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Episode: Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job

Author: NPR
Duration: 00:47:14

Episode Shownotes

When Ronny Chieng got a job as a correspondent and then anchor at The Daily Show, he kept the news to himself. "I didn't want to brag," the Malaysia-born comic says. "I just wanted to do the work." Chieng now costars in the series Interior Chinatown, and has a new

Netflix comedy special, Love to Hate It.Also, Ken Tucker reflects on the best pop music of 2024.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_27
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00:00:13 Speaker_27
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00:00:17 Speaker_21
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is comic, actor, and political satirist Ronny Chieng. He became a correspondent for the satirical news show The Daily Show in 2015 after Trevor Noah asked him to audition.

00:00:32 Speaker_21
Now Chieng is one of the rotating correspondents who anchor the show. He also co-stars in the new Hulu series Interior Chinatown. He had a memorable, funny scene in Crazy Rich Asians as a wealthy investment banker in Singapore.

00:00:46 Speaker_21
Ronnie Chang has a new Netflix comedy special called Love to Hate It, which starts streaming tomorrow. He brings an international perspective to his comedy. He was born in Malaysia. where his grandparents emigrated from China.

00:00:59 Speaker_21
From age three to seven, he lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, where his parents attended college. Then the family returned to Malaysia, which is basically across the bridge from Singapore, so he spent a lot of time there.

00:01:11 Speaker_21
He attended college in Australia, where he got his B.A. in finance and his law degree, while also doing stand-up comedy. Let's start with a clip from his new comedy special.

00:01:21 Speaker_21
This is from a section about how he and his wife aren't ready for children, but his wife had her eggs harvested for possible future use. He's imagining what his child, if he ever has one, might say to him.

00:01:35 Speaker_04
Daddy, daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a stand-up comedian, just like you.

00:01:49 Speaker_06
I just feel the Chinese coming over.

00:02:00 Speaker_07
Stand-up comedy? Are you out of your mind? That's not even a real job! Like, what do you think is gonna happen? You're just gonna run around America and tell jokes to strangers who don't give a f*** about your mental health?

00:02:16 Speaker_07
Even if you do somehow manage to overcome the odds and make it to even a semi-professional level as a stand-up comedian, do you think there's any chance in hell you'd be funnier than me? Daddy's a borderline arena act in some markets.

00:02:43 Speaker_07
Have you seen my IMDB page? I'm in everything. I will crush your career. Oh, Gary, your mother and I did spend a fortune to make an A-grade blastocyst for them to become a B-grade comedian. I will never watch anything you do. Go to law school.

00:03:19 Speaker_06
It's what my father said to me.

00:03:25 Speaker_21
Ronny Chieng, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.

00:03:28 Speaker_06
Thank you. Thanks for having me on. And I'd like to note the contrast between the yelling of that clip and how calm the rest of the interview will be.

00:03:39 Speaker_21
What else did your father say to you when you found out you wanted to be a comedian?

00:03:43 Speaker_06
He said no white person will ever buy a ticket to go watch you.

00:03:48 Speaker_21
Wow, did you think that that might be true?

00:03:50 Speaker_06
No, I didn't think that was true. But I didn't tell him I was going to go do it. I went to go do it.

00:03:56 Speaker_06
And then he found out like after I was, I've been doing stand up comedy for about two years, and then he found out and then, you know, and and he was trying to protect me. He was worried.

00:04:10 Speaker_06
He was worried about what was going to happen, what my future was going to be. And then later on, he got behind it.

00:04:16 Speaker_21
Nevertheless, when you were on The Daily Show and you started on The Daily Show, you didn't tell your mother.

00:04:21 Speaker_06
No, I didn't tell them I got hired on the show.

00:04:24 Speaker_21
What were you afraid of?

00:04:27 Speaker_06
It wasn't so much afraid. It was that I didn't want to brag about small achievements. I just wanted to do the work.

00:04:37 Speaker_06
I didn't want to tell them that I joined this institution, which, quite frankly, they didn't really know about anyway, and make it sound as though I made it, quote, unquote. You know what I mean? So, I genuinely- What are you gonna have?

00:04:49 Speaker_21
That's a big achievement. That's not a small achievement.

00:04:51 Speaker_06
Sure, but, I don't know. I think the work comes first, you know? Getting the job is one thing, but then, can you do the job?

00:04:57 Speaker_06
And so, honestly, it just came out of kind of humility, of like, oh yeah, I'm on The Daily Show, but it doesn't mean I've done anything yet. So, why tell them?

00:05:07 Speaker_06
My philosophy was just do the job and then maybe they'll hear good things about you and then that will be the... You know what I mean? I didn't need the flowers from them at that point.

00:05:17 Speaker_21
You deprive them of bragging rights.

00:05:19 Speaker_06
Quite frankly, if you want to talk about bragging rights for them, once I started doing decent work and people started liking what I was doing, then they would go up to them and be like, hey, your son is on The Daily Show.

00:05:30 Speaker_06
You know, which I think is better than you coming out and trying to brag about something that, you know, at that point I hadn't even been on screen yet, you know, I'm not sure how popular The Daily Show is in Singapore, Malaysia, so I'd rather just do the work and then, you know, hopefully people like it.

00:05:46 Speaker_21
A line that really stands out to me in the bit that we just heard is, you know, why would you do that? Why would you become a comic? Why would you make jokes to people who don't care about your mental health?

