How to American

by Jimmy O. Yang

  I had achieved one of my biggest goals when I became a series regular on Silicon Valley, but I felt more lost than ever. Now what? I was meandering around in my apartment not knowing what to do next with my life. I panicked. It was scary to feel empty in the presence of success. So I called my mentor, Sean Kelly, as I always do when I’m lost. I asked Sean, “What should I do now?” And he said: “Start back at square one, with an even crazier goal.” Then I realized, the chase is never over. I just needed new challenges. It’s satisfying to cross out a goal, but it’s even more exciting to write down new ones. So I wrote down some even crazier goals:

  Become a series regular on a TV show

  Stop driving Uber

  Get my own apartment

  Win an Oscar

  Meet Snoop Dogg

  HOW TO ASIAN IN HOLLYWOOD

  I auditioned for another immigrant role that couldn’t have been more different from Jian Yang. It was for Patriots Day, a dramatic feature recounting the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, directed by Peter Berg, starring Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, J. K. Simmons and Michelle Monaghan. The cast of this film was more impressive than the Last Supper’s. The role was a based-on-real-life-character named Dun Meng. Dun, or as he liked to be called, Danny, was a Chinese immigrant just like me. He had just moved from China to Boston when he was carjacked at gunpoint and kidnapped by the terrorists after the Boston Marathon bombing. Danny’s heroic escape played a key role in the capture of the two terrorist brothers. He was a real American hero. Playing him would be an honor. It would also be my first dramatic role in a feature film. This was the new challenge that I had been looking for.

  Every article I read about Danny Meng, I became more in awe of his heroism. He was held up at gunpoint and they loaded explosives into the back of his car. The terrorists drove Danny around for a nerve-wrecking ninety minutes. They were on their way to Times Square in New York for another bombing. When they pulled over at a gas station, Danny took a chance and made a heroic escape. He sprinted out of the car, nearly escaping the grasp of one of the terrorists. Then he made the 911 call that helped law enforcement track down the vehicle, which led to the shootout in Watertown and the eventual apprehension of the two heinous terrorists. I found the incredible surveillance footage of Danny sprinting away from the terrorists, and the chilling recording of the 911 call from Danny. It was terrifying and intense. I tried to put myself in Danny’s shoes that night, and I am not sure if I’d have the courage and presence of mind to do what he did. Danny Meng is a hero.

  I auditioned for the prolific casting director Sheila Jaffe twice before auditioning in front of the director, Peter Berg. Pete and I started off casually chatting about stand-up comedy, and then Pete just rolled into the scene. He pretended to carjack me like the terrorists did to Danny. I was ready. I sprinted out of the imaginary car and hid behind the imaginary gas station cashier like I’d seen in the real-life surveillance video. Then I made the 911 phone call just like I’d heard on the actual recorded version. Pete was acting with me every step of the way; we were in the moment. At the end of the audition, I felt an ounce of what Danny went through that night. And it was terrifying. Pete asked me:

  “So how do you feel about cutting your hair for this role?”

  “Yeah, I’d definitely cut my hair for this role.”

  “I didn’t ask you if you would cut your hair, I asked you how do you feel about cutting your hair.”

  I got the part.

  I was nervous about how I’d be received as a dramatic actor, but I was more nervous about how Danny Meng would receive me as an actor playing him in a movie. We had to “get it right.” That was the mantra on set. The movie wasn’t about us; it was about honoring the victims and heroes of this event. And my role was to tell the real story of Danny Meng, an average guy who became a hero in desperate times. I made sure his accent was genuine, the story was accurate and his emotions were real.

  Danny was a Chinese immigrant from the Sichuan province. He had a Chinese accent but it was different than Jian Yang’s. He had a very specific Sichuan accent where he pronounces n’s in place of l’s. Instead of saying “lonely” he’d say it like “noneny.” I worked on that accent every day for at least four hours for the month leading up to filming. I went to the grocery store, the post office and the mechanic speaking in that accent. What I learned was more than the accent itself. I noticed how crudely people treated a foreigner. The mechanic was quickly annoyed because he could barely understand me, the cashier at the grocery store avoided eye contact and the post office lady couldn’t be more frustrated trying to explain the difference between priority and first-class mail to me. This reminded me of my own struggles when I first came to this country. I looked up to Danny as a hero, and I empathized with Danny as a fellow immigrant.

