Comedian Ronny Chieng on Political Satire, Trolling Algorithms and Cerebral Dick Jokes

I'm doing comics all the time. I have them every six weeks because this is a very, because everything else is about constitutional crises and tech leaders taking over things.
Yeah, it gets very bleak. Yeah, bleak.
Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
My guest today is Emmy Award-winning comedian and actor, Ronnie Chang. If you've ever seen him, his shtick is kind of like being this grumpy, disdainful foreigner who tells it to Americans like it is.
And he also wants you to do better, wants all of us to do better. I love having comics on the show.
I want to have them on all the time in this really difficult time. I also think that people like Ronnie are doing very pointed political comedy, too, even though they often just say they're making jokes.
He's a very smart thinker, and that's why I enjoy listening to him. Ronnie's originally from Malaysia, went to school in Singapore, and launched his stand-up career after finishing law school in Melbourne, Australia.
He's a globalist. He's been a correspondent on The Daily Show for a decade and part of the rotating lineup of hosts on the show since last year.
I think it's a great way to do that show. In January, he had the Herculean task of hosting during the first week of the new Trump administration when a list of executive orders was so long they didn't have time to read them all.
I wanted to talk to him about doing political satire in Trump 2.0 and about his recent Netflix special, Love to Hate It, which oscillates between cerebral, personal, and potty mouth, of course. There's always a dick joke, no matter how you slice it.
And I want to talk to him about his acting career, which is going strong. He got a big break in Crazy Rich Asians, where he played a complete financial bro, asshole.
He did a great job. But since then, he's been in a number of films, including

Marvel movie Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, and the recent Hulu series Interior

Chinatown. Our expert question this week comes from Crazy Rich Asians and Wicked director,

John Chu. I think we all need a smart laugh right about now, so this should be fun.
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Ronnie, welcome. Thanks for being on On.
Hey, thanks for having me. Nice to meet you.
I'm so glad. I'm a real fan.
I was just talking to you earlier about some of the things I've seen you and you've been in tons of stuff and obviously The Daily Show. But before we get started, I'm heading to Australia in a few weeks for my book tour for the paperback of my book.
I know you live there for a decade and your wife is from Melbourne. Any suggestions, places to go, things not to say or to say? Should I just stay there? I don't know you that well, but I predict you're going to go there and be like, I should probably stay here.
Very safe and very socialist country in a great way. When you go there, when you do order coffee and they have the best coffee in the world um don't just say you want a coffee you have to be specific okay you can't just say give me a coffee you have to be it's the place where you have to go espresso flat white or cappuccino what else yeah so that and don't don't ask for hot sauce nobody knows what you're about.
And don't be a black person. And you'll be great.
Yeah. For Rigenes.
I've been there. Thank you.
Thank you for those pieces of advice. I've been to Australia once or twice before, but I love it.
And the only person I have to deal with there is Rupert Murdoch, which I can handle considering who we're up against now. So anyway, thank you.
Thank you. No more time for travel tips.
We got a lot to talk about. Let's talk about you.
You're a busy man. You've been part of a rotating group, hosting the Daily Show for the past year.
Your third Netflix standup special came out last year. Love to Hate It, which I loved.
You've done a lot of acting, including recently the Hulu series, Interior Chinatown. That's your latest, which is awesome.
Let me just say also. So talk to me about your multifaceted career.
What is your favorite hosting, standup acting, if you had to choose to do just one forever? Oh, I mean, I've been very lucky. Every job I do, I love doing it.
So if you put a gun to my head and make me pick, I have to go with standup comedy just because that's how I started. That's where all my creativity seems to come from.
That's where everything that happened to me started from me doing stand-up comedy. It's the most direct form of self-expression that I know.
Do you like the interaction with the audience? Is that what it is about it? it just you're more creative the live aspect there's really no filter there's no very few rules um and there's it's so immediate you're in the audience and you gotta figure it out in real time and um there's no one giving you notes on what you think is funny slash good and what you're saying to the audience.

No one's coming in between that. So it's the most direct way of testing out your ideas.
What's a joke you cut that you wish you hadn't? Oh, I got a ton. I cut for time, honestly, because I believe that the stand-up comedy special or album should not be more than one hour.
So, like I said, when you're touring the hour, it just naturally grows because you keep adding jokes to it. So, we all start our comedy routines with trying to figure out five minutes, 10 minutes, and then it becomes 20 minutes.
Then it becomes 30. And the next thing you know, it's 45.
And then you start touring 45. And then it becomes an hour.
And then it becomes an hour of 15. And so you eventually have to, in my opinion, you got to bring it back to under an hour.
Because I think comedy is one of those things where less is more. Yeah, that's true.
And there's a limit on how much comedy people actually want. So you don't want to be like the Joe Rogan of comics for six hours.
You don't want to do a podcast. Yeah, you don't want to do a three-hour comedy.
Yeah. I don't have the ability to pull that off.
Yeah. And I'm saying this versus music or musical or movie, right? Right, right.
you can go to a concert for two hours,

but comedy, you can't,

comedy isn't the same thing, you know?

