Chloe Bennet on 'Interior Chinatown' & Moving on From 'Agents of SHIELD'

After dedicating seven years of her career to Joss Whedon’s Marvel series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., actress Chloe Bennet, who played Daisy “Sky” Johnson on the show, is curating a “new chapter, creatively.” The pages of that new chapter include the animated feature, Rally Road Racers, and Interior Chinatown, an upcoming Hulu series based on the novel Charles Yu, that explores the life of an Asian-American actor facing cliché stereotypes and racism within the industry "with such a specific tone and such beautiful nuance." With so many projects in the pipeline, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with Bennet about the journey she’s taken to get to where she is now, and how excited she is to continue exploring her craft.

Though she’s grateful for the time spent on SHIELD, Bennet tells us that when the series wrapped, it allowed her time to “take space to really unpack everything from the past seven years.” In fact, the commitment to such a long-term project meant Bennet had to watch numerous opportunities pass by. Now, she tells us she’s taking on roles that have personal importance to her, and that allow her to feel represented and stake claim over her voice. How better to do so than in voiceovers for Rally Road Racers with stars like Jimmy O. Yang and J.K. Simmons, which she says are an “incredible challenge of the imagination.” The children’s movie features a sweet cast of critters on a high-speed, fast and furious race across the famous Silk Road trade route.

During the interview, which you can read below, Bennet tells us how her time on SHIELD helped prepare her with the skills for voiceover work and why these movies are so important for her to be a part of. She also discusses Interior Chinatown, whose author, Yu, also serves as showrunner and co-writer with Taika Waititi. Bennet opens up about why she was “aggressive” about pursuing her role in the series, and teases how the show “breaks all the rules.” Read on for all of this and tons more!

COLLIDER: I’ve got a ton of questions, let's jump on in. If someone has actually never seen anything that you've done before, what is the first thing you'd like them watching and why?

CHLOE BENNET: Oh my God. Wow, that's a great question. Honestly, I'd say watch my music video from when I was in China at 15 called “Uh Oh.” One, because it's the funniest thing that I've ever done, it's a good laugh, and then I think maybe you can contextualize the chaos that ensues later, and the instability in which I maybe started my career, and then other decisions might make more sense. So I would say watch that [laughs].

chloe-bennet-agents-of-shield-social-feature — Image via ABC/Marvel

Good answer, I wasn't expecting that one. This is a jokey question, but do you feel like you tweet too much? I saw you tweet like once a year.

BENNET: [Laughs] I used to tweet before and now I just would rather not engage.

Listen, I don't know how any of my actor or director friends are on social media, I just don't get it. I don't know how they do it, so I give you props for being on social media.

BENNET: Yes, I used to be slightly more masochistic, and I figure just being in the industry is enough, so I don't need to engage too much.

‘Agents of SHIELD’ Was “All-Encompassing”

I definitely want to touch on Agents of SHIELD. When the show started airing, what was your dream in terms of how long it might last?

BENNET: When the show started airing I was 20, and I truly had no real way to contextualize what I was even a part of. And I don't think I was really able to fully do that until the show wrapped when I was 27. I was really happy to pay my rent, and I think the best-case scenario was definitely, at the time, like, I just wanna kind of keep being a part of something, being a part of something getting and to work. It was a dream to be able to work, the industry was way different during that time.

That was like over 10 years ago. And, to think about how things have changed now, and kind of what you accepted– I'm was a young woman, a mixed race woman, the opportunities for me weren't the same that they are now. So, I was really just grateful to be a part of that at the time. Definitely, probably I was just kind of probably wanting everything to just keep going. Did I realize what seven years of production and 10 months out of the year meant, and how that takes a toll on you [laughs]? No, but, you know, we were young.

I can understand what it takes to actually make a television show like that, that's on 22 episodes a year, but the average person doesn't understand the real commitment of time and your entire life to making that show.

BENNET: And it was an extremely physical– There were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, especially in the beginning. That was all-encompassing in like every fiber of my existence, and it's a real thing. It's a real thing whether or not the show was the type of success that people wanted it to be. It still took up a lot of space.

I remember telling Clark Gregg way back when, “This is definitely gonna go for at least a few years because of Marvel,” but I had no idea it would go seven years and 136 episodes.

BENNET: Yeah, I don't think any of us really did. It did just keep going. It's an incredible fanbase, but when me, Chloe the person, separates myself from that, it's definitely, like, there's a lot of plus sides and then there's a lot of other things that came with kind of being a part of something for that long and that intense.

agents-of-shield-Chloe-Bennet-clark-gregg — Image via ABC

Like I said, I can't believe any actor stays on social media.