00:06:03 Speaker_21
Did your father say that or did you just come up with that?

00:06:05 Speaker_06
No, no. To be clear, that's a bit.

00:06:11 Speaker_21
But why did that occur to you to write that? to people who don't care about your mental health. I thought that was very funny. I've never heard anybody put it that way.

00:06:20 Speaker_06
So the premise of the bit is that if I have a kid, what's going to happen if they want to do stand-up comedy and I realize I'm just like my parents.

00:06:30 Speaker_06
Like, even me, who has done stand-up comedy professionally, if my kid wants to do it, I'd be like my dad too. I'd be like, why are you doing this? This is crazy.

00:06:38 Speaker_06
Especially me knowing what's involved in stand-up comedy, all the more that I'm like, are you sure you want to do this?

00:06:44 Speaker_06
And one of the things I know about comedy that is, I think, quite a difficult thing to overcome is overcoming people's apathy and... and their lack of concern for your mental health.

00:06:57 Speaker_06
Which, by the way, is part of the reason why I never told anyone I was doing comedy. Not my friends, or my parents, or my family. Because I wanted to test it in that environment. I wanted to test my comedy in an environment where nobody cared about you.

00:07:13 Speaker_06
Because I felt like if I could make these people who didn't care about me at all laugh, maybe this could be a job for me.

00:07:19 Speaker_21
So you grew up mostly in Malaysia, which is one bridge away from Singapore. You compared it to me to how New York is to New Jersey.

00:07:27 Speaker_06
Yes, yeah.

00:07:28 Speaker_21
Or how Philadelphia is to New Jersey on the opposite side.

00:07:32 Speaker_06
Sure. I'll let you guess which one's New York, which one's New Jersey in this analogy. But yes, it's just a bridge across that is called the Causeway. People cross the bridge from Johor Bahru, Malaysia to Singapore every day.

00:07:43 Speaker_06
Every morning people wake up in Malaysia, go to work in Singapore and come back. braving the traffic and the fumes and the immigration.

00:07:53 Speaker_21
So were you exposed to much stand-up in Malaysia or Singapore?

00:07:57 Speaker_06
No, was not. The stand-up I was exposed to was in New Hampshire when my parents would play Seinfeld, the sitcom. And so you would see Seinfeld do stand-up in his interstitials, right in between the narrative, he'd do stand-up.

00:08:11 Speaker_06
And I remember asking my mom, like, hey, and that was the first time I saw, I even knew that that could be an art form. just standing there and telling jokes with no other props and it's just you and a microphone.

00:08:25 Speaker_06
And I told my mom like, hey, I want to try that someday. And my mom was like, oh, OK, cool. And I was like four years old.

00:08:32 Speaker_21
You've said you were introduced to Jewish people from Seinfeld.

00:08:34 Speaker_06
Yes.

00:08:35 Speaker_21
Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. So what did it make you think Jewish people were like?

00:08:40 Speaker_06
To be honest, when we watched it in when we were watching in Malaysia and Singapore, we think that they're white people. At least for me anyway, I didn't realize like they were like a special type of ethnicity.

00:08:51 Speaker_06
I thought they were just a type of white person. And so when you're watching it, you're like, like you get little samples of Jewishness in it, right? They'll drop a Yiddish word, they'll have a

00:09:01 Speaker_06
Hanukkah, they'll have little things here and there where you slowly start to be like, oh these, I think they're different to white American people. And we didn't have any stereotypes. So I just thought they were New Yorkers. You know what I mean?

00:09:18 Speaker_06
I didn't think like, oh, this is Jewish behavior, or this is a Jewish joke. I just thought, oh, these are New Yorkers. That's how New Yorkers talk. Until I came here, I realized, oh, it's its own thing.

00:09:28 Speaker_21
Your new comedy special was filmed in Honolulu.

00:09:31 Speaker_06
Yes.

00:09:32 Speaker_21
Where Doogie- Kamealoha. Yes, thank you. This is like a Doogie Howser adjacent series.

00:09:39 Speaker_06
It was a reboot, yeah.

00:09:41 Speaker_21
Yeah, a reboot that you were in, and you're very popular there. Or so you say. Okay, yeah, sure. And you say you have a lot of MAGA friends there. And on The Daily Show, you spent a lot of time satirizing Trump.

00:09:54 Speaker_06
Yes.

00:09:55 Speaker_21
So how do you get around arguing about politics with your mega friends?

00:10:02 Speaker_06
That's a great question. I think, first of all, one, we might be in media silos. So the stuff I say on The Daily Show might not actually ever reach my mega friends because we're all so siloed in our media consumption. That's one.

00:10:17 Speaker_06
And then two, I think that decent people have a sense of humor. about things, you know? So I wouldn't take the comment section as reality in terms of what the reaction is to a clip in the comment section from MAGA people about a political clip.

00:10:38 Speaker_06
I don't necessarily think they would react that way in real life face to face. And third of all, Hawaii is a very different vibe. Hawaii people know how to get along for the most part.

00:10:51 Speaker_06
I think in Hawaii they know how to put community before themselves, which is very un-American, by the way. This idea that in Hawaii everyone's very generous and you get more than you give. in Hawaii, if you come with the right energy.