And I think I'm laughing

because I think sometimes people,

they just try to use comedy and music interchangeably

because you have a microphone,

that musician has a microphone.

Why don't I just put you in that situation?

And it's like, No, the context matters.

So let's start

with The Daily Show

a little bit.

You've been correspondent

since 2015.

I didn't realize

it was so long.

Yeah.

So you made it

just in time for Trump 1.0.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

It's all I've known.

It's all I've known.

I know.

You were hosting.

Well, there was a little

Biden interregnum in there.

There was Biden,

but he was still around.

Trump was still around.

When Biden was there, it felt like Trump was still present.

Right.

So you were hosting the first week of Trump 2.0.

From a comedic perspective, how is the second coming, as you guys have dubbed it?

He's calling himself a king, obviously.

How is it different?

Because, you know, you guys are doing pretty tough stuff.

I love it.

It's like you're tougher than a lot of reporters, honestly.

Oh, I don't know about that. I think so.
so i think so so talk a little bit about the difference i mean you know you've you coached it as from a comedic point of view which i think is important from a comedic point of view what's different is uh people are quite normalized to ridiculousness now and so a lot lot of the first time around, a lot of the jokes were like, guys, this is kind of crazy. The jokes now seem to be coming from a place of like, this is crazy and we've, we kind of like, it's par for the course.
Oh yeah, it's crazy. But yeah, we expect this.
Is it hard to find humor in some of the stuff? Obviously the Gulf of America just kind of writes itself. Sure, sure.
Yes, things get dark. You know, I know what you're saying.
I think things do get dark. And our job, as far as I know, is that's why we get paid the big bucks is to figure out how do you joke about this stuff you know and it's a tightrope and it's not easy and it's an art form and it's not a science and people want to know how you do it you know and um my my thing is like our job isn't to teach anyone how to do this so i don't care if anyone ever figures out where the line is where your line for comedy i'm my job is to yeah my job is to do the but is it harder given the stakes of reason so high with this guy because he's doing a very different yeah presidency than he did before so emotionally yes that's always in the background but like we can't focus on that to do the job you know and our job is satire and comedy and comedy.
And I'm not saying that's a noble profession. I'm just saying that's what we do.
So, and I don't advocate anyone else do that, follow our point of view. But like I said, we're comics, we're kind of psychos.
We're making fun. As far as I'm concerned, our job is to make fun of the asteroid as it's coming into destroy Earth.
Ah, okay. We'll be making fun of it.
Yeah, until the end, right? Until the end, yeah. So you've advocated for an Asian president as far back as 2019 because you said that Asians can arbitrate in the race war because they don't have skin in the game.
Obviously, Kamala Harris is both Asian and black. Do you think your job at The Daily Show would have been harder or easier if she had won? Maybe harder Harder or easier You know, I mean We had Biden for four years And there were still Tons of jokes So, you know People ask about this Is it easier with Trump and do you like it? I mean, let me just say, first of all I would prefer to live in a country that is functioning and is good.
So that's number one. I will gladly sacrifice any hypothetical jokes for that.
And second of all, it's like, you find jokes in any situation, in any government. You can find jokes in any government, conservative, progressive, humans are funny and crazy and politics is weird and the intersection of people in power and the real life culture that we live in is always funny.
So is it harder or easier? I mean, I don't think it would have been harder or easier. I think it would have been the same.
But are you writing jokes with a particular audience or political sensibility in mind right now?

Has that shifted? Or are there things too serious to make jokes about?

I don't think so. Probably not.

No, I think truthfully, if anything,

we've become...

