaters August second, and then we'll be available on Apple TV plus August knife. Everybody please go for Oscar Nominador Hotel. My guest tonight is director of Wicked and Crazy richasions. I hope he remembers me. He's the author of You Finder, a memoir of Seeing and being seen. Please welcome, mister John M. Chew. Cheers, come bag as they say, so good to see you here. It's great to be here. This is your new book.
I immediately look for way I was mentioned and do you mind just reading this out? So I have this on video? Perfect, Ronnie sorry looking at the camera.
Sorry, Yes, Ronnie Chang had caught my eye when he did a piece on the Daily Show that mocked a racist Fox News segment about Chinatown. I love that he was smart and hilarious and clearly wasn't trying to please anybody.
Thank you. No, but this is a crazy full SoCal moment is because I guess you. I never heard the story from you, but you apparently saw me on the Daily Show, and that's how you cast me on it. And now here we are. Yeah, we're just talking on the Daily Show and you're the guests and I'm hosting. It's nice. It's everything.
When we were casting crazy rich Asians, yeah right, come on. When we were casting I just wanted to cast Asians that I wanted to be like or had the confidence to be like, and you had, you had all of it. Then we were casting an asshole, so it's perfect.
I take it. Yeah, the story was for me was I saw you making the movie, and then at that time I just moved to America. Hollywood was such a foule away thing. I didn't not even my wildest dreams would i'd be in a movie, you know. I was just some assholes comic like running from Baba, telling dig jokes and and so I didn't even think about it. Just thought, oh, it's cool that John Hu was doing a story set in Singapore. I was like, oh, that's cool.
I can't wait to watch this movie. And then I read this article that came out a few weeks later that you said, like the headline was John Chu having trouble casting authentic accents increasiit Asians. And I did the most Hollywood thing ever. I just called my agent and I was like, yo, I will never do this. I told my agent, I'll never pull this card, but if you get me an audition, I promise you, I'm going
to book this. I promise you. And then he was he got me on to send an audition in I taped it, I sent it in a few weeks later, I got casts.
Come on, I mean the reality is you already on our list?
Yeah? I know so. And then I meet you on set and you're like, oh yeah, you always on a pitch deck, literally my pitch deck.
I would like, clip around and we're gonna get Ronnie Chank. That's gonna be the Asian Avengers. Okay, okay, that's great.
Now you are part of the Marvel universe. Wow, that's great. But then that would never go back to me. No one told me I was on the pitch decks. I was auditioning.
I was we gotta make it work for it.
I was happy to audition for it. And the first thing you told me where I got on set was I just I loved how positive you are on set. It's my first time on any movie set. I was just like some small role and you know, I wasn't trying to make about me at all, but you're so you're so positive, you didn't at all. Never and you came up to me and the first thing you said was like, hey man, you know I see Auras And I go like, I'm like, I don't want to know
my aura. Please don't tell me you go you have you got you got pink dots on your arm and that I'm like, I've injured right arm. And so I don't know how you saw that.
Well, you shouldn't be on edibles when you meet your actor for the first time. But if you're outing me as a spiritualist, then you know, I don't.
I don't know if I believe in all that, but I.
Do see colors. Yeah, So I've never said that publicly, just to I'm.
Trying to get I'm trying to get you say stuff you didn't say on Colbert. It is true, it's true.
Yeah, I see, I see you have a lot of blue.
Spikes right now, right now, all over your head.
I don't know what it means. So I cannot actually tell you.
You think it's the lighting. Man, it's true, but you don't know what edible. I'm not. I'm not. Yeah, but you are always relentlessly very positive, you know. And that was a tough film to make, and I mean when you were making it, did you know that it was going to become what it was?
No, I don't think any of us could have known. I think when we were there and we're all together, we're talking about our experiences of being an Asian person in entertainment from all around the world, where anyone came from. I think we shared something and that was really powerful, that, hey, this is actually really important. Whether people see it or not, we didn't know it, didn't really care. It was like
for us to show off what we could do. We could make fun of ourselves and our culture and our people, and we could show them as beautiful and as heroes and as villains in.
