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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 missed them. We'll be back with brand new shows on September 10th. Until then, enjoy today's episode. Welcome back to The Daily Show. My next guest tonight is an Oscar nominated actor who stars in the new film, The Instigators. Please welcome Hong Chao. Oh, watch this stuff. Thank you for being on the step? There you go, you're on the top. Thanks for being on the show. You're the first Oscar nominated actor I get to interview.

Really? Yeah. That's really shocking.

It's pretty hard to get nominated. I feel like you're in a great place in I'm really into culture right now because you're in all these shows that are like...

I wake up every morning and think, I'm in a great place in culture.

Yeah, I think you are. You were nominated for your work in The Whale. You are in Astroight City, West Anderson. You were in the menu, you're in Watchmen. They're all these really odd-y, critically acclaimed films and TV shows. I feel like, are you purposely Is it going a little bit under the radar, or is the system suppressing Asians? Which one is this?

I try not to wake up every morning thinking that the world is against me because I'm Asian. But no, 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. Every job that I've gotten has been because the director has seen me in something prior. I got Watchmen because Damon saw me in Downsizing, and those two characters are very different. I was in Kinds of Kindness, which came out recently because your Ghost saw me in Kelly Rikhart's movie, showing up. Again, two very different movies.

So just by being super talented and you just plowed through. Yeah, it's amazing. It's super cool because I say that just because I feel like you're not on social media, really, or you're not...

Who has the time? I mean, a lot of people have the time, I can't.

There's nothing but time for social media. No, I agree with you. I think it's different. It's so nice to be able to pour yourself into your craft. I feel that's my impression of you. It's my first time meeting you, but just based on how you conduct yourself. I feel like you devour yourself more to a craft than the show business side of things. Is that a conscious decision or is that just naturally?

No, I guess it's because I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I I never saw myself in front of the camera. I was very introverted. I'm still introverted, if I'm being honest. Whenever I do my work, I just show up and I just want to be of service.

You're so introverted that you decided to become the greatest actor of all time for millions and millions of people in hit films. No, I believe you. I'm not saying you're lying. I believe you. It's just funny that how do you reconcile being introverted? I believe that you're genuinely like that with Matt Damon, you're messaging him, you're in his films, and you got nominated for an Oscar, and all the press that goes with that.

How does that Well, Matt suggested me for the instigator.

So you're on first-name basis with this guy. Introverts don't do that. Introverts don't go, My friend Brad. You mean Brad Pitt? Yeah. Was that thing Is that a bit of getting out of your shell or what made you-Yeah, I took…

I took improv classes and public speaking classes after work, after I graduated college as a full adult, I was doing this. It was just something that I did because I knew I would be standing in my own way.

You forced yourself to overcome it a bit. Yeah.

I felt nauseous before every improv class, really sick to my stomach.

But obviously, you... Something...

I got over it.

I don't know how... Because, again, I don't know you that well, so I don't know how much you're exaggerating how introverted you were.

No, it was bad.

It was pretty bad?

Yeah. I'm sure you could find some people that I used to work with or went to school with, and they would tell you...

Oh, she's so quiet. Yeah. And the next you know you're getting normal. What is it? Can you talk about process a little bit? Because I think it's very interesting. When you're being so shy and introverted, how does that translate into...

I don't I think I just really love movies. I love films, I love directors. Whenever I'm working on something, it really excites me who the director is and what the script is. My preparation is just reading the script over and over again. That's really all it is. Right.

Okay, well, it's easier for some people. All I got to do is I was just shy, and I just show I read a script, and Matt Damon put me in a mood, and then next thing I know, I got nominated for an Oscar. That's just easy. It's like you tripped and fell into the best career of all time. Yeah. It truly does... Like your The work speaks for itself, which is really nice. I feel like you don't even need to promote it that much because everyone knows the face and the name and the work.

That's good because I've been doing a lot of promoting all week. I wish I had known. I wish I would have known.