  In one of the opening scenes of the film, Danny facetimes his parents back in China and they speak Mandarin to each other. They had cast a father who spoke Mandarin with a heavy Cantonese accent. The American audience might not notice the difference, but to a Chinese speaker that’s like someone playing a British character with a southern drawl. To me, that was unacceptable. We had to “get it right.” So I went up to Pete and voiced my concerns. Pete agreed. “Let’s find you a new dad.” A light bulb went off in my head. “Why don’t we just hire my real dad, he’s an actor.” Pete trusted my word as an actor and appreciated my sentiment as a son. They flew my real dad out to Boston the following week and he played my movie dad in Patriots Day. That scene is the best father-and-son memento we can ever have in our family.

  The entire film shot in Boston. We stayed in a hotel that eerily overlooked the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the same place where the bombs went off in 2013. I was able to get in touch with Danny, who still lived across the river in Cambridge. We hit it off right away. We spoke Mandarin to each other and shared our Chinese immigrant experiences. He created and managed a start-up food delivery app called RushRunner that specialized in delivering the most authentic Chinese foods in Boston. His real life wasn’t too far off from my pretend life on Silicon Valley. Danny told me, “I’ve seen you on 2 Broke Girls.” Apparently 2 Broke Girls was one of the most popular American shows in China, and my two lines on that show were my first introduction to Danny. He was so open to sharing everything with me. We sat down at Danny’s shared-space office as he recounted the fateful night to me. I had a good sense of what happened that night through my research; I wanted to find out what Danny was thinking during that horrifying night. Danny said:

  “I thought about my family, my friends and how I was never going to see them again.”

  That hit me. What would I do if I thought I’d never see my family and friends ever again? I felt honored that Danny would share these emotional details with me. Then he told me one detail that deeply affected me:

  “When the terrorist jumped into the car and pointed his gun at me, he asked me, ‘Is there anyone who cared about you here?’ And I said, ‘No.’”

  “Why did you say no?” I asked. “Didn’t you want to plead for his empathy?”

  “No, he wasn’t asking me because he cared. He was asking me to see if there will be anyone who’ll call the police if I’m gone. So I said no, nobody care about me here.”

  Each answer he gave to the terrorists that night could mean life or death. Even with a gun pointed to his head, Danny kept his smarts and composure.

  Danny continued, “And really, that was the truth. Nobody really cared about me here. I was new to America, most of my friends were in China.”

  That gave me the chills. Every immigrant has felt that way: “Nobody cares about me here.” I know I definitely felt that way when I first came to America. I might not have been able to relate to being carjacked at gunpoint by terrorists, but I could surely relate to the loneliness of being an immigrant.

  I took that part of the story to Peter Berg the next morning. “We have to put that in the movie,” I said. Pete, being one of the best directors
I’ve ever worked with, said, “Let’s try it.” He was the ultimate actor’s director. He started his career as an actor and he understood how actors work. He didn’t give us any technical notes and he just let us play out the scenes. There were no marks and he never said to open up to camera; he let us stay in the moment and play it real.

  I was nervous about filming the carjacking scene; it was a tough experience to re-create what happened that night in the car and I needed to do right by Danny. With Pete’s directing style and the great actors Themo Melikidze and Alex Wolff who portrayed the terrorist brothers, everything felt so real. I completely broke down during one take. I thought about my own family and how I’d never see them again. Those weren’t tears that I learned to conjure from acting classes; they were real. The scene felt so real that I had nightmares for a week after the shoot. I would wake up in the middle of the night and think someone was standing on the foot of my bed. I could only imagine what Danny had gone through after the real carjacking.