00:11:05 Speaker_06
And so I like to think that in Hawaii, I always try to come with the right energy.

00:11:09 Speaker_06
I won't be so presumptuous to say that I always manage to nail it, but I think I come with the right energy, and I think the locals and the Hawaiians, they respond to that.

00:11:19 Speaker_06
So, you know, they can be, you know, hardcore MAGA people, but they, you know, they're totally cool with me, as far as I know.

00:11:30 Speaker_21
You say you love America. This is the country that puts showbiz above everything.

00:11:34 Speaker_06
Oh, you're quoting my special. Yeah.

00:11:37 Speaker_21
And then you get paid for saying F the president. And then money comes in. And you say, if you did this in Malaysia, jail.

00:11:44 Speaker_16
Yeah.

00:11:45 Speaker_21
But now Trump has an enemies list. He's threatening retribution. And he's trying to revoke TV network broadcast licenses.

00:11:52 Speaker_06
Yes.

00:11:52 Speaker_21
So how do you feel about insulting Trump now?

00:11:56 Speaker_06
Those are all very concerning, don't get me wrong. I think if he does any of that, it is upsetting and subverts the legal process in many ways, in some ways more blatant than others. My answer to that is we had four years of him.

00:12:13 Speaker_06
And The Daily Show was making fun of him every day during those four years. And essentially nothing happened. So just going off of history and past evidence, which is all I kind of have to go by right now, is that kind of...

00:12:30 Speaker_06
For me, that's kind of a sign of how it's going to be. His bluster versus his actual actions. I reserve the right to change my opinion if we all end up in jail. If we all end up in jail, then I'll probably be wrong.

00:12:46 Speaker_06
Maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part. Yeah, he said a lot of concerning things about the law, but I think ultimately I believe in American institutions. I believe in checks and balances.

00:12:57 Speaker_06
I believe that the entire founding of America was geared around having a weak federal executive who is unable to kind of use the government to go after citizens individually. I think that's the whole premise of America.

00:13:12 Speaker_06
And so because of that, I'm a bit more hopeful.

00:13:16 Speaker_21
Well, I hope you're right.

00:13:18 Speaker_06
I hope I'm right, too. By the way, what do I know? I'm just a comic just making dick jokes. But that's what I hope and that's what I believe. And that's why I'm still here.

00:13:28 Speaker_21
Let's hear a clip from The Daily Show. And this is from the day after Kamala Harris conceded. So it's two days after Election Day. And you say Trump's promised a peaceful transfer of power.

00:13:40 Speaker_21
And then you say, let's hear it for the bare minimum of democracy. And here's the rest of the clip.

00:13:47 Speaker_06
So I guess American democracy still works as long as the guy who likes overthrowing the government wins the election because then he won't overthrow the government.

00:14:00 Speaker_06
So with the transfer happening, we're going to be talking about Trump again every day for another four years, I guess.

00:14:06 Speaker_06
And I, for one, did not think that when I came out of the jungles of Malaysia to do comedy that I would be making jokes about Donald Trump every day for 13 years straight. 13 years.

00:14:24 Speaker_06
I don't talk about anybody as much as, I don't talk about my mom as much as I talk about this guy. I don't talk about my wife as much as I talk about this guy. Yo, my wife thinks I'm having an emotional affair with him.

00:14:34 Speaker_06
I'm gonna be talking about this guy on my f***ing deathbed, okay, which I assume will be in three years when he somehow brings back the bubonic plague.

00:14:41 Speaker_06
And you might be sitting at home saying, well, Ronnie, why don't you just shut the f*** up about Trump? Well, for the same reason CNN doesn't shut the f*** up about him. Money! Lots and lots of money!

00:14:55 Speaker_06
So let's get these dollars right now and get back to Donald Trump.

00:15:00 Speaker_21
That's not really true about the money, I'm sure.

00:15:03 Speaker_06
Partially. There's some truth to that.

00:15:07 Speaker_21
So you got on The Daily Show after Trevor Noah became the anchor and you knew him from performing at the same comedy festival in Melbourne, Australia, which is where you went to college. How surprised were you to get the call?

00:15:20 Speaker_06
Extremely surprised because we weren't necessarily friends He was obviously, you know much more successful than me in the festival circuit so we rarely crossed paths and I ended up performing with him for the first time in Canada just for laughs in Montreal and that's when he

00:15:37 Speaker_06
was very friendly to me at the show. He was very complimentary. He said, it's great. You know, what you're doing is great. And I said, oh, thanks so much. I didn't think too much about it. Right.

00:15:46 Speaker_06
And then maybe two years later, I get this email to audition for The Daily Show. And I was like, it was like a dream come true. I couldn't believe it.

00:15:56 Speaker_06
You know, and so I still remember doing the audition in my apartment in Melbourne and sending it in and then getting the call back to come to New York City and audition for The Daily Show in New York City, which was obviously a huge deal if you're coming.

00:16:11 Speaker_06
from Australia and so I know I did not expect to get it at all. It was very much him who put the spotlight on me as in The Daily Show would never have found me if not for Trevor insisting that I get on.

00:16:23 Speaker_06
And again, I'm not his closest friend, you know, I don't even think I'm his funniest friend. He just really was adamant that he wanted an Asian person on the show because he felt that Asian people are like half of the world's population but

00:16:41 Speaker_06
There's no presence in on The Daily Show and he I guess at that time he was thinking of a more international show Right, so he wanted someone who could talk to these issues So I'm just lucky that I was the recipient of his search, you know, it could have been anybody How familiar were you with the show?

