BY DINO TAKASHI

Zoë Chao, the star of Amazon Prime’s “Modern Love” is extraordinarily busy these days.

The show, which is a romantic anthology series based on The New York Times column story submissions, features her as “Zoe,” someone who struggles and experiences delayed abnormal circadian rhythm. Her day is night and her night is day. She found love in a diner.

Chao has been steadily booking roles for Asian-American lead characters written for light-hearted romantic comedy genre on film and TV.

During the onset of the pandemic in 2020, she played “Sarah Yang” on the first season of HBO Max’s “Love Life.” She played a young woman in her 20’s who was afraid to move into adulthood.

Although Zoë mostly ACTED as an Asian model minority character, her most recent roles allowed her to explore more multifaceted, layered characters that need no explanation for being Asian-American. The characters are allowed to be messy and are fully human. They can be imperfect and that’s what makes her grateful with these roles. For Chao, being Asian is more than just that funny best friend who gets to help the main character get their shit together. 

During our chat, Zoë mentioned how proud she is of her work in the romcom space. She is fulfilled as one of the most recognizable Asian-American faces in this genre. On the horizon is a new APPLE TV+ murder-mystery comedy series “The After Party” alongside Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, Ben Schwartz and Ilana Glazer. Zoë is  America’s Sweetheart in her own pace and time. She talks about representation and the hard work she puts in to claim her own space. 

Hi Zoë, where are you?  

New Hampshire! We had a huge family reunion to celebrate my grandmother turning 91 this summer but we had to cancel it and so I'm seeing her safely with a mask on and spending time outside together. 

I saw your show Love Life last year. It’s one of those shows that I binged during quarantine. Can you guide us through with your character Sarah Yang? 

Sure!  Season 1 of Love Life came out in the beginning of the pandemic. It was a very bizarre time. It was a hard time to celebrate anything really but people have continued to discover the show which is really lovely and continue to reach out about Sarah Yang which is so sweet! They are filming the Second Season right now. Being Sarah Yang is a gift. She is a complicated, messy person. I haven't gotten to play a character that evolved over a decade. We see her relationship with Darby (Anna Kendrick) change, we see her navigate a serious substance-abuse problem and she really has a full arc and the audience feedback has been very encouraging and they go on this journey with her and it is so lovely to hear it from the loyal fans of the show... It's really nice to be inside someone who is figuring it out and is very much a work in progress. It was also important to me to take a break as an Asian American actress who has played a lot of roles that fall into model minority tropes. It was very exciting and important for me to be this woman who is allowed to be a mess called Sarah Yang.

For those who haven't seen it, how is Sarah Yang comparable to you and to anyone who could relate to her? 

Sarah Yang is a bottle of pop that shakes up. You open the top and it explodes! She is full of life and you know she loves a good time, feels alive around people and she is the life of the party. She is also a friend in your mid-20s that you want to go out with all the time. I think she's also a very loyal friend. At the end of your 20s, people find themselves sometimes at a crossroad where you're trying to figure out what path you are meant to pursue. People mature at different times and everybody's priorities can be different. Often when you’re in a long term relationship with a friend, you find yourself at a place where it's like OK, we're not necessarily going in the same direction anymore. Sarah has to figure out how to deal with wanting to still be a party animal while some of her friends are deciding to focus more on work and relationships. I think she feels reluctant to grow up and wants to sort of keep chasing the night but she gets to a place where she needs to make some important healthy decisions for herself. We get to see her in a much better place at the end of Season 1.

Your social life is very much different compared to a normal person. How do you tie these in together being once a young adult like Sarah Yang? 

Yeah I mean there are parts of me that are Sarah Yang. I love to laugh, I love to hype up my friends. I love to go out dancing and I love the anticipation of the beginning of the night- like who knows where the night could go. I really get that and I think we share a similar sense of humor. There's a lot of me that’s Sarah Yang. But she’s also much darker and I was really nervous to get into that darkness.

Alcoholism is something that a ton of people in this world deal with.  It was an undertaking I wanted to portray her relationship with drinking in the most responsible way possible because it affects so many people in real life and so that was daunting. In the end, I say it was such a joy to sort of explore these darker corners with Sarah that I haven't gotten to explore with other characters.

For this role, do you think Hollywood has made any progress with having Asian characters who can play multidimensional roles like Sarah Yang? 

I think we're heading in the right direction. I think there's a lot more work to be done but it was the first time I was in the show in the pilot that there were two of us Asian American actors in one scene. We didn't have to explain or legitimize why we were both there or talk about being Asian American. We were allowed to just be in the scene and have that not to be the topic. And that seems sort of basic, but it's been very special for me and this is the first time I’ve been on set with another Asian American actor where we're just allowed to be ourselves, the conversation isn't about like “oh look at us two Asians in the scene.” I think Sarah Yang is a really special character because while she is the best friend, it sort of takes that and turns it on its head. The fact that there's a whole episode dedicated to her, sort of unraveling, felt much more robust than just being the best friend. Her story line wasn't just serving Darby Carter’s storyline, she had her own life you know and I give a lot of credit to the writing team and Sam Boyd for understanding how important that is. We're still in a place where you know we need to see Asian people being fully robust people on screen. 

You've been very busy recently. Has acting always been “the dream?” 

Yes I grew up on old movies. My mom is a huge movie buff and so I grew up watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. I would play dress up all the time. My parents would catch me having a full on conversation with the bookcase when I was like four. They just knew that I had a rich imagination and then I was playing out scenes that I saw in movies and continued to do plays in high school and in college. I just didn't know that it was something I could pursue professionally until the last year of college. I  didn't realize that when I was studying art history I was really spending [most of my] time acting. “If I look at where I choose to spend my time and [what I] gravitate to: it is performance.”