  Patriots Day wasn’t nominated for any awards, but it was the proudest thing that I’d ever done in my career, to portray a Chinese immigrant hero in such a quintessential American story. Everyone who knows Danny’s story thinks he’s a hero, except for Danny. Danny said, “I don’t think I’m a hero. A hero is somebody who is willing to sacrifice himself to save somebody else. I was just trying to save myself that night.” To me, his humbleness makes him even more of a hero. Danny makes me proud to be an immigrant.

  Danny called me after he saw an early screening of the movie. “You were very good.” That meant more to me than winning any award.

  I take pride in playing immigrant characters. I’ve come across people who had a negative opinion about playing Asian characters that have an accent. I’ve even met Asian actors who won’t audition for a role that has an Asian accent. They believe these accented characters reinforce the stereotype of an Asian being the constant foreigner. Frankly, I can’t relate. I was an immigrant. And no matter how Americanized I become, no matter how much Jay-Z I listen to, I’ll always be an immigrant. Just because I don’t speak English with an accent anymore doesn’t mean that I’m better than the people who do. My job as an actor is not to judge anyone and portray a character with humanity. There are real people with real Asian accents in the real world. I used to be one of them. And I’m damn proud of it.

  To me, the issue is not the people who speak with an Asian accent; it’s the perception of the accent itself. Sofía Vergara’s Spanish accent is considered sexy, and it helped her become an international sex symbol. Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau French accent in the Pink Panther movies was praised in the comedy world, and it earned him a Golden Globe nomination for best actor. But why is the Chinese accent considered foreign and nerdy? Jian Yang is more than a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant; he’s also a funny, devious little asshole. Danny Meng is not just a foreign Chinese student; he’s a real-life American hero who helped capture the Boston Marathon bombing terrorists. I want people to see these guys and say, “Wow, that Chinese dude is awesome.” And I want girls to watch these roles and say, “I need to find myself a Jian Yang or Danny Meng. These guys are fucking sexy.” My mission is not to avoid playing an immigrant; my mission is to make Asian immigrants as sexy as Ryan Gosling.

  Mark Wahlberg, me and Danny Meng. Two Chinese immigrants, three Americans.

  HOW TO BE SEXY

  My sexiness was finally noticed when I was cast in the film Life of the Party. It’s a Melissa McCarthy–Ben Falcone comedy about a mom who goes back to college and joins her daughter’s sorority. The description for my character is “Maddie’s perfect boyfriend.” And as this small world would have it, Molly Gordon, who played my girlfriend Maddie in the film, is the daughter of Bryan Gordon, the director who wanted to cast me for Sin City Saints, which led me to being a series regular on Silicon Valley. Playing a boyfriend might not seem like a big deal, but playing a white girl’s boyfriend is like the Holy Grail for Asian actors. It has always been rare for an Asian male to go out with a white female in mainstream media. Jackie Chan never had a white girl; Bruce Lee married a white girl in real life but he never had a white girl in the movies. But on the flip side, Lucy Liu had plenty of white beaus. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; we don’t see a lot of Asian men with white women on-screen, so we don’t risk putting a lot of Asian men with white women on-screen. I was happy to help change that.

  I was actually a bit uncomfortable being the “perfect boyfriend.” I was used to being a funny character actor on-screen and I have never been the perfect boyfriend in real life. My whole life, I’ve always felt like I had to be funny to compensate for my lack of aesthetics. I felt insecure about playing the straight-man boyfriend. What do I bring to the table? Looks? Charm? How could I be the perfect boyfriend when I couldn’t even navigate through a Tinder date? I could hear my dad saying, “You? Ha-ha-ha-ha, come on.” Melissa and Ben believed that I could be the perfect boyfriend before I ever did. They never thought for a second that it was unusual to have an Asian boyfriend and a white girl on the big screen. They saw me beyond my ethnicity. I had to put my insecurity aside and put the Asian nation on my back. This was not just about me; this was about making all my Asian brothers look sexy. So I decided to do some research on how to be sexy.