00:17:00 Speaker_06
Very familiar. I've been following U.S. politics since the West Wing came out. Was watching it religiously and then started, you know, always reading about U.S. presidential history. I'm a U.S. president nerd.

00:17:15 Speaker_06
And The Daily Show, we were watching it as soon as we were able to illegally download it in Australia. We would torrent, like, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and watch it. So I'm a huge fan. I was watching all the time.

00:17:31 Speaker_21
What I read about when Trevor Noah resigned is that you had just done a bit and then without you knowing that Trevor Noah was resigning, he resigns on the air right after your honor. Were you on camera?

00:17:46 Speaker_06
Yes, there's a photo of me standing there not knowing what to do. I was in the studio right next to him. But obviously off his camera, but there was a camera on me because I was doing a segment with him as you said.

00:17:59 Speaker_06
And then we finished the segment and then usually he says, okay, everybody, Roy and Chang, everybody, and then everyone applauds and I leave, leave the studio. But he didn't do that this time.

00:18:10 Speaker_06
He, yeah, he just, he explained why he was leaving the show on air and no sign of it. There was no sign. I didn't know he was doing that.

00:18:18 Speaker_21
Why did he do it that way?

00:18:20 Speaker_06
I don't know. He's a very smart guy and I trust his judgment on everything. And I'm sure he had his reasons, you know, and I can't speak to them, but I'm sure he had his reasons to do it because it seems like a pretty extreme thing to do.

00:18:33 Speaker_21
Maybe he didn't want anybody to leak it.

00:18:35 Speaker_06
Maybe he didn't want anyone to talk him out of it. I don't know.

00:18:38 Speaker_21
That's a possibility.

00:18:39 Speaker_06
Yeah, but yeah, maybe you don't want anyone to leak it. That's also a possibility, you know.

00:18:43 Speaker_21
What was the expression on your face like as you heard him resigning?

00:18:47 Speaker_06
I was like, is this a bit? And then in my head, I was also like, well, we're not live. You know what I mean? Like he could say that and then we could just edit it if he changes his mind. So I was like, this sounds serious. I don't know what's going on.

00:19:01 Speaker_06
I'm a person who I think I do a decent job at minding my own business. So I wasn't like, well, what's going on? I wasn't trying to like insert myself into this situation. You know what I mean? I was like, oh man, what's going on?

00:19:13 Speaker_06
You know, it sounds like he is going through some stuff. And so I hope he's okay. You know, that was my primary thought.

00:19:20 Speaker_21
You might have also been thinking, oh, what happens to the Daily Show? What happens to my job?

00:19:26 Speaker_06
You know, honestly, I wasn't thinking that because I was here because of Trevor. If I lose the job because of Trevor, I was OK with that. You know, I mean, I wasn't supposed to have this job anyway.

00:19:40 Speaker_06
So I've always adopted this very nihilistic view about the job and doing it. Not nihilistic, like I care about the job a lot. I love it. It's the best job in comedy.

00:19:48 Speaker_06
But I adopted this very, like, live in the present, I guess, Buddhist, you know, don't worry about the future kind of mentality with the job. And the second thing is also I believe that America will always have a daily satirical news show.

00:20:03 Speaker_06
I think of all the countries in the world, if America can't do a daily satirical news show, which country can? We have the most freedom of speech. We have the most resources for show business.

00:20:18 Speaker_06
We have infrastructure for comedic talent, where people can write and get better as performers and writers, and can aspire to be hired on shows like this. And we have the craziest political news.

00:20:30 Speaker_06
Like, if all those factors combine, if America cannot have a daily news satirical show, no one can.

00:20:37 Speaker_21
My guest is Ronnie Chang, a field correspondent on The Daily Show and one of the anchors. He co-stars on the new Hulu series, Interior Chinatown. His new comedy special, Love to Hate It, starts streaming on Netflix tomorrow, December 17th.

00:20:52 Speaker_21
We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

00:20:57 Speaker_02
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00:21:04 Speaker_24
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00:22:27 Speaker_25
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00:24:06 Speaker_21
After Trevor Noah left, there was a roster of celebrity comics who anchored the show. And then there was a hiatus, I guess, over the summer.

00:24:19 Speaker_06
Which we have all the time, by the way.

00:24:22 Speaker_21
And then the correspondents started rotating who anchored the show. And I wasn't sure, like, is this a temporary thing? Have they decided against having one host or one celebrity comic hosting?

00:24:38 Speaker_21
And it's turned out so far to be the real thing with the correspondents hosting, anchoring. Are you at liberty to say why the decision was made to have alternating correspondence anchor as opposed to one person or one famous comic?

00:24:55 Speaker_06
I can talk about it but to be honest I don't know the reasoning. Maybe it's just hard to find someone to do it. It's a tough job. I mean I guess what I can say is I think the way it is right now it makes sense because Jon wants to be on.

00:25:17 Speaker_21
Jon Stewart who's back on the show once a week.

00:25:19 Speaker_06
The legendary Jon Stewart is on once a week and the way he described it was We as a satirical news organization, we should be trying to cover the climate instead of just chasing the weather, right?