So on a whim, I auditioned to go to grad school and I immediately did three years of theater training. My parents were very supportive because they are both visual artists. They understand what it's like to pursue one’s passion and they've always been super supportive.

Do you think theatre really prepared you for this career that you're actually enjoying right now?

I think it starts in the theatre. I think that for me, my understanding of acting is rooted in theatre and everything it represents- the work ethic,  the team building that goes on when you're putting on a play. The respect for the script. The sense of all of that has been introduced to me through theatre and I take that with me on to the set. When I need to sort of re-center and get focused on: “Why am I acting? What are we doing here? What are we doing today?” I sort of go back to early days in the theatre and yes it gets much more simple for me. And we’re telling a story with these people here today and it's a very alive experience even if it's captured in film. 

How is Modern Love different from Love Life? 

They're both anthologies, which is cool. In Modern Love, every episode is its own tiny movie with its own cast and a story and there's a beginning, middle and an end. You get together for a week and you get to create this whole world and this whole relationship with another person. That's challenging but also really fun versus a whole season to build something. This is a very sweet story between two people who fall in love while trying to remain true to themselves and it was a joy to work on. It was also the first project back after many months off from work due to the pandemic. It was a scary adventure but it was a lovely story to sort of slide back into work with. 

What’s the difference between Zoe and Sarah Yang?

I would say that Sarah Yang is a very social butterfly. She gets a lot of energy from people and I would say that Zoe's existence is completely different. She is a woman with a delayed sleep phase syndrome circadian rhythm. It's a neurological disorder in which the sleep wake cycle is out of sync. She goes to bed at like 8 AM and then wakes up at six or so and lives at night. Her life is full and she makes no apologies for living in an atypical way but I wouldn't say she's a people person. I think for her, living at night is a quieter lifestyle than people who live “by a typical schedule.” They both have their own challenges; they are just very different. 

Talking about the pandemic, how did you try to reconnect with yourself or go back to basics? 

It was challenging and it remains challenging. I think my partner and I really returned to nature. We realized that it was our way to stay sane. We actually did two cross country trips out of his little Honda Fit where we camped inside his car and we managed to stay away from people and we got to explore this country in ways we never had the time to do. It was a very moving exercise because this was also around the same time there was a huge racial reckoning that was happening- George Floyd and Breonna Taylor- there's so much ugliness in this country that has deep roots.

But also to be reminded on this cross country trip just how beautiful physically the land is. It was a wild exercise but yeah that was the way that we spent our time and we were traveling in a very basic way. We had a little tent (that attached to the car) so it looked like a little car diaper. A couple days ago, we were making our way up to New Hampshire and our car was flooded from (hurricane) Ida. That car was kind of a home for us. We’re literally in the process of saying goodbye to it but we're very grateful to her. She was a part of the family.

How did you end up getting the role of Zoe in Modern Love? 

I had worked with both the director Jesse Peretz  and the executive producer Anthony Bregman. They have become very close friends and their bodies of work I admire so much. They came to me saying we have this really sweet story and we are hoping you can do it we're hoping so much that we have made the character’s name “Zoe.” I didn't have to audition for it because I worked with them closely before. It was very dreamy and to return to work with people that I knew well was very comforting. 

Both of these shows were set in New York City. What's your take on dating in general and falling in love in a big city like New York?

I think Zoe is kind of a lone wolf until she meets Jordan (Bgenga Akiinagbe) and she goes about her life like “This is my schedule. I am not necessarily looking for someone or feeling the need to couple with someone” and sort of stumbled on Jordan in this diner and “love” kind of found her. Any relationship is really hard and it’s a miracle that two people come together and they have a particular set of challenges which is like existing on different ends of the clock and trying to come together in the middle. For Sarah she was in this long committed relationship with Jim (Peter Vack) but relationships can often go longer than they should and I think Jim outgrew their relationship. I think Sarah wanted to continue at a pace that Jim and Darby weren't interested in anymore and so Sarah felt really left behind when they started to “adult.” New York is such a rich background for anyone. I love living in that city and part of it is you just never know what's gonna happen. It offered a rich playground for both characters.

We hardly see Asian characters in lead roles especially in American romcoms. What do you think about Asians being lead for this genre? 

Oh my gosh!  I am trying to change that. A lot of my work exists in the romcom genre. I did a movie called Long Weekend where I was the lead, opposite Finn Whitrock. I am the romantic lead for this TV show that will be released in January 2022 at Apple TV+ called After Party. I play Sam Richardson’s love interest. I think my work is to just continue to be out there and keep booking roles that weren’t available to me and to people who look like me even four years ago. Every time I audition for a part, it's political for me and every project is meaningful because my face needs to be out there.

We're very excited. I think we're going to see Julia Roberts in the face of an Asian-American actress. I know you've actually been in these light-hearted rom com movies, but any genre in particular that you hope to be in? 

I love suspense and psychological thrillers. I love mysteries. I love murders! I don't know why I do but I do a lot of true crime like many other women and yeah that seems like a natural world for me to explore. I also am not opposed to action - I love to move.  I love to dance. I was an athlete when I was younger. If the writing is good, I am there. If the people making the project are real human beings, I'm there. It’s all about the story so I am open to all genres. 

If you were a book what would you be and why? 

Ok this is a wild question. There was a book that I read when I was probably 12 that I remember. It was the first time realizing that you could have inner thoughts and not say them, that you could be saying one thing and thinking another thing. And that is The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾. It's by Sue Townsend.  And it's written as a diary and it focuses on this person who is trying to figure out who they are and there's something very sweet and really funny. It was one of the first books that I laughed out loud reading. So that's a throwback to today. If I were a book I would be The Diary of Adrian Mole. 

Season 2 of MODEN LOVE is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video