Interior Chinatown, the television series adaptation of Charles Yu’s award-winning novel, is now streaming on Hulu in the USA (and Disney+ in various international markets).
Producers Charles Yu and Taika Waititi discussed their work on the series, including their love of beautiful fight choreography, police procedurals, favourite Asian cuisine and more!
Check out the full interview with Taika Waititi and Charles Yu below:
There is stellar fight choreography throughout Interior Chinatown. As such, we had to know which fight movies would be Waititi and Yu’s favourites, and how they might have inspired their work on the series.
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Waititi said, “I mean Michelle Yeoh is like the greatest. I mean that opening one where she’s chasing the the bandit, who we know is later on going to be Zhang Ziyi, that fight for me, I watched that movie, and I went straight back in for the next session, just to see that fight again.”
Yu said, “I’m gonna go with The Grandmaster. I mean the beauty of it, you know? The discussion of styles throughout, you know, it’s just stunning.”
“Those films are exhilarating to watch. I really like, remember seeing those fights and just being so blown away. I mean, I’ve watched martial arts films my entire life and it’s just that one in particular where it was just such a celebration of, like, the history of an Asian cinema, and fight scenes and fight films that came together just in such a beautiful way. And it was just elegant, poetic,” Waititi said.
Interior Chinatown pays homage to the police procedural. While there aren’t any shortage of these kinds of shows, but there are some that stand the test of time.
“Hill Street Blues. Why? I mean, it’s Hill Street Blues, and it opened every episode opened with the debrief in the police station, and then the chief would say, as he lets everyone go, he goes, ‘Let’s be careful out there.’ And that was, like, the thing that hits, like, that kicked off the show, and it was like, just, it’s awesome, man,” Waititi said.
Yu chose a long-standing standing favourite with Law & Order: SVU.
Yu said, “I’m gonna go with Law and Order: SVU, because I watched the most of that. And it was on all the time when my daughter was a baby, so I would just be holding her, and she wouldn’t go to sleep, so I would just watch five or six episodes in a row until she fell asleep. So, yeah, it was burned into my brain, and that’s how this show came to be.”