Can you talk a little bit about your background? Because I just find it very interesting.

Yeah, I'm Vietnamese, and my parents left Vietnam after the war in '79, they left by boat, part of the whole boat people, boat exodus. My mom was actually six months pregnant with me. 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 ended up at a refugee camp in Thailand, and that's where I was born. And we had a sponsor family in New Orleans.New Orleans, girl.And.

Now I'm here talking to you. Yeah, it's good. That's amazing. That's such a huge glow-up. From Vietnamese refugees to New Orleans residents to Oscarman.

I know. I'm very scary, aren't I?

I Yeah. My wife's family, she's Vietnamese. Yeah, I just found that out. Yeah, she's Vietnamese. The same thing happened to them. They escaped South Vietnam, Saigon, and went to Australia instead. My wife always tries to 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, Okay, can I make her a Vietnamese cake? And she made you a traditional Vietnamese Bumbo cake. Yeah. Look at my wife Hannah's Bumbo green cake. That'd be okay. Would you try some of those? Yeah. I got the spoon too. All right. Okay. I hate to go into the stereotype of... Oh my gosh.

This is one of my worst nightmares is eating on camera.

It's okay. You got nominated for an Oscar. You can pretend to like this.

This could be your thing. What's the chicken wing show?

Oh, the hot ones? Yeah.

But yours could be like, or Hannah could do a Vietnamese.

Yeah. She got this featured in the New York Times. This is a New York Times Bumbo. Can you tell her how delicious it is?

Rok-long, Rok-Long..

The Instigators will debut in select theaters August second, and then will be available on Apple TV Plus August ninth. Everybody, please get up for Oscar nominated,. My guest tonight is Director of Wicked and Crazy Richasians. I hope he remembers me. He's the author of Viewfinder, a memoir of Seeing and Being Seen. Please welcome Mr. John M. Chou. We're here.

We're here, so... Cheers., as they say. So good to see you here. It's great to be here.

This is your new book? Yes. I immediately look for where I was mentioned. Do you mind just reading this out so I have this on video?

Perfect. Roni Chan- Sorry, look in the camera. Sorry. Roni 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. Just for my Instagram. No, but this is a crazy full circle moment because I guess I never heard this story from you, but you apparently saw me on The Daily Show, and that's how you cast me on it. Now, here we are. Here we are. We're just talking on The Daily Show, and you're the guests, and I'm hosting. It's nice.

Everything is nice. When we were casting Crazy Rich Asians, 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 all of it. That's great. We were casting an asshole, so it was perfect.

I take it. The story for me was I I saw you making the movie, and then at that time, I just moved to America. Hollywood was such a far away thing. Not even my wildest dreams would I be in a movie. I was just some asshole's comic, running from bar to bar, telling dick jokes. I didn't even think about it. I just thought, Oh, it's cool that John Chew is doing a story set in Singapore. I was like, Oh, that's cool. I can't wait to watch this movie. Then I read this article that came out a few weeks later that you said the headline was John Chew Having trouble Casting Authentic Accents in Crazy Rich Asians. 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. Then he got me to send an audition in. I taped it. I sent it in, and a few weeks later, got cast.

Come on. The reality is you were already on our list.

Yeah, I know. That's insane. Then I meet you on set and you're like, Oh, yeah, you were always in our pitch deck.

Literally my pitch pitch deck. I would flip around, and we're going to get Roni Chan. This is going to be the Asian Avengers. Okay, you see.

That's going to be the Asian Avengers.Okay, you see...Okay, that's great.

Now you are part of the Marvel Universe.

Wow. This is crazy. That's great. But then that would never got back to me. No one told me I was on the pitch deck because I was auditioning.

We got to make it work for it.