We were always very joke-focused

and we never want to

pander to our crowd. I think we've

become even less pandering

lately, if that's even possible. Because I don't feel like we were pandering before, but from what I can tell, we came in pretty hard with, Biden's too old.
This guy's too old, he shouldn't be running. I think we call the balls and the strikes, right? The way we see them, which I think is important for satire.
For satire, absolutely. So got a new character a double-headed hydrant Trump and Elon last year you called Elon a loser who's trying to buy friends with million dollar checks how are you looking at this new character for comedy right now? he's not that new he's been hovering around so it's not like a Street Fighter new challenger appears i think he's been kind of you know he's been hovering around the thing for uh quite a while he's been this summer sure well well even before that i think he was hovering since biden he he's been he's been here since the first trump one obviously not to the same extent but um yeah how do you see him i mean uh it's yeah it's another it's another kind of mega figure who has his own orbit and quirks and weirdly intersects with everyone's life and then he's also on the internet trolling so in a lot of ways it's like covering a trump a little bit right so that i mean yeah if you ask me off the top of my head that that's how i would see it it's almost like covering like a second trump stature level figure right that that has household name recognition so you don't have to explain him like versus some other kind of um mega figures sometimes you have to set it up a bit, right? Whereas Elon, everyone immediately knows what you're talking about.
And he's always, just like Trump, you know, he's kind of using the same kind of trolly playbook. So a lot of stuff he's saying.
Sometimes you can't joke his trolling because that's kind of what he wants. Yes, that's correct.
Yeah. Right.
So you can't go like, look how ridiculous it is that he said that. Because that's kind of what he was trying to do in the first place you know which is also like the jesse waters thing right like he'll just as well to say something outrageous our job at a daily show is satire and part of the satire is covering the news and so we'll pull up a clip of him and we'll watch him and he's saying something ridiculous and then it gets so ridiculous to a level where you're like we can't even play this because he's clearly just saying it like it's not we're not making a joke if we play it because he's actually he knows he's what he's doing is a joke so we're kind of like joking the joke and what's the point of that so you know that that's how i see elon is elon a good character from a comedy perspective see a good character damn you you really look at this from a narrative point of Well, you're making jokes about him.
Is he easy to joke about? No, no, it's fair. It's a fair question.
Is he a good character for comedy? I guess, yeah. I guess he is.
I mean, he's always saying new stuff, and so that's useful for a new satire show. I don't, I would, again, I would prefer not talking about him but he's made himself kind of the main character on the internet so in that way.
The neighbor who won't leave, you've been trolling him for quite a while. In May 2018, you responded to a tweet from Elon saying he was going to create a site to track the credibility of journalists by writing, please buy Twitter and shut it down.
Do you remember? Yeah. I do remember that.
That was when I still used Twitter. And I guess that's, do you remember when Jon Stewart was begging Donald Trump to run for president? Yeah.
Yes, that's right. Yeah.
Yeah. So I was begging him to buy Twitter and shut it down.
And you know what? He actually, not only did he buy it, in my opinion, he kind of did shut it down a bit. Well, for a lot of people, although they're raising the valuation of it.
He's trying to sell shares now. Oh, right.
Well, I mean, you know, this is more your world than mine, but I do, I definitely feel that after he bought it, there was a bit of an exodus. So thank you, Elon, for destroying it.
Every week we get a question from an outside expert. This week it's coming from someone you know, Crazy Rich Asians director John Chu.
Hey, Ronnie. It's your old friend John M.
Chu. Here's my question.
You've lived in multiple countries and cultures, Malaysia, Australia, the U.S. And how has that shaped your sense of humor? It's given me some perspective on America because I know from an outsider point of view, I have strong beliefs in what America does very well.
And I can also see what America doesn't do that great um because i've lived in countries other countries

