How Actor and Writer Kelvin Yu Redirected His “Flawed” Hollywood Business Model

The beach has always appealed to Kelvin Yu. Having grown up in Palos Verdes before eventually settling in Santa Monica with his wife and two young children, he’s rarely lived far from it. This proximity has allowed him to become a deft surfer, though he’s too modest to call himself one. “I’m not incredibly proficient, but I have been doing it for about 30 years,” says Yu, 43, who often starts his days on the water. “It’s just a meditative exercise in multitasking where I can get a little quiet time.”

Yu’s professional multitasking is less solitary. He serves as an executive producer on Fox’s long-running animated series Bob’s Burgers, still takes for-hire onscreen roles (Master of None, Wonder Woman 1984 and The Afterparty) and recently completed a labor of love by showrunning an adaptation of cult graphic novel American Born Chinese. That last one, about a high schooler caught up in a spat between the gods of Chinese mythology, arrives May 24 on Disney+.

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Premiering in a crowded TV corridor, the series has already scored a jolt of buzz by having four castmembers who also appeared in juggernaut Everything Everywhere All at Once, including newly minted Oscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan. “It became this tractor beam where it felt inevitable,” says Yu, who cast and shot his series’ eight-episode first season before the film premiered. “But we’d told everybody early on, ‘If you can try to win an Academy Award in the next year, please do.’ “

American Born Chinese is a beloved graphic novel. What was your relationship with it?

There was nothing like it in 2006. Sometimes you think about diversity as something that’s here to stay, and I sure hope so, but this idea of capital-D diversity has only been around for a few years. Some of us still have a healthy level of anxiety of how long it’s going to be here and in what form. We want to strike while the iron is hot.

There must have been previous attempts to adapt it. Why do you think it took so long?

Gene Luen Yang, who wrote the book, was reflecting metaphorically on what it feels like to live in multiple worlds with these three storylines — a mythological figure, a teenage American kid and this controversial character whose name is a racial slur, Cousin Chin-Kee. That was his biggest quandary in adapting it. And early on, people would come up to Gene at Comic-Cons: “Hey, my favorite character is Cousin Chin-Kee.” He didn’t know how to take it — if they were in on the joke or if they were completely missing the context. So he turned down at least one or two opportunities to adapt it.

The cousin character is replaced in the series by an actor (portrayed by Ke Huy Quan) who’s best known for playing a stereotype on a ’90s sitcom. How’d you land there?

When I started as an actor out of college, the first role I got was a high school nerd.

This was on Popular, Ryan Murphy’s first show, yes?

Yes. My acting career, with the exception of a couple of highlights in the early 2000s, is a great example of taking what you can get. I was a very stereotypical nerd on that show — but, by the way, it was a dream come true. It was the best day of my life, being paid to act on that show. But then you keep getting roles where you are the neighbor, the computer tech or the high school nerd. It’s like Stockholm syndrome, where you never even imagine a version [of your career] where the audience is in your shoes and your experience.

You have a ton of one-off TV show credits. Did you ever have to do an accent?

Not on Popular, but I did an accent on The Closer, for instance. This was after that young adult boom, where I was able to work on Gilmore Girls and Felicity. As I got a little older, they had me kill my wife five different times: CSI: NY, The Closer, Without a Trace, NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS proper. They would do one specialty Asian episode a year, and it was always about some ashamed, repressed Asian man who just lost his mind. Sometimes I killed my brother’s wife. One time it was my sister.

Did you find it hard to say no to roles like that?

There’ve been a couple that I passed on, where it was just a bridge too far. But, in general, the actor’s job is to say yes and then to find a way to make “yes” feel real. And I have good-boy syndrome to begin with, so I wanted to do good work. When you’re a 20-something actor, waiting tables, and somebody says, “Hey, come to the Warner Bros. lot tomorrow at 5 a.m.,” it’s just “Yes, yes, yes!” It’s hard to break that.

What was the catalyst for your move into writing?

I’m dating myself here, but I saw that poster for The Proposal — where Sandra Bullock is holding Ryan Reynolds up against a wall — and I remember looking at him and thinking, “Oh, they’re never going to give me that role.” I had been working consistently, but, for some reason, that was the moment it hit me. That’s not how this industry works. I might be in that movie, but I’m never going to get that role. My business model was flawed. So I started writing.

Your brother, the novelist Charles Yu, is adapting his book Interior Chinatown for Hulu. What did your parents do when you were growing up that you both became writers?

My father is an aerospace engineer for Boeing. My mother was the accountant for Manhattan Beach School District’s food department. And my brother and I came in through very different paths. He was a lawyer who became a novelist, and I was an actor who became a TV writer. Now we basically have the same job for the same company.

Speaking of that company, I was surprised by how large the Disney logo is above the American Born Chinese title card. Was that a discussion?

I went to Disneyland on Friday — and the whole day was a reassertion that, like, Apple makes TV shows but their core business is selling phones and computers. Disney’s core business is child wonderment. They’re grabbing that really soft chewy part of your brain and moving in. And I don’t mean that in a sinister way. My son’s 3½. He wasn’t even “happy.” His brain cleaved itself open, like when a whale is eating kelp, just trying to take in as much as possible. To think that our show falls under that banner, I take that as a badge of honor. At some point, I’d like to make something adult and edgy and effed-up, but this is the stuff that stays with people when they grow up.

WGA members have voted overwhelmingly in favor of strike authorization. Is it uncouth to ask you how you voted?

Like “What are your Tinder preferences?” (Laughs.) No, it would be problematic if I hedged on this. I voted yes. There’s no question that the studios have a shifting tectonic world that they’re living in, but I also think that the writers are patient zero for the effects of those changes. One of the defenses I’ve heard is that there’s so many more writers than there used to be. That, to me, borders on offensive. Laced into that rebuttal is that by expanding access and opening the doors to more voices, there’s not room for all those voices. They’re not saying this explicitly, but it’s like saying, “We could pay the 64-year-old white guys, when that’s all there were, but now that there’s everyone — from disabled writers to LGBTQ writers to writers of color — it’s just too many people for everybody to make a living wage.” If you can put all those shows on the streamers, you can pay all the people who are making them.

We’re speaking a month or so before your series’ premiere. If it launches during a strike, are you able to promote it?

This is the world premiere of me thinking about that. (Laughs.) My first step would be to check with other writers. If we strike, we’re trying to grind the industry to a halt to flex our muscle, but I don’t think we’re trying to shoot our own shows in the foot. You want the show to be successful to demonstrate your value. But I understand both sides. A quiet ghost town is also very effective in letting the people in power know.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story first appeared in the April 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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