It was great. I was happy to audition for it. The first thing you told me when I got on set was I loved how positive you were on set. It's my first time on any movie set. I was just like some small and I wasn't trying to make it about me at all, but you were so positive. He didn't at all. Never. You came up to me and the first thing you said was like, Hey, man, I see auras. I go like, I'm like, I don't want to know my aura. Please don't tell me. You got pink dots on your arm. I have an 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 I don't know if I believe in all that stuff, but I do see colors.

Yeah.

I've never said that publicly.

I'm trying to get you to say stuff you didn't say on Colbert.

It is true. Yeah, I see You have a lot of blue spikes right now all over your head. I don't know what it means, so I cannot actually tell you what it is.

I think it's just the lighting, man. It's true. But you know what it means.

I'm on Edible, so no, I'm not.

Yeah, but you are always relentlessly very positive. That was a tough film to make. 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 were 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 that was really powerful that, Hey, this is actually really important. Whether people see it or not, we didn't know. We didn't really care. It was 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. 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.

You could feel I could feel it on set.

I could feel it on set. But you don't know until the audience shows up in that first weekend when people brought their grandmothers and people who hadn't gone to the movies for all these years and were crying outside and would just congregate in the lobby. You just felt that we were part of something, something bigger than us.

I guess I want to talk about this relentless positivity that I felt back then and I still feel now. I guess I don't know if you have any words of how to stay positive in these times because I feel like, if anything, the world has gotten less positive after we made this movie, but you never stopped with the positivity. I don't know if you have any perspective on that.

That's part of the reason why I wrote the book is I grew up in an 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 homework at the bar. I go there all the time. Yeah, you go there all the time.

Chef Chew, Paulo Alto. That's right. That's right. Hello, Uncle.

I feel like the American dream still exists. Yes, it wasn't maybe not what our parents said it was, and maybe not what we hoped it would be, but the idea of it still exists. We have the power to control what that narrative will be in the future. I I really wanted in the book to show any young dreamer out there, or old dreamer, when 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. I think that's necessary in this world right now.

Yeah. I did read this, and it's a page. I did read it. I was looking for my name. I was like, Hold on. 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 almost feel like you wrote it for kids to read, almost, in a way, for them to read and see how to navigate dream chasing. I also think everyone has a camera now.

Everyone's a creator. Everyone has it on their phones or editing for TikTok or whatever it may be. That's power. That is a very powerful thing in your When I started making videos, it was for weddings and bar mitzvahs in high school, and I was the only kid doing it. Now everyone does it. I think there's a responsibility when you realize the power that you have. I think there's understanding what that grammar is of audiovisual 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. You may have mistakes that you make along the way, but that's okay. It's a constant, it's It's a routine.

Chasing your dream is a routine. It isn't a goal or destination. I do want to talk about this next project you're doing. You've helped Asian representation in film, and you've helped Latino representation in film, and now you're helping green people be represented in film. So this next movie project, Wicked. When is it coming up?

It's coming out November 22nd, and we have Ariana Grande, Cynthia Arivo, playing the Two witches.

I mean, just set it up. What made you want to choose to work on Wicked? Well, it's about the backstory of the Wicked Witcher of the West.

Cynthia Arivo 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 the Wicked Wish. But there's a deeper plan, a darker plan that has made her the Wicked Wish. When you get to meet her as a young dreamer, that you find out that she's more than meets the eye. Seeing that story in a totally different point of view is fascinating, interesting, and you get to almost take apart the American story and put it back together. I loved it. It had a lot of meaning to me in terms of anyone who feels different and what does it feel like to come through? Also for Galinda, who's Galinda 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, Galinda also has to pop her own bubble. I think that as much bravery as anyone else to get off your privilege for a moment to confront some of the things that we have to confront these days.

Yeah, it's the way you talk about all your projects. It's all like that. That's how he talks about everything on set. It's It's real. It's real for him. It's in here. I just want to say, thanks so much for believing in me on your project. I love you so much. You changed my life by putting me on. Thanks for trusting me. Thanks for making all these really great films. Don't you, everybody? Explore more shows from The Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11:00, 10:00 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

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