The common thread of my comedy shows is conflict and, I guess, the frustration of people who either argue with you or just say stuff which is blatantly incorrect, and nobody calls them out on it.
— Ronny Chieng
You don't need to go far to see the hatred and abuse that happens online. Even using social media is anti-social because people are always on their phones.
Sometimes, we want Asians in the media, but we don't want them to talk about being Asian. For me, that's interesting because I'm from Asia. If you want me to be on television but I can't be Asian, I'm not being true to myself.
Every time I do something, I think, 'Am I portraying Asian people in the way I want to be portrayed?'
I've found that if you have big thighs, as I do, long underwear will not ride up.
I think the whole 'tiger mom' thing is a very common trope. People like to show Asian moms giving pressure, but they don't really show the love that comes with it.
Writing a whole series was a crash course in screenwriting, which is a very different muscle to standup comedy writing.
I come from the corporate world, where everyone has a five-year plan, but performing arts doesn't work that way; you just kinda do the best job you can with the gig you've got.
When you do comedy shows, you usually don't finish until about 11 P.M. Then you have this adrenaline dump, and you get hungry.
We're pretty down-to-earth at 'The Daily Show.' Everyone is pretty sane. We don't party crazy.
When you do any job well, it looks very natural.
I like to think we're all the sum of our experiences, so no one has my perspective.
We were constantly traveling between Malaysia and Singapore, which is connected by a bridge at the southernmost end of Malaysia. In fact, when I was a child, I had to go between countries twice a day to go to school, because I was living in Malaysia at the time but attending primary school in Singapore.
Japan is the only country I have visited that I want to go to again. I just feel the Japanese have such good taste and dedication to craftsmanship in everything they do. They also merge the traditional and modern aspects of their culture so well.
I grew up in Singapore, and I went to Australia for law school, and after law school, I started doing stand-up comedy.
My style of comedy is probably absurdist, observational, and Olympian.
I'm made of dead stars, I eat a lot of fruits, and I hate peak period travel, as opposed to my character on 'The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,' who is made of jello, eats vegan, and loves camping.
I saw 'Seinfeld' on TV and told my mum that would be something cool to try one day, and she was like, OK, 'Here is a five-year-old telling me what they want to when they grow up' sort of thing, and what would they know, right!
Melbourne City is an awesome city. You can get everything: You can get open air. You can get city life. You can get cafes and bars. I started comedy here; I lived here for 10 years. I went to university here. This is my home ground.
I think when people talk about race relations in America, they talk about African-American and white people. Asians are not often brought into the conversation. But there's a historical legacy of issues between them. It's hard to be like, 'What about us?' But we are a little underrepresented.
Early on, people told me I was making Chinese people look bad. I've been living with this accent. I had already been doing standup for a while. I knew my voice already. I myself never wanted to make my accent the butt of the joke. I never want it to be, 'I'm laughing at your accent.'
Underwear shouldn't hurt. If it hurts, you gotta change.
I don't want to ever tell a stereotype joke for the sake of it. I'm going to tell the story that I feel is true.
'The Daily Show' forced me out of my comfort zone.
I stopped eating processed sugar and carbohydrates.
That's the thing about 'The Daily Show' - we're doing four shows a week, so we can't be too precious about what's going on.
The beauty of the university world is that you can use it as a microcosm to parody anything in the 'real' world.
My approach to comedy is that whenever it comes to me, I write it. With 'The Daily Show,' you have to write stuff every day, and that's a new experience for me, to not only write on someone else's schedule but a daily schedule.
There's a lot of comedy in being the outsider. You can say, 'That's weird. Why do you do it that way? That's foreign to me. That's pretty weird.'
We didn't really have vacations when I was a child.
We promote Asian storytelling - not just Asian stories but Asian people in stories with the full spectrum of the human experience. When you say, 'Oh, it's not enough attention on Asians. It's more black and white,' that game becomes like you're playing the discrimination Olympics.
I once did a gig at an office Christmas party in the showroom floor of a friend's father's home appliance shop in the suburbs of Melbourne. It was to a much older crowd. Without a microphone. Or a stage. With the queue for the buffet behind me.
I've been seesawing between not doing too much racial stuff - because I'd rather be known as the funny comedian than the funny Chinese comedian - but at the same time embracing my voice and who I am and what makes me unique, you know, which is the racial background.
I got heckled off stage in Western Australia at a music festival once.
The way Singaporeans talk is they use less words.
Whatever what your job is, you want to do a job that matters.
You just have to tell your authentic stories, and hopefully, it resonates. Whatever your story is, you just have to tell it authentically.
You don't have to speak English to have sophisticated political opinions.
America is the NBA of culture. So to have Asian people in the biggest entertainment market in the world, in Hollywood, is cool.
I invested in bitcoin - was that because of my degree? I don't know.
Obviously, you're a better writer at 31 then you are at 19. Hopefully, you're also a better human being and better at describing reality.
America - it's the best and the worst.
University characters are prime for parody, you know - the self-entitled rich kids to the self-important protestors to the international students.
That's really my main message: everyone is stupid, and no one is more stupid than the rest.
Always being the outsider, you... feel comfortable everywhere, but you don't really feel at home anywhere. I definitely draw comedy from that.
When I first came to Australia, one thing that struck me was how everything closed early. Singapore is very much a 24/7 place. You can get good food any time of the day - in the middle of the night, even.
If you go to Japan, you have to take the train and go visit different capital cities. Just sticking to one city would be a shame, considering how easy it is to get around. Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto all have different vibes and sights.
What happened was, in my final year of university in Australia, there was a campus comedy competition, and I felt like it was something I could do. I won that competition, and I kept doing it, and I couldn't get a job in law. So I just kept doing comedy.
American comic Bill Burr makes me laugh a lot.
I'm the worst night owl, because I'm a self-loathing night owl who thinks, 'No, I should be getting up early.' It feels unproductive. I must get over that.
