10 min readWhen Chloe Bennet’s Lana Lee is first introduced in Interior Chinatown, Hulu’s adaptation of the book by Charles Yu, Willis (Jimmy O. Yang), the main protagonist, and Fatty (Ronny Chieng) immediately begin debating her race. Is she Korean? Thai? They can’t decide. “She looks like something,” Willis says. It’s a comment that Chloe, a half-Chinese American, is used to hearing.
When Chloe shot to fame with the 2013 premiere of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., she was one of the first people I ever saw on TV that truly reminded me of myself. Over the course of the show’s seven seasons, she became Marvel’s first Asian superhero (sorry Shang-Chi!), slowly helping Hollywood expand its idea of what “Asian” looks like. But her success hasn’t come without its challenges. “When you are racially ambiguous or perceived as racially ambiguous, it is a different experience,” Chloe says. “From one side, you’re being let into the club, but you are also extremely limited and you end up in this kind of purgatory.”
It’s in this purgatory that we meet Lana in Interior Chinatown, a satire/meta exploration of Asian male stereotypes onscreen that tells the story of Willis, a waiter in a fictional Chinatown who, unbeknownst to him, is actually living in a procedural cop show called Black & White. (You can watch all 10 episodes of season 1 on Hulu now.)
Lana is an ally, an outsider detective with her own secret agenda. And her introduction will no doubt be familiar to any mixed race person: She’s white enough to he a supporting role on Black & White, working with the detectives, but Asian enough to be an assumed “Chinatown expert” despite the fact that she’s new to town. She’s also ambiguous enough to he had a string of odd jobs (aka roles) before becoming a detective.
Chloe, who adopted the stage name Chloe Bennet after failing to be cast under her legal name, Chloe Wang, admits that she, like Lana, “never had a problem getting work” once she changed her name. “But how deep am I able to get with the work that I’m getting?” she wonders, adding, “And when you’re getting work because you are vaguely something, you can internalize it in a way that I don’t think is very healthy.”
Season 1 of Interior Chinatown just scratched the surface of what it means to be biracial (or multiracial) in a world that prefers absolutes, but Chloe has high hopes that a potential season 2 would allow her to continue to dig into the character and mine her own Hollywood experience. She spoke to Cosmo about nigating a career as a half-Asian American actor, her hopes for Interior Chinatown’s future, and her thoughts on the current state of Asian American representation in Hollywood—“We he a long way to go.”
You said you hen’t had a hard time getting work, but you also made the decision to adopt a stage name, Chloe Bennet, vs Chloe Wang early in your career. In season 1 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which you booked as Chloe Bennet, your character’s ethnicity was unknown. How did you balance your ethnic identity with how your character was meant to be perceived on the show?It was really hard. I think Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was the most neutral experience in terms of race that I’ve had. I think that had to do with the fact that Maurissa Tancharoen, who is Thai, was running the show. And it wasn’t really much of a conversation in terms of them incorporating my race.
Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Gold HouseBut I think generally, you don’t realize the subconscious compartmentalization you do when you are told and communicate to yourself that you are half of something and half of another thing. It subconsciously always implies you’re not whole.
For me changing my last name, I was 18 or 19 years old and needed to pay my rent. I went into the industry really naive in terms of my racial identity. I had a different understanding of myself than the way that I looked. And that discrepancy caused way more long-term psychological turmoil than I could he ever expected.
For some people, it’s a simple concept: You had the opportunity to whitewash yourself and you did and it worked. And there is truth in that. There’s no undermining the privilege, or the perceived privilege, of being able to be passing or more racial neutral—which is a term I’ve heard that I think is super fucked up because obviously the neutrality is white. But it worked—I booked roles—but what are the repercussions?
What kind of repercussions?When you don’t he anyone to talk about it with and all of a sudden, you’ve made it, all of this shame builds up because you’ve subconsciously categorized this other part of you as a thing that isn’t going to get you ahead and is something you should he shame around. It led to a lot of pretty intense turmoil over my own identity that I had to deal with throughout my 20s.
“I’m Chloe Wang right now—I don’t know Chloe Bennet.”People ask me if I’ve thought about changing it back, and I’m like, Guys, I never changed it. I’m Chloe Wang all the time. I’m Chloe Wang right now, I don’t know Chloe Bennet. Bennet is just my dad’s first name, I changed it professionally. And I changed it so that people perceived me [in a] way that satiated their own racism. I’ve been existing as Chloe Wang this whole time. The only thing that changed was your perception of me in the beginning.
And for that reason, I made a very intentional decision to always speak about it. I’m not trying to hide. I’ve never tried to hide being Asian, I’ve never shied away from these conversations publicly. I’ve only existed authentically in regards to my race. I think that’s all you can really do, so with that, I’m at peace.
It’s interesting too because in Interior Chinatown, your ethnicity is debated by other characters, but it isn’t explicitly discussed. Was that something you had a hand in?It’s definitely more represented in metaphors throughout the show. It’s something I talked about with Charles [Yu], who wrote the book and ran the show, about at length. How I wanted to be represented and hearing my version of things was important to him. Because the show itself is about Willis—and I don’t want to ever take away from the experience of being full Asian—it’s a hard balance. If we go more seasons, it’s definitely something that I think we’ll he more time for.