um and uh it also um i don't know it makes it gives me a lot of gratitude to be in america so um i guess that informs my comedy in the sense that i feel like all my jokes come from a place of of um there's a i think there's undercurrent's an undercurrent of love in it. That you love this place.
I love this place and also I love doing comedy. I love doing comedy.
And I think that comes through. Because I've been to countries where you can't really do comedy.
I lived in countries where you can't really do it. So I think that kind of also informs, you know? And I think it also makes me feel like my comedy should be a bit more edgier because I come from places where you can't say stuff that by American standards would not be considered edgy at all.
So I think it makes me a little bit more fearless, you know? So given things that are going now, are you all afraid of retribution? Maybe satirists don't tend to do well in authoritarian regimes as you know sure um i mean we can't play scared so i don't really play scared i don't think i don't think i've held any punches because i'm scared of retribution um i think we already had a trump presidency we you know we've run the experiment for eight years now We've been talking shit for eight years And there's no retribution so far So there's also that data point And then Also Yeah, I don't think he watches us So that's So far so good So far so good Do you feel any pressure from corporation or anything else? Or do you feel like, no? I mean, obviously, Jon Stewart talked about it at Apple, and this was pre this. Are you worried? Or is the group there worried in any way about that? Not that I know of.
I've never, you know, I've been there, I can't believe I've been there nine years now. I have never had a directive to go easy in the paint.
I've never had someone, you know, from any anonymous source. I've never had a note handed to me from anywhere where it was like, hey, can you take it? You know, I've never had that.
And, you know, I chalk that up to we have good taste on the show, I believe. You know, I think The Daily Show as an institution, everyone who works there, we're very experienced.
They're great comedy writers. And part of comedy writing, as you know, isn't just saying the worst possible shit.
That's being an edgelord. Comedy is kind of like the art of getting away with it, right? Saying something edgy and getting away with it it and i think we're good at that and i i think that's reflected in the fact that yeah i've never had someone give me a note to be like hey can you not talk about that guy who shot that guy in the head in new york city like we just go hard we just go hard and and that's why that that's also why i'm so grateful to be at in america at the daily show doing stand-up comedy where it's just like nothing's off limits yeah you're in a room for people just trying to make jokes you're you don't want to be an edgelord Ronnie no I don't be an edgelord no I think that you know and that's a real shame right I think a lot of comedy I think what has happened is that there's been a lot of really funny edgy comics who've managed to find a niche on the internet and and and you know power to them and they're very talented people and i think unfortunately what has happened is that they've kind of inspired a lot of these copycat like people who watch what they do and they because when you're good at it you make it look easy And so you inspire all these kind of, quite frankly, untalented, like angry, edgelordy people who watch edgy comedy and they think.
That they're doing. They think, oh, that's what it is.
I can do it. Comedy is just about saying the most fucked shit you could say in any given situation.
But they miss the nuance and they miss the art and they miss the, you know And it's become this thing where people think companies are saying the worst thing. Edgelords, basically.
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I want to do, speaking of your latest Netflix special, I Love to Hate It, we talked how you build your set in terms of time. Let's talk about TopX.
They run the gamut from you talking about carrying your jizz through Manhattan so you and her wife can freeze her eggs to MAGA and social media to revealing the last Twitter post your dad probably read before he died. It makes sense, while you're watching it, talk about conceptualizing a show like that.
It's beautifully constructed, I will tell you. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I think I started doing stand-up comedy in Australia, and Australia has a very kind of British sensibility with comedy, which is they kind of favor that one man, one woman show format.
So I think I kind of picked it up because I was in australia learning the craft and um they would always try to like have some kind of narrative thread and i always kind of rejected that because i always thought just be funny just have funny jokes and then i kind of realized like you if you have both funny jokes and a little bit of a narrative thread you can kind of you elevate everything um And so that's always in the back of my head when I'm doing an hour. But day to day when I'm writing the hour is just what's the funniest jokes.
And so I just keep writing jokes. I see what's funny.
I see what works in comedy clubs in New York City, which is, you know, as you know, New York City, you need to be funny fast for a long time. You can't just tell some long story about your dad on Twitter.
And you do these funny jokes. And then just like David Lynch says, you go to this ocean of consciousness.
And then suddenly things just start connecting weirdly. And then you start seeing the connections.
So after you write the funny jokes, you lay all of them out in front of you. And you're like, oh, there's a little bit of a connection here.
And then you start crafting in that direction. What did it turn out to be from your perspective? What's the narrative you were trying to go for? It unintentionally became a story about having kids, thinking about having kids and reflection on my father having me.
And, you know, it kind of became a little bit of that. It also became a little bit of a love letter to Hawaii, which I didn't intend because I spent a lot of time in Hawaii filming a TV show, two seasons of this TV show, Doogie Kamealoha on Disney+.
And I became kind of, I really just connected with Hawaii a lot.

I felt like it was-

I love Hawaii.

It's my favorite place on earth.

Yeah, it felt like the best of Malaysia

and America in one to me.

Yeah.

And Hawaii was very welcoming to me.

And so I decided,

before I even wrote a single joke,

I was like, hey,

I want to film my next special in Hawaii.