00:25:36 Speaker_06
That's how we get an elevated show is if we can describe the climate, the political climate of America versus just chasing these individual news stories. And so

00:25:48 Speaker_06
What the current arrangement does is that it allows Jon Stewart to come in and talk about the climate once a week, and give us the big ideas in America, and it allows the rest of us correspondents to do a bit more weather chasing.

00:26:04 Speaker_06
As much as we're trying to avoid that, unfortunately, it's necessary weather chasing sometimes because ultimately our job is to make fun of the news and the news happens every single day.

00:26:13 Speaker_06
Not that we have to avoid discussing the climate, but we can also, it freezes up to kind of chase the weather a bit and nobody gets burnt out. So as long as the quality doesn't drop, I mean, you know, this might be the way to do it.

00:26:26 Speaker_21
You've been in films, you're now the co-star of the series Interior Chinatown. And it's a cliche that the Asian guy is the best friend.

00:26:36 Speaker_21
But in a film where the main character is Asian, and much of the story is set in Chinatown, you're the best friend of the other Asian guy.

00:26:42 Speaker_06
Yes, yes. But that's the beauty of the show is that we're actually making fun of these stereotypes, sorry, of these tropes.

00:26:49 Speaker_21
It's kind of a theme of the series that the main character feels just kind of invisible. And he wants to be the star of his own life. So I want to play a clip from Interior Chinatown.

00:27:06 Speaker_21
And you and Jimmy O. Yang, the main character in the series, you're both working at a restaurant in Chinatown and don't really like the job. You're just doing it.

00:27:19 Speaker_06
Maybe I should set up also that we are working in a restaurant in Chinatown, but we are also characters in a TV show who don't realize that we're in a TV show. So we are

00:27:30 Speaker_06
on the surface working at this restaurant, but we are working at a restaurant in the context of being on a law and order type show. So that's the meta aspect of it.

00:27:41 Speaker_21
It's very meta.

00:27:41 Speaker_06
Yes.

00:27:43 Speaker_21
So in this scene from the first episode, you're both in the alleyway where the dumpster is. Yeah. And you're both talking and the Jimmy O. Yang character is talking about how he's like a minor character in his own life and invisible in the world.

00:28:03 Speaker_21
And he wants to be the main character. He wants to be the star of something. He wants to solve a murder mystery like they do on TV. So this is the conversation between Yoom and Jimmy O. Yang. He speaks first.

00:28:19 Speaker_05
I'm not saying I want someone to die. So what are you saying? Well, I'm saying if someone's already dead, I would like to be the first one to find the body. That's weird, man. Okay, you know how in cop shows, there's usually a cold open? Cold open.

00:28:31 Speaker_05
The first scene before the main title. Right. Okay, so for a couple of minutes, you follow this random character who you've never met, who's not one of the leads. And part of you is thinking, why am I even watching this guy?

00:28:42 Speaker_05
Why are you watching this guy? You're watching because either he's about to get killed, or... Or? You've seriously never seen a cop show? How is that even possible? Video games and weed. Okay, what was I saying? Somebody's about to find a dead body?

00:29:01 Speaker_05
Yes, that's the rule. The person in the first scene of a procedural is either a victim or a witness. Holy s***!

00:29:13 Speaker_07
Somebody threw away an entire Peking duck with the sauce and everything.

00:29:17 Speaker_05
You're a dk, man. I'm the dk. You are the one who's hoping it was a dead person.

00:29:22 Speaker_21
Mm-hmm. Okay. That was my guest Ronnie Chang with Jimmy O. Yang in a scene from Interior Chinatown. In the film Crazy Rich Asians, you have a real standout scene. You're kind of a minor character in it.

00:29:34 Speaker_06
That's very complimentary of you, yeah.

00:29:36 Speaker_21
But it's a great scene. Does it feel qualitatively different to be in a film with an Asian-themed story and largely Asian cast?

00:29:45 Speaker_06
Yeah, that's a good question. Crazy Rich Asians was my first movie, so I had nothing to compare it with. But I will say on set, you could feel this really cool camaraderie and chemistry. We all had this shorthand.

00:30:00 Speaker_06
We were all Asian actors in our 30s, and we were all in this movie for the first time. This underdog movie, which when we were making, there was no indication it would have been as successful as it was.

00:30:12 Speaker_06
I think that's fair to say, as in it was still yet to be seen. was not a sure thing. Lots of risks were taken by the directors and producers which we're all eternally grateful for that it paid off.

00:30:24 Speaker_06
But we were all in this thing in Malaysia and Singapore and so we were just hanging out, you know, we were going

00:30:30 Speaker_06
for karaoke we will go for Korean barbecue we didn't need to explain why we were going for Korean barbecue it wasn't ethnic eating it was just food and then when we get to Korean barbecue we don't have to explain what was being served we all got it so stuff like that you know there was like a shorthand and camaraderie which exists till today

00:30:48 Speaker_21
So correct me if I'm wrong, you're third generation Malaysian?

00:30:51 Speaker_06
Yeah, Chinese Malaysian.

00:30:52 Speaker_21
Chinese Malaysian. So what I read is that your parents moved to the U.S. when you were three, you stayed with family in Malaysia or Singapore, and then you moved a year later when you were four.

