How Ronny Chieng’s sharp style helped him become a new version of a classic comedy star
After years of being in stand-up comedy, Ronny Chieng’s career is most certainly heating up. These days, the 39-year-old comic can’t even walk through the halls of “The Daily Show” where he’s been a correspondent since 2015 without setting off the fire alarm. At least that was the case on a recent morning when he popped into a Zoom interview from his phone in the midst of an unexpected company fire drill. “Perfect timing!” he joked. “Luckily it’s not a real fire.”
He scrambled momentarily through the show’s New York office to find a quiet place to talk about his third Netflix stand-up special, “Love to Hate It.” Launching Tuesday, the special was filmed in the slightly less chaotic locale of Hawaii, one of Chieng’s favorite places to work and vacation. Apart from notable roles in “Crazy Rich Asians,” “M3GAN” and more recently in the Hulu TV series “Interior Chinatown,” fans of Chieng’s acting remember his days playing Dr. Lee in the Disney show ”Doogie Kameāloha, M.D.,” which filmed on location in the Aloha State.
Outside of deploying quick-witted observational comedy from the lens of a millennial Malaysian immigrant, Chieng’s weapon of choice is a wardrobe of tailored vintage threads fit for a ‘60s spy caper. Even on a day that finds him offstage in his normal streetwear — a dark blue sweater and ballcap hiding a head of tousled black hair — Chieng’s thoughtfulness in discussing his recent career uptick is indicative of the intentional mindset of a comic who combines old school style and a new school perspective.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Aspects of the special are bound to resonate with people your age, especially jokes about putting off having kids for the sake of your career. Have your thoughts on putting off parenthood changed at all since filming the special?
Yeah, it’s interesting, I did that bit and I was just kind of talking about what’s happening in my life, and I have to say, not to pat myself on the back, but a lot of people, surprisingly, have been relating to it. So it feels like everyone in America is doing it. I wrote it this year so it’s a very current bit, so I’m still in that mindset. I’m a bad person to ask about it, because I don’t have kids, so I don’t know. Everyone who does have kids tells me that there’s never a good time and it’s fine. Bill Burr was telling me that he wished he had more sooner. So that all that stuff gives me a kind of perspective on it. [Jerry] Seinfeld told me being married and not having kids is like going to Disneyland and staying in the car park. But everyone who is the comic who I admire, seems to say that it’s not only OK [to have kids while working on your career], it’s great.
What inspired you to film your special in Hawaii and what started your longtime appreciation for the Aloha State?
Every special I do, I try to have a visual aesthetic that matches a classic American show business era. This one was “Elvis in Hawaii.” I’ve been lucky to film a few projects in Hawaii, including two seasons of a TV show [“Doogie Kameāloha, M.D.” for Disney]. I did at least one movie there, if not two. It sounds so hacky to say I love Hawaii, but I definitely feel something there. It reminds me of the best parts of Malaysia and the best parts of America in one place, and it was a shelter for my wife and I during the pandemic. And then, by coincidence, all these references to Hawaii were popping up in my comedy unintentionally as I was preparing for the special. But it was a coincidence. I picked Hawaii to film in months before I even wrote the special.
I thought it was cool how you kind of ended with your love for Hawaii and tying it together with a special reference to your late father.
Yeah, that was the goal of it, and it took me six years to talk about [his death]. My dad passed in 2018 and I mention him in the end of [the special]. So if you hate everything I do about comedy, I would say at least skip to the end of this special so you can watch that part. I tell a true story about him and yeah, I’m glad that I was able to put him in it, I think he would have liked it.
Are there any comedy heroes whom you model yourself after, especially as a non-American comedian of color?
A lot of the time I model my decisions after Aziz Ansari. I asked myself a lot, like, ‘would Aziz do that?’ or ‘how would Aziz do a poster?’ Because he’s very tasteful, obviously very funny, and also he managed to do comedy in a way where he kind of went beyond race. Everybody loved him, and it wasn’t about his ethnicity. And he was a sort of super funny comic, and he was always very stylish and tasteful, and he also didn’t overexpose himself in terms of social media. So he was very selective in what he did. I’m also lucky Bill Burr [executive produced] my special. I’m glad that I can get advice from [Dave] Chappelle and Seinfeld and all the greats of comedy. Jo Koy gives me advice. I filmed my first special [“Asian Comedian Destroys America!”] in Glendale [at the Alex Theatre] and [Koy] filmed a special there 10 years before me. So I called him and asked him, ‘Hey, anything I should know about this venue?’ And he gave me specific tips — he told me to mic up the balcony, and stuff like that. Ali Wong’s always giving me advice. So I’m very lucky to be able to get advice from everybody. I also learned a lot from John Mulaney. John let me open for him this year, and I got to see how he works and how he runs his shows. And I got a lot out of it, just logistically, how to organize the show at that level.