And I want to kind of capture that Elvis in Hawaii, kind of kitschy, show business vibe. Yeah.
And so I had that- Little Don Ho thrown in. Don Ho, all those guys.
And I wanted to capture that. And that was before I wrote a single joke.
And then as I wrote the hour, I didn't even realize until two months before I filmed it in Hawaii, that, oh, Hawaii comes up a lot in the special. I have a joke about MAGA Hawaii in it and how friendly they are.
And then I have a joke about at the end about my father kind of seeing a photo of me and my wife in Hawaii. And the fact that I filmed it in Hawaii.
Again, it's one of those weird, you know, universe things where suddenly everything comes together, you know? One of the things you do talk about is how men fall into self-help algorithm that leads them to following the kettlebell swinging guy. I love that guy.
To Andrew Tate, to toxic masculinity, and then they end up storming the Capitol. Let me play a quick clip.
I love this. This was fantastic.
I'm not saying as a man, don't take responsibility for your own actions. I'm just saying that YouTube algorithm is very alluring to straight guys.
It sucks men in in a way that I don't think women understand. It really preys on that men's need to seek guidance from somewhere.
It's very hard to resist. It just draws you in.
That's why fucking Mark Zuckerberg is trying to MMA fight Elon Musk right now. That guy fell for his own algorithm.
Do you understand? This is a really good point. It's absolutely true.
The kettlebell swinging guy particularly is the gateway to hell. I'd love you to talk about that because I had this issue with my son who, when he was 13, wanted to watch Ben Shapiro.
I let him. I said, I think he's an asshole, but go forward and watch him.
Like a good progressive mom. Exactly.
I didn't want to be yelled at by Ben Shapiro, who later said I wouldn't let him watch it. But Ben, I let him watch it.
He thought you were an asshole all on his own. But what was interesting, what bothered me and what I was making the point about, and actually Ben Mitz construed it, was he testified by Congress that I was trying to censor my son, but I wasn't.
Anyway, here they're there. But what I was upset by was it went right to algorithms that were really problematic.
I was like, what are you watching now? What happened here? And he was leaning into it. He's a big kid, and he just loved it.
And it moved him very quickly. So talk about this, this idea of what you were trying to get to.
First of all, I love that that went all the way to Congress. Yeah, it did.
Oh, no. I was like, take back your testimony.
I let him watch you. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't have kids, so I can't speak to that. I can't really worry about that.
But this is a really very interesting, you're making a very important point about social media, of the way it goes down into, you know, insurrectionality, essentially. Yeah, I can't speak to a 13-year-old boy growing up in America's experience, but I can speak to being a man in this time.
And I think that there hasn't been a good way for men to talk about things that they're feeling, you know, truthfully feeling deep inside. And then you keep bottling it up and then you feel, eventually you feel wronged because you feel like you've never got a chance to say this stuff and no one explained to you or gave you a fuller picture or even acknowledge when you are right, you know, sometimes.
And so, and then that leads them down this dark path to, you know, because they're looking for it from somewhere. They're looking for either advice or acknowledgement or commiseration from somewhere.
And they just, they feel like they're not getting it from enough sources. And, you know, rightfully or wrongfully so, right? But that's how they genuinely feel.
And then they unfortunately find it on the internet and the internet, it just is not a good place to look for those things. For, you know, for guys or for women.
But again, I'm just going to speak from a guy perspective. And like you said, I think it's, to me, it's become so obvious that you you do excellent attacks on social media i've always like he totally understands i mean you're not a reporter but you're writing about things reporters write about because um you really i can't tell whether you hate it or love it that's the thing because you said you were off twitter or what do you do i am off twitter what do you do on social media now? Besides watch the kettlebell guy.
Yeah. So, yeah, I'm off Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.
As in, I still have accounts, but I don't have notifications to my phone. Honestly, I just kind of use it to make money now in terms of I need to sell tickets.
I'll use it there. And I understand what I use it for now.
You know what I mean? Like I make no pretension about what it is. I'm here to make money on social media.
So I'm here to advertise. I have a show.
For marketing. For marketing, yeah.
And as long as I don't get sucked into it, I feel like that's the best I can do. Do I hate it? I do hate it a lot'm i'm lucky because i i feel like i was the last guy to slip into old media like i'm the last person who managed to get past the goalposts yeah because i get to work on a daily show which is very old media i sell tickets which is the oldest form of show business um and i'm lucky to get cast in TV shows and stuff like that.
So I was lucky. I'm so grateful that I'm in a position to be like, Mark Zuckerberg, you can delete Instagram.
I'll be okay. I'm okay.
Actually, I'd probably be happier. But, you know, I've also seen the benefit from all my friends, you know, my fellow stand-up comics, who they put clips on the internet and that's the only way they were able to build a following and sell tickets so you know that again again that's the love hate that you just perfectly described although it can lead to as you said a lot of bad comedy um or bad singing or bad anything um sure i think yourself tam is interesting from a technical point of view you have these really long smart build-ups you make analytical arguments and still manage to land the punchline.
Let me play another moment on Love to Hate It. It's long, but that's the point.
Let me play it. For example, MAGA, make America great again.
They have a point. America is not doing so great right now, right? Our kids' math scores are down.
Our children's science scores are down. When judged according to international metrics, healthcare systems not doing so great, wealth gap disparities increasing exponentially.
There was an implied promise to a generation of Americans that if you do certain things, work hard, go to college, be a good person, you would have certain outcomes. And those outcomes didn't materialize for majority of people because baby boomers and transient decision-making positions lowered the capital gains tax so that their net worth essentially compounds year after year.
And post-World War II, U.S. leadership traded the domestic manufacturing industry for national security by making the U.S.
