Ronny Chieng - On The Path To Perfection

Ronny Chieng may never attain it, but it’s all about that grind.

- Joy Ling

Everyone who knows of Ronny Chieng likely is aware of these trivia about him: He’s a stand-up comic of Malaysian Chinese descent; he spent his foundational years studying in Singapore; he both pursued law and cut his comedic teeth in Australia; he’s famously senior correspondent on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Oh, and as satirically pointed out in Netflix’s short Ronny Chieng Takes Chinatown, he was ‘Mr Five Lines’ in Crazy Rich Asians.

It’s funny, because in a 2019 panel interview about landing the role, Chieng jested about telling his agent his new business model was the caveat that he would only do “200-million-dollar movies with [an] all-Asian cast”. Fast forward to 2021, Chieng appeared as underground fight club ringmaster Jon Jon in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Which, needless to say, featured a predominantly Asian cast and raked in USD360 million worldwide at the box office according to Forbes.com.

You start to wonder then, seeing a fellow Southeast Asian manoeuvring the global stage, with a Netflix special Asian Comedian Destroys America! and Comedy Central TV series International Student, all based on sincere personal experiences, whether he regards the Asian identity as integral to his career.

“Yeah… no, it definitely varies on the project. I did Bliss with Salma Hayek and Owen Wilson,” Chieng recalls with a light chuckle, “and in that movie, the ethnicity wasn’t a factor in that story. So I’d say it depends on the project you’re working on and what you’re trying to say with it.”