Chloe Bennet stars in Hulu’s “Interior Chinatown,” Charles Yu’s series based on his novel of the same name.

(Annie Noelker / For Time)

Det. Lana Lee, played by Chloe Bennet, sparks debate almost from the moment she appears on screen in Hulu’s “Interior Chinatown.”

The series, premiering Tuesday, was created by Charles Yu and is a highly stylized adaptation of his National Book Award-winning book. novel of the same name. It takes place in two universes: one is a send-up of the Wolf Entertainment-produced crime procedurals that have long dominated NBC’s programming; the other centers on Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang), a waiter who attacks a Chinatown restaurant.

Willis always felt like he was a background player in other people’s stories, until he witnessed a crime.

Lana is brought in to help on the case due to “cultural considerations”, like Detective Lisa Gilroy. Sarah Green says this sarcastically during a televised press conference. It doesn’t matter that Lana knows nothing about the community.

Willis is stunned the moment he sees Lana on a small television screen at work, as waiters and table cleaners jostle around him. Who is this bright and beautiful woman? Can she help him forget his life in Chinatown? But his less motivated colleagues, including best friend Fatty Choi (played by the actor Ronny Chieng), focus on something else: his race, which they try to discern.

Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang) and Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet) in a scene from Hulu’s “Interior Chinatown.”

(Mike Taing/Hulu)

This is reminiscent of another scene featuring Bennet. In season 3 of the FXX comedy “Dave,” she plays Robyn, a photographer and girlfriend of the show’s eponymous rapper. The night they meet, Dave asks if she’s Latina.

Bennet, born in Chicago as Chloe Wang – her mother is white and her father Chinese – is used to these comments. She eventually took her father’s first name as her stage name after having difficulty booking roles. She explained her decision in a Viral Instagram comment 2017 and in subsequent interviewssaying a casting director told him, “You’re not white enough for the (lead) role, but you’re not Asian enough for the best friend role.”

“I’m kind of used to my identity being cannon fodder,” Bennet said in a recent Zoom interview. “It’s like an open territory where people can have fun guessing what I could be or what I couldn’t be, or how good of something I am.”

There are also projections that Bennet witnessed, such as questions about his father’s masculinity.

“The problem with internalized projections is that you attribute your self-worth to being… okay with it. But it really puts you in a position where you don’t feel whole,” she adds, arguing that there are objective advantages to being white. “But that’s only if you consider existing in an imperfect society.” You cannot build your psyche and your understanding of yourself based on something that is actually arbitrary.

“I’m kind of used to my identity being cannon fodder,” Bennet says. “It’s like an open territory where people can have fun guessing what I could be or what I couldn’t be, or how good of something I am.”

(Annie Noelker / For Time)

These discussions were among the topics of discussion both in “Interior Chinatown” and behind the scenes. Yu compares his book and TV series to the “Matrix” films, saying that “in the world of this series, reality looks a certain way. It doesn’t look like what we see because we look at it from the outside and they experience it differently.

Lana, he says, “understands that there are certain rules and patterns and structures to things that Willis is only beginning to understand. And that’s part of what we see throughout history.

(Also, for those wondering: no, Dick Wolf has not contacted Yu about his book or the series. “I live in fear but also excitement that he might actually watch this,” Yu says. “My point for Mr. Wolf, if he’s reading this, is that his creative product has entertained me for hundreds of hours, and that translates into character satirical.”)

The book’s version of the character, who is named Karen, is also biracial. Yu says it’s to show that she can, for better or worse, navigate between a procedural where cardboard police characters take down organized crime in about 44 minutes and another reality, where a waiter searches for her identity .

“It’s important that she seems plausible as a person who could succeed,” Yu says. “That’s the idea of ​​the book and that’s the idea of ​​real life (because) for a long time, there was That, I don’t know if we call it a practice, but a reality for certain actors. If a show wanted people to give a vague whiff of ethnicity, then they could pick someone (like Chloe) and push them in any direction.

Charles Yu, author of “Interior Chinatown” and creator of the TV series, on casting Chloe Bennet as Lana Lee, who is mixed race: “It’s important that she seems plausible as someone who could pass . »

(Mike Taing/Hulu)

The TV version of this character has more attributes, in part because Yu says Bennet got him thinking about questions about the character’s history. She says she wanted to create enough layers in the performance that anyone rewatching the series after experiencing the twist would still find surprises and that this character who is forced to straddle two worlds “had this identity crisis and it is the most consistent thing in his.”

“Chloe is tactile and she has a way of making things more grounded and trying to find reality for herself through small details,” says Yu, explaining that they were talking about what the interior would look like from the character’s car or apartment.

Bennet, whose curriculum vitae includes a main role in the ABC “Agents of SHIELD» and a brief stint as a pop star in China – watch it video for his song “Uh Oh” If you want to see her give strong energy, Christina Aguilera admits that she has been obsessed with this character and this story since she read “Interior Chinatown”.

“He awakened a part of me that had been dormant in my psyche trying to navigate my racial identity in the industry,” Bennet says of Yu and his novel “Interior Chinatown.”

(Annie Noelker / For Time)

“Everyone has that (moment) where you click on an author and you say, ‘Oh, my God, this person was able to communicate these really, really sticky, diluted thoughts that I’ve had in my head for years , that sort of thing.’ it’s got dust on it,” she said. “It awakened a part of me that was dormant in my psyche trying to navigate my racial identity in the industry… You know, I didn’t go to l. I left high school with a GED from a parking lot in Santa Monica. My brain grew up on television and so my understanding of myself was largely shaped around (what I have. seen) of my identity on the screen.

“Interior Chinatown” didn’t have a therapist on set, but Bennet jokes that she gives her people a lot of money.

After the 2016 presidential election, she co-founder of RUN AAPI (Represent Us Now)an organization intended to help with the representation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders both on and off screen. But after being heavily involved in preparing for the 2020 elections and feeling tired, she chose to step back from the group. But today, like many Americans, she doesn’t know whether she should have done more as the 2024 elections approach.

As for the rest of her career, she is working on the development of a new project, although she does not provide details. Yu says there is potential for a second season, but audiences will have to watch to see what that could mean for Bennet’s character.

“I’ve been a vehicle for a lot of different things and I’m much more interested in developing my own stories,” she says.

And like her character in “Interior Chinatown,” she’s likely to catch people’s attention.