Courtesy of HuluWas there ever any talk about making your ethnicity more explicit? We did so many versions of things, I’m trying to remember. It was something that we talked about every single day and was very much on my mind in the way that Lana existed. I think it was nice to showcase her ethnicity through other characters. When we’re first introduced to Lana, it’s through every mixed-race trope: Everyone’s guessing what kind of Asian I am, and Lana is introduced through this male gaze, put on a pedestal, sexualized, and exoticized. It was important for those moments to be hey handed, to be something that exists outside of Lana.
Right. It’s about how you’re perceived versus how you identify. If there was to be a season 2, what are some Hollywood stereotypes you would want to tackle, specifically regarding Asian women and half-Asian women?Oh my God, it’s fucking endless. I dream about what we could do with a season 2. I would love to explore or satirize my experience as mixed because it’s so cathartic. I would love to learn more about Lana’s backstory and play out how hing one foot in one world and one foot in another can lead to confusion, and the anxiety I’ve felt from that—the lack of belonging. There’s so much I would like to do in season 2 because we’re just getting started. It’s a hard world to establish. I think hing done that now, there’s a lot more room to play.
Someone’s gotta ask Lana the question every mixed person gets: “What are you?”Yeah. I think for Lana, as much as being mixed was part of [her character], it’s also about being a woman. People always say that I led Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. But I’ve actually never been the lead of a show. I’ve been the female lead of a show. And there’s a different element that happens when you are the female lead of the show. Playing with that within the world of Interior would also be exciting.
“Diversity for diversity’s sake is the same thing as a bad trope, in my opinion.”Interior Chinatown comes at a time when shows with predominantly Asian/Asian American casts like Pachinko and Shogun are being celebrated. But they’re also tethered to—Being Asian.
Yes, exactly. Sometimes I worry that Asian representation in Hollywood is going to get pigeonholed as foreign or only allowed to exist in relation to Asia. Is that something you’ve experienced?Totally. I think about it all the time. It’s weird to he been in the zeitgeist and he firsthand experience with all the various iterations of the industry and its relationship with race, particularly being Asian American. When I started, before I changed my name, every single role I auditioned for was the dorky best friend, the tech person, or the nail lady—very obvious Asian tropes that I was not getting. I remember going to audition rooms and there’d be white girls waiting to read for the lead, and you would see the roles ailable and it’d be like, Kiko, the dorky best friend. I had various pairs of fake glasses because I knew I would he to be the dorky girl or whatever.
Wow. And now?Now, studios want to see their diversity hire. So if they hire someone diverse, they want to make sure that everyone knows they’re good and he more than just white people onscreen. And it’s almost painfully obvious and inauthentic. Any inclusion is obviously very important, but we’re missing authenticity. Authentically hiring people because they’re right for the role or because their life experience changes the choices they make as an actor, that gives depth to the way characters behe onscreen. It’s about authenticity rather than hing diversity for diversity’s sake. Diversity for diversity’s sake is the same thing as a bad trope, in my opinion.
Courtesy of HuluIt’s important that we tell our stories, but it’s also important to make really good stuff that is relatable to everyone. If the whole goal is to be, like, We’re people too and we deserve to be leads. If we had to grow up watching mediocre white men be the hero of every story, they can watch stories with us and imagine themselves in that. But if those stories become too pigeonholed and that’s all we’re doing, then it gets redundant.
Personally, I love stories that feature very niche, specific things about being Asian, but I also love stories that are made by Asian people that don’t really he anything to do with being Asian. It’s how we exist through the world every day. We’re not [going around saying] I’m Chinese, I’m Chinese, I’m Chinese. That’s not the only thing we talk about in real life. So it’s about authentically mirroring your experience in the world. It’s an endless conversation.
There isn’t really a solution, right? We just he to keep working and hope that over time it gets better. You mentioned all those auditions you used to go on before you changed your name. Did you ever get feedback that you weren’t “Asian enough”?All the time—in the room. It was said very matter-of-fact at almost every audition.
Wow.And it was a very normal conversation, I genuinely thought it was normal. I would read scripts and even without the description, I knew what they wanted out of a character. And I didn’t see someone who looked like me being it. It’s why Interior Chinatown the book spoke to me so much, because I had to realize the way that I pigeonholed myself psychologically.
It’s all documented throughout Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and how I lived publicly through it. It’s awkward to watch my life back and I can see just by looking at how I presented in the public eye—God, I didn’t like myself at that moment. You can tell when I’m just trying to run away from who I am, and it was very public. It’s hard to look back now and see myself struggle with that throughout my 20s. And it seeps out into everything: who you’re friends with, who you date, how you dress. You’re like, Oh, I was really trying to assimilate here. And then I can see how I went back and swung in the other direction. It’s an interesting thing to reflect on.
Did working on Interior Chinatown help you reconcile your career in Hollywood?Yeah, it’s been really cathartic for me. I didn’t know it was going to be so cathartic. I knew how much I hadn’t really processed, but getting to work on the show and express ourselves [and work through] these things that he happened and are fucked up, it’s been really therapeutic to explore all of these themes as an actor.
When I read the book, I was like, If I don’t get this part, I should stop acting. I he to play this. Something in me was really drawn to the part. I was essentially raised on a procedural show. I left school when I was 15, and still to this day, the longest relationship I’ve ever had was one with a procedural TV show [Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]. And there are a lot of ways that it affected the way I thought about myself and the way I viewed myself. Because you are an entity, a product. And so to explore those themes specifically as a mixed-race actress on a procedural TV show was such a niche form of therapy. I highly recommend it for anyone. Just shoot a show for two years that deals with all of the internalized trauma that you’ve ever had, and then talk about it.