Have you always had an eye for vintage Hollywood style or did that evolve over time?
Yeah, it’s definitely something that’s evolved over time. When I did my first special, I wanted it to look professional and classic because I didn’t want it to look amateur. I felt like I was in America and to me, this is the NBA of comedy and entertainment. That was the impetus for trying to make it look stylish and have a unique aesthetic. And the look I picked was classic American show business, because quite honestly, it was easier for me to look classic than to look fashionable. You just have to put on a suit to make sure it fits. When you try to look fashionable, you’re trying to look forward into what will be stylish or what will stay stylish. So it was easier for me to look backwards for style and be more classic and be more professional. So that aesthetic kind of stuck, and I like it. For me, it shows that you put in effort into what you’re doing. One of the reasons I did it was because I always felt like I never saw Asian people in that setting. They were never on ‘Jackie Mason,’ they were never on ‘Johnny Carson.’ So that was my way of putting myself in those settings.
Of course, running around New York City doing spots you obviously can’t dress that way all the time, right?
I feel like if you did three-piece suits every single time, it almost looks like a gimmick, you know, it kind of loses its impact.
Plus that dry cleaning bill is astronomical. Speaking of branding, marketing when it comes to comedy, you don’t sell very much merch. Do you think selling merch as a comic is more trouble than it’s worth?
I never want to sell something I wouldn’t buy myself. So if I wouldn’t wear it every day proudly, then why would I try to sell it? Also, when you bring merch on the road, everyone takes so much of a cut that it doesn’t even make sense anymore unless you make it into an entire operation and you outsource it. Part of me feels like I know the free market will determine whether or not people buy it, so it’s not like you’re forcing it on your fans, but I also feel like I don’t want to take advantage of my fans like that. I’m happy that they bought a ticket. I don’t need to try to extract more money from them, but that’s just me. I asked Bill Burr about this because he doesn’t really do much either. I asked if he ever figured it out and he was like, no, they take such a big cut that it’s not worth it. And so I’m like, if Bill Burr can’t figure it out, then I don’t think I can figure it out.
So the way that people can support you is just coming to the shows and watching you on screen?
To be fair, I do sell socks and vinyl on my website. So people can buy socks and vinyl if they want to buy something. But it’s also an environmental thing, I just didn’t want to sell something that would end up in a river, choking out a sea turtle.
One of the things you also talked about in the special is losing male friends in their 30s to the “self-improvement algorithm” on YouTube and social media. How can you tell when someone’s become fully engulfed by these types of influences that may start with the idea of simply getting fit and end with the notion of wanting to overthrow the government?
There’s some key words they say. They start talking about the “Global South” or the “Global North” or there’s words they use that I’ve never heard them use before. “Mainstream media” is one that’s been around a while, but yeah, it’s just sad.
Do you think comedy has the potential to become part of that kind of extremist algorithm when it comes to how some people view the world socially or politically?
Yeah, but that goes both ways politically, right? Some of [that type of content] can influence you to go left or right. There’s comedy for everybody, so it can influence you in any direction. I think what’s sadder is guys — and I can speak to straight men because I’m a straight man — sometimes have legitimate gripes that get kind of focused on and exaggerated by being on the internet too much. It’s not even about politics, it’s about losing your mind. It’s not about conservative or liberal. You could lose your mind as a liberal, you could lose them as conservative, I think just losing your mind is very scary.
Have you ever gone to the extent of asking or trying to profile what type of people typically become fans of your comedy?
I don’t — I can’t think of that, because it’s all I can do to just write a funny joke. I really can’t calculate the audience. I mean, I’m curious about who shows up when I do a live show. I’m always surprised by who comes to my shows. I literally cannot believe it when anyone comes to my shows or says they’ve seen my stand up.
Now that you have a bit of a break once the new comedy special comes out, how do you plan to celebrate the holidays? Will you actually take some time off?
I’m lucky I’m married to someone who can help me take it easy and relax. I find myself having a few weeks to go to Asia and visit my mom and take her on a holiday. So we’re just gonna go to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and just hang out and then I’ll come back in January to work on “The Daily Show” and write a new special, just going around New York City doing gigs, which is a dream.
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