dollar the default international trade currency, which gave America the ability to impose economic sanctions on foreign countries through a U.S. financial banking system, but consequently increased the value of the U.S.
dollar astronomically, which made it impossible for anyone to manufacture anything in America. Although the logic at the time was that Americans were supposed to upskill en masse away from the menial manufacturing jobs.
But everyone here is too much of a dumbass to stay in school, so we just traded domestic manufacturing to Asia and the rest of the world at the expense of working-class families. But if you don't read enough, it comes out as, let's go, Brenda! And it's like you have a point, but you don't have the vocabulary to describe your reality because you didn't read enough you gotta keep reading beyond the hashtag there's a book behind the word you gotta keep going you can go at your own pace but you gotta finish the required reading otherwise we can't have a conversation this is a terrific joke this is a tremendously well constructed joke uh would you mind talking about it for a second because i thought this was i love this joke you're obviously doing a sort of a college lecture thing and then but making it into a very funny and true thing yeah uh yeah i just thought it was uh it's actually an argument it's quite a centristrist argument, actually.
It's a call for like, hey, can we talk about actual issues and not just yell slogans? And also, there's also this idea, I think, of like, people want five-second explanations for everything. You know, especially in government or whatever, right? And not everything's a five-second explanation.
Some of these, like, are long technical, like, multi-factorial issues that, you know, require undergraduate degrees to learn. So a bit of it is kind of like an argument or maybe a weeping at the death of respect for expertise, you know, where everyone kind of like wants simple answers or believes they know everything.
And also, you know, as you mentioned, I thought it was pretty funny to just keep talking about this as long as I could. Yeah, yeah.
See how long I could pull it off. I think it's a perfect job.
Oh, thanks. And I actually was, I never clipped it, you know, I never clipped that bit from my special because I thought it wouldn't work on social media because it's so long-winded.
It kind of needs context, you know, to have it. Sure.
But someone else clipped it and put it on the internet and then it started going, you know, viral. It really did.
That was the one that really jumped out to a lot of people. Yeah.
But they did like, I saw like they clipped their own version, but it was like the shittiest resolution, the subtitles were spelled wrong. Someone sped it up.
It was like 1.5 speed. And I was like, that's all right.
This is awful. But for some reason that, you know, we spent, you know, for me as an artist, I spent so much time crafting the look and the timing.
And then this person totally fucked it up. But it went viral.
And so I'm like, all right, well, I don't know what to do about it. Well, it worked.
It worked. No, well, someone told me that on the end this is how bad i'm with social media someone told me that the fact that it looks janky makes people trust it more that's correct because it looks like it wasn't like a marketing effort it looks like someone clipped it and i'm like i guess there's logic to that but but you know goddamn this looks like shit right right um it reminds me that you went so interesting, because you're talking like a lawyer a little bit, which is interesting.
You went to law school in Australia, even passed the bar there. I know it was a massive career ship, and you said it was going from corporate to the circus.
Does your legal background help you at all? I mean, are you worried that it going over their heads, or do you just have a dick joke in your pocket for an emergency? No, I think that I kind of refuse to dumb it down for the crowd. You don't, which I love.
Because I think you, one, I think people are smarter than people give them credit for sometimes. And also, I think you attract the audience that you want, right? So that's two.
And then also, yeah, you're right. Like, you kind of undercut everything with a classic, just whatever dick joke you pull out just to make the broccoli more… Palatable.
Sugar. Put sugar on broccoli.
This is becoming a very disgusting analogy. Yeah, put sugar.
Yeah, don't put a dick joke on it. Yeah, you put sugar on it.
So, yeah. So there's that, right? You pull it out of your hat, right? But also the the legal stuff uh the legal background i didn't think it helped but my wife always kind of points it out to me like the longer i've been doing comedy the more it's like oh my style has developed this kind of like i'm i feel like i'm making arguments you know sometimes when you're doing style comedy you you are arguing for a sometimes you're arguing for a very preposterous or depraved point of view.
And so I guess the legal background helps you in forming a coherent argument. It also helps in eliminating the irrelevant, which I've noticed a lot in not just creative.
Creative, a lot of it is, as you know, right? A lot of creativity is cutting out stuff.'s okay we don't need that we don't need this editing and i think legal background helps with that right it helps you eliminate what you think you don't need and yeah quite frankly i think sometimes when i talk to people about politics or even you know when when you argue about politics sometimes it's like you hear people bring up stuff and you're like wait all that stuff is kind of irrelevant. That's right.
What we're talking about. I think it does help because you cut away the crap, even if you like the joke.
You know, I used to die when I cut out lines from stories and I'm like, oh, that was the right thing. Even if I liked the line.
I think the great comics, they all have this kind of logic to them, right? And I think people who don't study law, I think they kind of hate the idea of the legal system and the legal industry for many reasons. But I think if you actually study law, you realize that this is the product of many, many people over decades or centuries figuring out the logic of things.
So there is a logic to it that end of the day, it's quite stable. And so just being able to think logically is, I think, something that you get out of legal training.
Who are your influences? Who are the ones that you think are? Oh, yeah. I mean, when I was coming up, it was, I love Bill Burr.
And he actually EPs my specials now. So I'm glad to call him a friend and mentor.
And love Dave Chappelle. I loved everybody in New York City who was gigging.
Todd Berry. I mean, if you were doing stand-up comedy, if you were a headliner at a comedy club, I loved you.
Because I was watching these professionals, you know, like, man, I was like, damn, this is amazing, you know? So I was influenced by everybody. Seinfeld, yeah.
You did sign for this thing, doing this three-deal Netflix special. This was your third.
Will you stay with the streamer? What is that economy like now? You have to have these streaming no one's ever no one's ever asked me that