  The movie shot in Atlanta. On a Saturday night, I went out to a dance club by myself, for research for the role, obviously. I’m not usually a dance club type of guy, but when in Atlanta, I was supposed to be sexy. The club was a cool underground spot playing the latest dirty south hip-hop joints. I threw back a couple drinks, and I was ready to cut a rug. Then a cute girl approached me and asked, “Do you want some Molly?” I’m usually not a Molly type of guy, but when in Atlanta, I was supposed to be sexy. So she dabbed her finger in a small plastic bag of white powder and stuffed that finger right into my mouth. I’d never done Molly before. Ten minutes later, everything felt like Disneyland. I was in love with everything and everyone. I had the confidence to go up to every girl in the club; I finally felt sexy. I’m sure in reality, I was probably dancing like somebody’s drunk aunt at a quinceañera. Three hours later, I was still feeling great, the club was closing but I wanted to keep dancing. Six hours later, I was still ready to party but everything was already closed. Twelve hours later, I was pacing around in my hotel room with my heart beating out of my chest. My body was dead tired but my mind was wide awake. I drank a couple glasses of red wine and I took some NyQuil, to no avail. The next thing I knew, I hadn’t slept for forty hours and I was on the brink of cardiac arrest. That definitely wasn’t just Molly; pretty sure that finger was laced with meth. I had to be back on set in eight hours. I lay on my bed with my eyes wide open.

  I didn’t sleep a wink that weekend and got on set with massive dark circles under my eyes. My eye bags felt like grocery bags and my face looked like a panda. I’m pretty sure I aged five years in two days. I pretended to be the perfect boyfriend while my body was about to shut down from methamphetamine. I somehow managed to power through the scenes without collapsing. Luckily, the scene was an eighties-themed party scene, so everyone looked ridiculous anyway. Maybe this was method acting for this party boy, or more precisely, meth acting. I survived that day and practically went into a coma and slept for twenty hours. Nobody ever found out this perfect boyfriend was doing meth on the weekend, until now. Little did they know Jimmy was far from a perfect boyfriend; he was a dipshit who let random girls stick drugs in his mouth.

  FRESH TO DEF

  I got a call from my manager one afternoon. “Hey, you want to go to the All Def Movie Awards?” The All Def Movie Awards was like the urban Oscars. It was an award show created by Russell Simmons to champion diversity in film. So of course I went. The next thing I knew, I was in the same building as Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, LL Cool J. I looked at the name tags at my table—Tommy Davidson, Mark Curry, Too Short—two of the best comedians and one of the most legendary rappers that I grew up watching on BET. There was an award t
hat night called “Best Performance by an Asian Not Asked to Use an Accent.” I’m not making this up. I was invited to attend the show because I was nominated for that award for my role in Patriots Day, in which I did have an accent. The other nominees were Randall Park and also, Donnie Yen from Star Wars who naturally had a Chinese accent. The award was supposed to be ironic, really; it should have been called “Best Asian Homie Award.” And as if it was a dream come true, I won. It was the pinnacle of being an Asian actor who grew up watching BET. This was the very first award I’d ever won for my acting and it couldn’t have been more fitting to receive it in front of everyone who taught me English. This was my Oscar.

  I jumped onstage to receive my golden All Def statue; it looked like an Oscar except the dude on the statue was the dude from Super Fly. I gave a speech in front of all of my heroes:

  “Wow, an Asian winning an award on the All Def show, this is a dream come true.”

  I looked over to Russell Simmons:

  “Thank you, Russ. You have no idea who I am but that’s okay… This is big, man, I guess I’m doing it on behalf of Jackie Chan, Yao Ming, Lucy Liu.” The crowd laughed. “This is about diversity. I was an immigrant, I was the dude with an accent and I learned to speak English by watching BET Rap City with Snoop, Cube, LL Cool J and Def Comedy Jam, so all my heroes are here. Thank you, guys, very much.” I pointed to my heroes in the audience, and I saw Snoop Dogg clapping through a cloud of weed smoke surrounding him. Then I pointed to Snoop Dogg’s mentor in the audience, the infamous pimp who is always dressed in green and gold, and I signed off with one of his signature pimp catchphrases. “Thank you, Don ‘Magic’ Juan, you’re my hero. Green for the money, gold for the honey.”