The Hulu series Interior Chinatown—created and showrun by Charles Yu, who wrote the eponymous award-winning book—is coming to us this fall.
Hulu shared the news as well as some first-look images during the show’s panel at the Summer TCA Press Tour, where Yu and stars of the show, Jimmy O. Yang, Chloe Bennet, and Ronny Chieng, took to the stage to talk about the series, including how the adaptation differs from the novel.
“It took some time to get used to the idea that this isn’t the book,” Yu said when asked how difficult it was to adapt a book that, if you’ve read it, seems to defy adaptation. The solution, according to Yu, was to approach the series as being inspired by the book and “stay true to what made you want to tell this story […] and to make a new story that ultimately is surprising for people, whether or not they read the book.”
Yu and the cast were tight-lipped about what those changes may be, but when I asked whether the ten episodes we’ll see this November cover the entirety of the novel, Yu was hesitant to give a direct answer because spoilers, but said that he hopes people watch the show recognizing themes in the book but also be surprised by what they see.
[ed note: The book is a fairly surrealist work of meta-fiction in which a man named Willis Wu is trapped as a background character in a cop procedural called Black & White, who yearns for a starring role. The trouble is that once he gets his shot, it comes at a bit of a cost. There’s much, much more to it than that, but that’s the basic logline.]
Chieng, who plays Fatty Choi on the show, was more straightforward. “The DNA is the same, but if you read the book, there’s no way to adapt it one-for-one. You have to rethink the whole concept,” later adding that “the show ends in a way where there’s multiple seasons possible.”
All ten episodes of Interior Chinatown (with a pilot directed by Taika Waititi!) will be available on Hulu on November 19, 2024. Check out additional first-look photos below.