i'm a business lady so i i think the business is very interesting you should mention that because uh the power keeps shifting about who is the number one uh for comedy you know it used to be hbo hbo was like a dream yeah to do it it was like oh my god if you get hbo special that means you means you are it. And Netflix came along.
Comedy Central was in there for a long time. Netflix has come along.
You know, I can't tell who's number one. I think Hulu has just entered the chat with Comedy Special.
So I don't really know where the industry is going. And then now, right, people are just putting on YouTube now, entire specials.
bother yeah why even bother you know well i i you know you can get paid on streamers whereas youtube you're kind of going off your own back so i don't know i don't know where the power is i think it really depends on one who's offering you because you can only accept offers that are made so are you getting the offers and two uh what your personal uh your fans is you know like some people are more men and women of the people so we're on YouTube you know we're underground and that's cool right that's very cool and some people are like we're on Netflix you know we're the Netflix comics you know but you know all this is not up to us this is up to the free market and the streamers have to make offers. There is an appeal to doing it yourself on YouTube, I can tell you that.
There is, but there's also an appeal to making money on a streamer. Right, that's true, which they do.
Right now, I think Netflix is ascended. I think you're correct.
Are you signing a new deal? I hope so. I hope so, yeah.
I hope they have me back. You know, Netflix stuck stuck their neck out for me.
Like, my first special, no one wanted it. My very first one, Asian Comedian Destroys America.
I was shopping around, I was asking people to come and I say this with no bitterness because I get the game but nobody really wanted it and so I kind of gave up on trying to make one. I was like, I'm just going to tour live.
If anyone wants to ever buy it, I'll do it, whatever. And then Netflix, they stuck their neck on and was like, hey, we love it.
Let's do it. And they've supported me ever since.
And honestly, for me, having Netflix in my corner has allowed me to turn down many shitty offers that I would hate to do. And I get to do that because I'm like, oh, end of the day, I can do it with these guys.
I have myittiest offer oh you know people come in and be like hey can you do you know uh we want you to go you know look silly and be goofy and sell this product like advertising goofy advertising stuff or like bad commercial like um come in come and do a stand-up spot for these rich assholes yeah I it it basically just empowered me to be like, guys, I'm okay. I don't need unlimited money.
Netflix is taking care of me. I'd rather do that.
Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah, meaning if you want to hire me, you have to kind of meet me on my terms.
Yeah, Al Pacino was on Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah, I'll do Dunkin' Donuts, no problem.
He'll be Dunkin' Donuts, no problem. Okay.
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I want to finish up talking about your acting career.