00:31:04 Speaker_06
So they came when I was one. So then I only came here when I was three and then I left when I was seven. So basically they came to America and they left me in Malaysia for like a year and a half or something.

00:31:19 Speaker_06
And then when I was around three years old, then they brought me over. So they were with my sister without me. So they were probably here for like two years, I guess.

00:31:27 Speaker_21
Did you recognize your parents?

00:31:29 Speaker_06
You know, I think they tell me that when I saw them at the airport, I walked away because I was so pissed. But I don't remember being, you know, holding it against them. First of all, they were putting themselves through college.

00:31:41 Speaker_06
So, you know, imagine having to support two kids and themselves and college. So they were working and going to college at the same time. And then second of all, it was like, yeah, I was too young. You know, it's like a baby. Like we don't like that.

00:31:54 Speaker_06
It's before the internet. Who knows what's happening in Manchester, New Hampshire. They just didn't want to risk it. So it was easier to just take my sister.

00:32:01 Speaker_21
So what was it like when they decided to move back to Malaysia?

00:32:05 Speaker_06
Oh, great question. So when they moved back, they didn't tell me we're moving back. They said we're just going for a vacation. So I was like, oh, OK, so we'll go and see Malaysia and we'll come back.

00:32:18 Speaker_06
And then we went back to Malaysia and we never went back to America. And I was like, what happened? Like, why did you guys lie to me? And so I had a chip on my shoulder for like years of being in Singapore and Malaysia. And you know what?

00:32:32 Speaker_06
Maybe they changed. Nah, I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I was going to say maybe they went there and changed their mind. But I'm pretty sure they went there knowing they were going to go back.

00:32:40 Speaker_06
But no, in hindsight, I think they made the right decision for them. Because when they went back to Malaysia, they had more social capital because they had U.S. education and they were culturally more suited to Malaysia and Singapore.

00:32:57 Speaker_06
So when they went back, I think they made the right choice for them.

00:33:01 Speaker_13
What did they end up doing?

00:33:02 Speaker_06
Oh, they became like corporate executives. My mom became like a financial controller. My dad became like a general manager of factories in China. And then he would, you know, he would commute between China and Singapore and Malaysia.

00:33:13 Speaker_06
But my point is that I don't know if they would have been happy in America because in America we were in, I was very happy, but I was like a four-year-old kid and they were working on a gas station. So I don't begrudge them at all.

00:33:27 Speaker_06
I wish they had told the truth that we were moving back for good, but I think they made the right choice ultimately.

00:33:34 Speaker_06
So yeah, and I was lucky I got to... I appreciate being from Malaysia and seeing Singapore and seeing Australia and then coming to America and having a bit more perspective on things, you know. I truly think it feels like a superpower sometimes.

00:33:50 Speaker_21
My guest is comic and actor Ronnie Chang. His new comedy special, Love to Hate It, starts streaming on Netflix tomorrow. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

00:34:01 Speaker_20
On the TED Radio Hour, don't you hate it when leftover cilantro rots in your fridge? I have to tell you, cilantro is like my nemesis. Food waste expert Dana Gunders says that's just a hint of a massive global problem.

00:34:14 Speaker_18
Food waste has about five times the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire aviation industry.

00:34:20 Speaker_20
Ideas about wasting less food. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.

00:34:26 Speaker_23
When it came out in 1843, A Christmas Carol was a sensation, and Charles Dickens became a legend.

00:34:34 Speaker_12
Some people would consider him the originator of Christmas or the inventor of Christmas.

00:34:39 Speaker_23
The past, present, and future of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

00:34:44 Speaker_03
Listen to ThruLine wherever you get your podcasts.

00:34:51 Speaker_26
Every weekday, NPR's best political reporters come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington, the campaign trail, and beyond. We don't just want to tell you what happened. We tell you why it matters.

00:35:04 Speaker_26
Join the NPR Politics Podcast every single afternoon to understand the world through political eyes.

00:35:12 Speaker_21
What was it like for you getting started in comedy in the U.S., being an immigrant and being of Chinese-Malaysian descent?

00:35:19 Speaker_06
I mean, I didn't start comedy here. I started doing stand-up comedy in Australia. So when I came here, I was already six years into comedy.

00:35:28 Speaker_06
If you're asking me what it's like to start again in America, it was like a dream, because I always wanted to do comedy in New York City. It's the best city in the world to do comedy. You can do five, six, eight shows a night here.

00:35:41 Speaker_06
The best comics are here, so you're competing against them. So if you have to follow them, you have to be good.

00:35:47 Speaker_06
But I mean, I've told this story many times, but one of the best advice I got was from Mr. John Oliver, who when I first joined The Daily Show, I met up with him because The Daily Show has a very strong alumni, truly the Harvard Business School of Comedy.

00:36:02 Speaker_06
And I asked him for advice on how to be a correspondent in America. being a non-American correspondent on The Daily Show, which is something that he's uniquely placed to give me advice on.

00:36:12 Speaker_06
And he told me that it took him two years to relearn how to do comedy in America. And he was spot on. He was spot on.

00:36:21 Speaker_06
And he was, you know, he was saying like, well, I mean, this is my interpretation of what he was saying is that when you come to America as a foreign headliner comic, you can do comedy for

00:36:37 Speaker_06
5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, you can kill for, you can maybe even kill for 30 minutes. But you're always doing comedy as like the outsider. Meaning like, you're coming in, you're making fun of America on a very surface level. And that works.