Any way we wanted.
And I think it was when we were making it, is when I felt like, if people get a load of this, they're not even ready.
So you could feel it on set.
I could feel it on set, but you don't know until the audience shows up. And that first weekend when people brought their grandmothers and people who hadn't gone in the movies for all these years, and we're crying outside and would just congregate in the lobby. You just felt that like we were part of something, something, something bigger than us.
And I guess I want to talk about that, this relentless positivity that I felt back then and I still feel now. And I guess I don't know if you have any woods of how to stay positive in these times because I feel like, if anything, like the world has gone less positives after we made this movie, but you never stop with the positivity. So I don't know if you have any Yeah, I'm expective on that.
That's part of the reason why I wrote the book is you know, I grew up in America where people believed in their dreams that you could achieve these things. My parents have a Chinese restaurant. I grew up as a restaurant kid, doing my whole tek at the part, Yeah, you go there all the time, and.
That's right, that's right.
And I feel like, you know, the American dream still exists. Yes, it was maybe not what our parents said it was and maybe not what we hoped it would be, but the idea of it still exists, and we have the power to control what that narrative will be in the future. And I I really wanted in the book to show any young dreamer out there, old dreamer, when you're you're on the cusp of chasing your dream, that it can happen, and that it's hard, and that there's ups and downs
and it's not overnight. But if you just keep walking, you'll end up at some place, and I think that's necessary in this world right now.
Yeah, I mean I did read this, and it's a page. I did read it. I did. I was looking for my name. I was the whole It's already at the end, so I had to read the whole book before I could find out what you said about me. But no, this book is a very positive book. I feel like I almost feel like you wrote it for kids to read, almost in a way for them to read and see, yeah, you know how to navigate kind of dream chasing.
I also think like everyone has a camera now, everyone's a creator. Everyone has a you know, on their phones or editing for TikTok or whatever it may be. And there's that's power. That is a very powerful thing in your hand. And I you know, when I started making videos, it was for weddings and bar mitzvahs and high school and I was like the only kid doing it. And now everyone does it. So I think there's like a responsibility when you realize the power that you have. And
I think there is. I think there's understanding what that grammar is of audio visual storytelling and what you want to say is more important than ever and owning who you are. That's why it's called viewfinder, is to find who you are and how you want to express that. And you may have mistakes that you make along the way, but that's okay. It's a constant. It's a routine. Chasing your dreams a routine. It isn't a goal or destination.
And I do want to talk about this next project you're doing. So you've helped Asian representation in film, and you've helped Latino representation in film, and now you're helping green people. Yeah, the representative film. So this next movie project WI good? Yeah? Well when yeah, when is it coming up?
It's coming out November twenty seconds and we have Aurana Grande Cynthia Rivo playing the two witches.
And I mean, just set it up. What made you want to choose to walk on Wicked.
Well, it's about the backstory of the Wicked Witch of
the West. So Cynthia Riva plays Elphaba, who in the story of the Wizard of Oz, which is probably one of the greatest American fairy tales out there, she is seen as like the Wicked Witch, but there's a deeper plan, a darker plan that has made her the Wicked Witch, and when you get to meet her as a young dreamer that you find out that there's more than MEETSI and seeing that story and a totally different point of view is fascinating, interesting, and you get to almost like
take apart the American story and put it back together. And I loved it so that it had a lot of meeting to me in terms of, you know, anyone who feels different and what does it feel like to come through. And also for Glinda, who's Glinda the Good in Wizard of Oz, that she goes through a transition that she could live in a bubble her whole life and never have to fight for anything because she has that privilege. But at some point Glinda also has to
pop her own bubble. And I think that is as much bravery as anyone else to get off your you know, your your privilege for a moment to confront some of the things that we have to confront these days.
So, yeah, this is the way you talk about all your projects. It's all like that. That's how he talks about everything on say. He's always it's it's real. It's real for him, it's real, it's really real. And I just want to say, you know, thanks so much for believing in me on your project. I love you so much. Can you change my life by putting me on? And thanks for trusting me, And thanks for making all these really great films, don't you? Everybody?
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