You got your big break in Hollywood with Crazy Rich Asians.

John Chu, who directed it, sent us a question.

I was still waiting for him to get to Crazy Rich Asians, too.

We'll see what happens there.

He's the best.

He is the best.

Last year, though, you were in Hulu series,

Interior Chinatown, based on a book by Charles Yu.

It's the best. He is the best.
Last year, though, you were in Hulu series, Interior, Chinatown, based on a book by Charles Yu.

It's really stereotypical or even non-existent about that, the stereotypical or even non-existent Asian representation in Hollywood. where the main character is Willis Wu,

who wants to stop being a background character and becoming a main character like Kung Fu guy.

You play his best friend, Fatty Choi,

who goes viral as angry asian waiter of talk a little bit about this this i think this is wonderful talk about the character and how the storyline ties into the set yeah i'll give you guys the quick pitch on the show like who cares about me the show is brilliant the show is so smart it's so meta it's like twin peaks meets law and order i guess because in the show all these characters are on a tv show and they just slowly start to realize that they become self-aware that they're on a tv show and that's not just you know the main characters are these two asian guys jimmy or yang and me willis woo Fadi Choi. But then there's also a Law & Order show happening in the show with these other characters.
And they also start to figure out that they're in a TV show. So everyone starts kind of like becoming self-aware.
And it gets weirder. But there's a great social message behind that, which is kind of like people who feel like background characters in their lives you know and i think a lot of people in america feel that way i mean i think this show was written obviously the the surface level is about asian people feeling like background characters in america a lot of the time because we're not really active in politics or entertainment and we don't really have influence the way white people and black people have so sometimes you feel like oh we're just here to you know vote for people sometimes they someone will say hello to us in chinese and then we're supposed to vote for them or you know whatever it is and um uh so it speaks to that but honestly it speaks to anyone who feels like a background character here you know black native american latino you know gay whatever lesbian if you feel like a background character sometimes i mean that this show is kind of about that you know it's very smartly written taika waititi directed the pilot he did amazing and it was a dream project to do it shot beautifully um and i think the the ending is very satisfying i think yeah so the book interior chinat came out in 2020, for people who don't know.
That was after Crazy Rich Asians. But since then, your Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings came out.
I can't call it mine. I can't call it mine.
And everything, everywhere, all at once, went big at the Oscars. And of course, you now co-host The Daily Show.
Do you think things have gotten better in terms of Asian representation or any different? Not, because there's a big push against DEI. I find it really interesting when a movie like, say, A Black Panther does well.
They're like, oh, look at that. And I'm like, it's not a DEI movie.
It's a great movie. It's just a great movie.
Yeah, that's the problem. But that's the reaction, right? right yes yes uh so has it gone better uh it's gone i mean a little bit better sure i mean undoubtedly uh i think the main problem is that this argument about diversity in hollywood specifically is a bit of a i feel like it's a bit of a misnomer sometimes because it's not about diversity in terms of statistical how manyians do we put in how many movies or whatever it's about like authenticity and storytelling like making good movies and part of that is having asian people in decision making positions you know as producers or executives because as you know right that's the layer that is like you can be all diverse as you want here and whatever but when you hit you you as when you're making something you go up the chain of decision making eventually you hit this layer where suddenly everyone is like we can't cast this person obviously because this person you know we need this so we you know we need a gay asian here and then you're like oh this is where the this is where the problem is.
The problem isn't down here with the creators. The problem is in that decision-making layer, in Hollywood anyway.
Right. Absolutely.
Yeah. Because they can give people kind of like cursory decision-making power, but then really, it's not there.
And so I think that affects the storytelling because you you have people who are either they're trying to tell diverse stories but they fuck it up because they they put the diversity before the story and then everyone looks bad the project doesn't go well and then what what worse than we were when we started right so i think that is the main problem to me. It's not casting, you know, on camera is one issue, but the executive level and the producer level is the other issue.
Yeah, absolutely. And it does.
It's a story that matters most of all. That's what always succeeds.
Yeah, because we all want good stories. We don't want to just make shit for the sake of it just because it has a bunch of Asians or whatever, you know.
we want to make good shit. So how does that happen? That happens because decision makers are able to have taste and tell what's good and what's authentic and not force inauthentic decisions onto good stories, right? Right.
Absolutely. In that vein, I'm just wondering, what do you think the next step for you in terms of main character energy? Your next stint hosting The Daily Show is coming up in march um if you could get your own show what would it be i know i think it's working rather well with all of you shifting honestly i know there was a big search for a for a king but or not a queen it would have been a king um but what how do you like that and would you like your own? Or is this kind of group thing better, do you think?

Yeah, I love The Daily Show.

I think the group thing keeps one person from burning out, which I think is important.

It's a significant problem.

It's a significant problem.

I think it gives a different perspective every week, which I think is interesting.

I think the truth of the matter is also that nobody really knows, as in the general public, I don't think they actually know who's hosting. So meaning the way the show is consumed now is segments on social media.
No one is watching the whole show through. So as far as anyone's concerned, like Jon Stewart is still hosting it.
And in many ways he he's hosting the whole show we're just helping him out you know I mean so the way the show has consumed has played a factor in terms of we don't have that linear television here's the host and we're watching the show appointment viewing right now we're just watching clips. So it almost doesn't have that bigger impact.
Do you think that era is over? Would you want your own show? What would be different? When you say you want your own show, yeah, I would love to do my own show, but not a talk show. I would love to do a scripted narrative or a scripted movie.
I think, you know, because I get my rocks off doing to the camera satire from The Daily Show.

And we're never going to top that.

This is the institution.

It's the Harvard Business School of Comedy and Satire.

So I think the only other thing that what's more interesting to me is cracking scripted narrative and having social messaging through scripted narrative, which I think actually goes down better, you know, than someone to the camera kind of outrage, evisceration, lecturing, because that kind of, you kind of preach to the choir a little bit. You're better off doing a scripted narrative show that you tell a story that has a more impact in it, that makes people see other points of view, right? So to me, that's for my own project, that's probably what I would aspire to, you know? Yeah, under pressure too in a weird way but at the same time so last question we talked about your career as an actor a stand-up a host television late night comedian um if you could add another pillar what would it be i know you sell socks with your face on them um do you do you do you want to do a fourth thing no i'm okay i got i'm trying to figure out these these dumb jokes.
I'm trying to tell these dick jokes in a bar. That's all I'm...
Dick jokes in a bar. That's all you do? Just a simple dick joke in a bar, guy? Dick joke in a New York City dive bar.
Yeah, so you wouldn't want to do anything else? Would you go to politics or anything else? No, no. I'm trying to literally get these jokes to work on them.

That's it.

Yeah, yeah.

That's all.

That's all.

Okay, then I'll leave it at that. I really appreciate it, Ronnie.
You're a wonderful and creative thinker, and I really appreciate all you do. Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for speaking to me, and yeah. on with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Dave Shaw,

Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.
Special thanks to Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics.
If you're already following the show, you read past the hashtag. If not, go listen to a dick joke in a bar

or maybe on Pivot from Scott Galloway.

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We'll be back on Thursday with more.

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