00:36:54 Speaker_06
for about 9 months. But after 9 months or like 11 months, I think the audience and you yourself subconsciously can feel the inauthenticity of that in the sense of like, you've been here long enough, you should know that this isn't that weird.

00:37:12 Speaker_06
Why are you still making fun of five flavors of Coca-Cola? You know, like you should know better now. You've been here long enough.

00:37:18 Speaker_06
And so the point was that it took two years to really kind of get a little bit more understanding of America where you could joke about it in a way that one, Americans haven't heard before and two, in a way that they agree with you in the authenticity.

00:37:35 Speaker_21
So earlier you said that you didn't tell your parents when you were on The Daily Show and they didn't know what The Daily Show was because they'd never seen it. It's not big in Malaysia.

00:37:47 Speaker_21
Did they start watching it after you felt like you were doing a decent job and they could watch it?

00:37:54 Speaker_06
Yes. literally the day after I spoke to him and I told him I was on The Daily Show, he googled everything about it and he was like, hey, you know Jon Stewart is a big deal in America. I'm like, yeah, dad, I know, that's what I was trying to tell you.

00:38:08 Speaker_06
And he was like, yeah, he makes a lot of money, man, this guy's making a lot, this guy's a multi-million dollar contract. I'm like, yeah, yeah, comedy's a big business in America. And then he, yeah, then he started following it more.

00:38:18 Speaker_06
But they've always been into American politics from afar.

00:38:22 Speaker_21
Apparently your father was very funny and prided himself on that. Yes. What kind of sense of humor did he have? Did he tell jokes or stories?

00:38:30 Speaker_06
Yeah, he would. Only in hindsight. Now, you know, he passed away in 2018. And I talk about this in the special. It's actually the last story I tell in the special. And only in hindsight, do I realize like, oh, yeah, he was

00:38:51 Speaker_06
he would hold court at family gatherings and he would joke about politics and he would like roast the decisions by leaders or people around him, family members, he would make fun of family members.

00:39:08 Speaker_06
So it was a very, I would say a very modern style of comedy that he was doing. But obviously he didn't know he was doing comedy, he was just being the life of the party.

00:39:20 Speaker_06
And he was, you know, usually the most educated guy in the room, usually, you know, so he would be making fun of current affairs, current events, people, family members, he would, you know, he just roast them. Yeah, that's how he would do it.

00:39:39 Speaker_21
You seem to have such an interesting perspective on the world and on comedy because you've lived and grown up in so many different countries.

00:39:46 Speaker_16
Sure.

00:39:47 Speaker_21
And traveled the world doing comedy too. How helpful is that to you as a person and as a comic?

00:39:55 Speaker_06
I can't deny that having perspective helps a little bit because I have something to compare America to. So I know what's an extreme idea or what's not, you know, compared to other countries. I also know what America does better than other countries.

00:40:11 Speaker_06
So I guess that lets me talk about it a little bit more in depth. I don't know.

00:40:17 Speaker_06
I think a lot of what I learned about comedy, I'm very lucky that I moved to New York City when I was 30 years old, nine years ago, because I think being here in this environment made me a better comic.

00:40:29 Speaker_06
I don't think comedy is the greatest art form on the planet and whatever, but I think it's a good art form. And one of the good things about it is that we talk to live human beings every day.

00:40:41 Speaker_06
So you get a sense of where the cultural zeitgeist is, I think a lot better than anyone else, you know. So, not just being able to live in different countries, I went to law school, you know, I have a degree in finance as well.

00:40:58 Speaker_06
So I think I've gotten to see a lot of different worlds. I've seen the corporate world, I've seen the crazy

00:41:05 Speaker_06
comedian, live-performing world, I've seen the left-wing world, you know, in Singapore I see the conservative world, the Chinese world, Australian, so I've seen enough different kinds of subcultures to, I guess, be able to compare stuff.

00:41:21 Speaker_21
Ronny Chieng, thank you so much for coming on our show. It's been a pleasure.

00:41:25 Speaker_06
Thank you so much for having me. This is a real honor to be on the show and to speak to you. Thank you so much.

00:41:29 Speaker_21
Ronny Chieng's new Netflix comedy special, Love to Hate It, starts streaming tomorrow, December 17. This is Fresh Air.

00:41:38 Speaker_03
The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you.

00:41:42 Speaker_20
Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation.

00:41:45 Speaker_03
So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes, and home prices.

00:41:50 Speaker_05
The S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever.

00:41:53 Speaker_03
Follow all the big changes and what they mean for you.

00:41:55 Speaker_05
Make America affordable again.

00:41:58 Speaker_03
Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR.

00:42:03 Speaker_18
Have you ever been on a date with someone and suddenly found yourself disgusted by something they did? Well, you might have gotten the ick. On It's Been a Minute, we're asking the big questions about dating.

00:42:15 Speaker_18
Like, what's actually happening when we get the ick? And is it about them or about you? To find out, listen now to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR.

00:42:27 Speaker_28
This message comes from the Kresge Foundation. Established 100 years ago, the Kresge Foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America. A century of impact, a future of opportunity. More at kresge.org.

