MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Every week, a well-known guest draws a card from our Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Jimmy O. Yang says as an Asian American immigrant, he often felt invisible when he came to America at 11 years old. But he discovered comedy as a tool for countering people's expectations of him.
JIMMY O YANG: Whether it's, like, verbal bullying or something like that, or people just, like, talking trash, making jokes. And I think maybe that's how I developed a sense of humor is, although with the limited English language that I knew, I found a way to talk back and fight back, you know, and not let someone get the best of me.
KELLY: Yang turned that early lesson into a career in comedy. He's worked his way up from bit parts to supporting roles in hits like "Silicon Valley" and "Crazy Rich Asians." Now he is starring in Hulu's "Interior Chinatown." He plays Willis Wu, a waiter who is stuck as a background actor in a police show, and he says the role reflects the feeling of invisibility that he had for much of his life.
YANG: I mean, when I first started acting, I was a background actor. And then I had a two-line part. I was Chinese Teenager No. 2, you know? I was Person In Line. But all those parts, I felt like - even those small parts, I felt like I snuck in and I scored, you know, 'cause I wasn't supposed to be here. That's how I felt.
KELLY: When Jimmy O. Yang spoke with Wild Card host Rachel Martin, he drew a card that let him talk about one of his biggest fears.
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: One, two or three?
YANG: I'll take the first one.
MARTIN: Does the idea of an infinite universe excite or scare you?
YANG: Infinity scares me.
MARTIN: Does it truly?
YANG: Yeah. If it's something that I can - you can put a number on, and it could be a billion trillion (vocalizing) plus one, whatever. It's fine if I can wrap my brain around it. Infinity is something I cannot wrap my brain around, and I think it's why me, and probably a lot of people, are so afraid of death, because you are gone forever.
MARTIN: (Laughter). Yeah.
YANG: If you're telling me...
MARTIN: Yeah.
YANG: ...I am dead for a trillion, billion, million years...
MARTIN: Yeah. But you're not going to know.
YANG: ...Plus a trillion years, and then I'll get to come back for one day, and then I'm dead again for another - then I'm fine, OK? But if I'm gone forever, very scary.
MARTIN: Yeah.
YANG: So infinite universe is a little scary. Anything infinite is scary. I look up - I look at the ocean at night, I get a little scared. It seems so vast and infinite.
MARTIN: Oh, yeah, no, I don't - I actually - I know this is a controversial opinion, but oceans - I like them. I like to be on a beach. It's nice. But I find that all very unsettling.
YANG: Thank you. Too vast.
MARTIN: (Laughter) It's too big. I don't get it.
YANG: People pay extra - people pay extra for ocean views.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
YANG: I'll pay extra to not look at the ocean.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
YANG: Give me the city view.
MARTIN: The parking lot (laughter).
YANG: I'll look at, yeah, your parking lot, your utility closet.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
YANG: You know, don't give me - give me a room with no windows. I'm not paying extra to see the cliff of my death...
MARTIN: (Laughter). That's right.
YANG: ...Into a vastness of infinity.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
KELLY: And you can hear more from that conversation with Jimmy O. Yang if you follow the Wild Card podcast.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS YORK SONG, "ALONE A LOT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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