![]() ![]() “I want to kick ass in something without anybody laughing. “I want to do something that's meaningful to me, to the community, something that's subverting expectations,” he said in the email. Yang wrote an email to his agents and managers about what he wanted for the next chapter of his career. The threat of the pandemic, of living on borrowed time, was clarifying. In summer 2021, just as vaccines were rolling out and the world was slowly opening up again, Yang took stock of his life and went full Marie Kondo on the parts that no longer worked. The high degree of difficulty didn’t ever really phase Yang through some alchemy of pathos, comedic timing, and charm, he made an online scammer almost forgivable. ![]() In the tradition of great rom-com parts-Julia Roberts' scheming saboteur in My Best Friend’s Wedding, Tom Hanks' double-crossing capitalist in You’ve Got Mail-Yang was able to transform a dubious character into someone you genuinely root for. But the film turned out to be a huge hit. Love Hard was anything but typical, and had a somewhat tricky premise: here was a dweeby Asian guy catfishing a white woman from across the country. In 2021, he had his first shot as a romantic lead in Love Hard-the Cyrano de Bergerac of Netflix Christmas rom-coms-opposite Nina Dobrev. Post- Silicon Valley, Yang quickly proved to be an actor with range, vacillating from bread-and-butter comedy roles in films like Crazy Rich Asians to surprise turns in dead-serious thrillers like Patriot’s Day. By the time he landed a role in Space Force, the Netflix comedy series that starred legends like Steve Carrell and John Malkovich, he had grown from someone who set up punchlines to someone with a real narrative arc. I'm not surprised at all that he's able to do dramatic roles.” “Jimmy was really great with all that, and always dialed in a subtle nuanced performance. “To do the kind of comedy we were going for on Silicon Valley, the actor has to get the joke but also be able to play the drama of the scenes without ever looking like they're trying to be funny or reaching too hard for the comedy,” Silicon Valley creator Mike Judge wrote to me in an email. And in the last season, he became the surprise series baddie, the final boss. But Yang proved a natural scene-stealer, adding specificity and depth to a character that seemed to have been written as a one-note joke. Initially, the Jian Yang character was just supposed to be a three-episode bit part on the show’s first season. “They always say, George Clooney got rejected on 17 pilots or something to that effect. “That was my college,” Yang says of the HBO comedy that made him a star. Later, as I sit in front of one of those kidney-shaped pools with an elevated jacuzzi, he brings me a pot of tea, made from mint he picked out from their garden. He’s excited to show me the Tiki bar, an interior design project that the couple built together. Yang greets me at the door in a slouchy Billy Joel-Stevie Nicks concert tee, registering less like the wisecracking man-child he’s played in various roles and more like a serene dad who spends his weekends at Home Depot. It’s a sunny Saturday morning when I pull up to Yang and Kimmel’s stylish Hollywood Hills home. Overhearing her narrate the couple's meet-cute, Yang breaks into a sheepish smile: “Hey, I know what I want!” “I just think it’s very hard to find in modern times,” she tells me. But Yang's gambit worked they've been dating ever since. “I thought that was so on brand for Jimmy-and so shocking for me as a girl in 2021!” Kimmel says. The night led to a second date, which led to a third.īy date three, Yang said he was ready to make things official, which caught Kimmel off guard. “It was so damn close I walked there,” he says. As luck would have it, the hotel was even closer to Yang. For their first date, Kimmel booked a table at the Cara Hotel, one of her go-to spots not far from where she lived. ![]()
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