00:42:42 Speaker_21
Rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening back to the pop music made in 2024 and sees a pattern of women hit makers who prize both aggression and vulnerability in various proportions.

00:42:55 Speaker_21
In songs by Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Roan, and others, Ken has found the soundtrack to the past year's tumultuous times.

00:43:35 Speaker_01
The year in pop music 2024 pivoted around a trio of women, hitmakers whose various successes hinged upon assertions of creative ambition and admissions of romantic weakness. Foremost among them is the British songwriter Charlie XCX.

00:43:52 Speaker_01
Her album, Brat, sought to redefine brattiness, less as irritating behavior than as an insistence that petulance can be justified frustration and anger, that you don't get to define her feelings.

00:44:06 Speaker_01
Charlie's collaborations with other women on the remix version of the album, including Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande, suggested a growing army of artists ready to take up her cause.

00:44:53 Speaker_01
Keeping things light while also serving as an example of ferocious willfulness was Sabrina Carpenter, whose album title, Short and Sweet, referred both to Carpenter herself and the concise, clever hits she makes.

00:45:07 Speaker_01
Listening to her cooing vocals and seeing her wiggly videos, I had to reach way back to Mae West to come up with a comparable example of a woman who raps her steely command in such a deceptively saucy tone.

00:45:20 Speaker_09
have a fun idea babe maybe just stay inside i know you're craving some fresh air but the ceiling fan is so nice and we could live so happily if no one knows that you're with me i'm just kidding

00:45:47 Speaker_10
Please, please, please don't bring me to tears when I just did my makeup so nice. Heartbreak is one thing, my ego's another. I beg you don't embarrass me, little sucker.

00:46:11 Speaker_01
That's Please Please Please, Carpenter's pleading not pleading warning to a boyfriend that he's got to treat her right. The third member of my 2024 power grouping is Chapel Roan.

00:46:24 Speaker_01
Her mixture of singer-songwriter details, dance pop grooves, and lovely ballads really caught on as the admiration of her peers increased. She was an opening act on Olivia Rodrigo's tour and is a guest on Sabrina Carpenter's Netflix Christmas special.

00:46:40 Speaker_01
No wonder she proclaimed, I'm your favorite artist's favorite artist.

00:46:45 Speaker_01
One of her catchiest songs is the emotionally complex Good Luck Babe, in which Roan encourages a straight woman who seems to have a crush on her to feel free to express her desires more openly.

00:47:10 Speaker_08
Arms out like an angel through the classroom room. I don't want to call it off, but you don't want to call it love. You only want to be the one that I call baby.

00:47:23 Speaker_14
You can consume me and poison my soul. I'm never trying to stop the feeling.

00:47:44 Speaker_01
If you're thinking I've forgotten a certain woman, one around whom so much of not just the music industry but the culture industry revolves, well, I did enjoy a lot of Taylor Swift's album, The Tortured Poets Department.

00:47:58 Speaker_01
But I'd be lying if I didn't say I enjoyed a book about her even more. Rob Sheffield's Heartbreak is the National Anthem, How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music.

00:48:08 Speaker_01
It's the year's best critical appraisal of pop stardom, disguised as a fan's ecstatic notes. Finally, I want to remind you of a woman who is not a hit maker, whose 2024 work was among the year's finest.

00:48:23 Speaker_01
Arriving in an election year, Carsey Blanton's glowingly political collection, After the Revolution, tried to imagine a better world after a period of upheaval and chaos.

00:48:33 Speaker_14
♪ You let me buy the one thing you see ♪ ♪ Buying something in ♪ So I picked a fight later on that night. I was sick of fearing shame. And I know it all could be your fault, but at least I

00:49:49 Speaker_01
Where the other artists I played locate their feminism in dance pop, Carsey Blanton mixes folk and rock distinctively. And her version of sexual politics is broad enough to encompass a class critique as well.

00:50:03 Speaker_01
While Blanton is singing from the sidelines of superstardom, some stars might do well to listen to her for an example of how to make good music that also refers to subjects other than self-care.

00:50:15 Speaker_01
Nothing wrong with expanding your already huge base by being even more ambitious in the new year.

00:50:22 Speaker_21
Ken Tucker is Fresh Air's rock critic. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, my guests will be Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell, the internationally famous brother and sister songwriting and music-making duo.

00:50:34 Speaker_21
We'll talk about what it was like to be homeschooled, become famous in their teens, and how their lives and music have changed as adults. They have a new album. I hope you'll join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

00:50:50 Speaker_21
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

00:50:53 Speaker_21
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yukundi, and Anna Baumann. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey Nesper.

00:51:08 Speaker_21
Roberto Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

00:51:17 Speaker_19
Oh my goodness, if I could get a reindeer, that would be nice.

00:51:21 Speaker_00
I'm Jesse Thorne. Celebrate the season with me and certified reindeer lover Jennifer Hudson on the Bullseye Holiday Special. Plus, we'll hear from Tower of Power Zach Cherry and Judy Greer on the Bullseye podcast from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

00:51:40 Speaker_03
After the election, the economy feels like one big, huh? Good thing there's the Indicator from Planet Money podcast. We take a different economic topic from the news every day and break it down in under 10 minutes.

00:51:51 Speaker_03
Topics like the home building shortage or the post-election crypto rally. Listen to the Indicator from Planet Money podcast from NPR and turn that, huh? Into an, ah.