BENNET: [Laughs] Yeah, exactly.

Why ‘Rally Road Racers’ Is So Important

So, when did you decide that you were only going to work with Jimmy O. Yang from now on?

BENNET: [Laughs] I don't even know how that happened, but he is the prominent man right now! It’s funny, the movie (Rally Road Racers) was such a pandemic little baby. I recorded that in my guest bedroom closet, and to see it come out now, and then be working every single day on [Interior Chinatown] with him, has been really just kind of weird. That kind of made Interior feel even more exciting, as well, because it's like, “Oh, well, that's so weird. I've been acting opposite Jimmy's voice for the past two years for this movie.”

It's really funny that you said your closet; one of my questions was, was this something you literally recorded in your closet? Because every person I've spoken to who's done voiceover work in the pandemic, it was in their closet.

BENNET: Yes, it was very much in my guest bedroom closet. And the director actually came here and stayed in my living room and I stayed in my closet because I was so bad at setting up the technology, and all of that, that I just couldn't do it. So I had him do that ,and yeah, I was looking at an old pair of shoes that I had kept, actually when I was performing in China, almost the whole time I recorded the whole movie, which was funny.

I think you touched on it a little bit, but you've voiced for DreamWorks’ Abominable and the Invisible City. How was the voice work for this project similar to that one, or was it radically different?

BENNET: You know, I love voiceover. I think it's actually so much more challenging than people think. I think a lot of people are always like, “You get to just show up in your pajamas!” And look, did I show up in my pajamas? Yes, for this project I did. But for other things, it's actually like an incredible challenge of the imagination. When you have really nothing to work off of? I think this is to speak to how SHIELD gave me such important infrastructure for my career. There's a lot of special effects and blue screen and green screen work on SHIELD that actually ends up being extremely beneficial in a lot of other ways that you don't realize, and one of them being voiceover, which is like, if your character is walking up to something and leaning down and picking something up, and you have to imagine what's in front of you, you know, that changes your performance, what you're seeing. So imagining it takes actually a lot more energy. So it was really special to have one, SHIELD, and then two, Abominable and DreamWorks, that experience, to then be able to record this in my closet. It was a really, really fun process. It's a very different thing.

But I do have a soft spot for these characters, that I feel represent me, for children to see, like Abominable and Rally Road Racers. These are stories that take place, obviously, in China, and being Chinese, I didn't have stories like that. So to be a part of that in any way has been cool.

And also, you get to watch it with families.

BENNET: Yes, exactly. To have young kids just have access to those stories, and not even being about that, but having that being a backdrop for all kids, not just Asian kids, it is an important kind of thing to normalize. So being a part of projects like this, I'm just very grateful for Jimmy and for (director) Ross [Venokur] and for J.K. [Simmons] for being a part of it.

‘Interior Chinatown’ “Breaks All the Rules”

I'm really looking forward to Interior Chinatown, and one of the things is the way that, I believe visually, you guys are going to be telling the story. I don't know how much is known, but what can you tease people about the project?

BENNET: Oh my God, we're so in the thick of it right now. It's pretty incredible. I can solidly say there's nothing like it out there right now, and we're making something that feels really important, but then diametrically just so weird and wild and funny. I'm very excited for people to see it. We have some pretty heavy hitters, you know, (author/showrunner) Charlie Yu and Taika Waititi are pretty brilliant, and this as a collaboration for them has been wild to be a part of and I just really can't wait for people to get to see it.

I could be wrong as I say this, but isn't it one of these things where – and again, basing this a little bit on the book, but when Jimmy's character is in one reality it's gonna look one way and it's gonna look another way when he's in something else?

BENNET: Yeah, it's something like that. There's a lot. I don't think I can give it away, but it is, it's that, it is a thing that everything is changing. I don't know how much… I don't wanna give too much away, and I don't know what will end up being– we basically break all the rules, we break all the rules.

Yeah, I don't wanna get you in trouble, but it's exactly that. From what I understand, it's gonna have a visual style unlike anything else on television.

BENNET: It breaks all the rules, but it also, somehow, it does it with a wink. We were somehow also telling really important stories, in a way that I think is gonna be very entertaining and digestible.

It's also very unusual for the writer of the book to be the showrunner of a show, so can you talk a little bit about working with Charlie on the series and what it's been like working with the person who wrote the book?

BENNET: It's actually pretty incredible. Just that skill set of Charlie to be able to be a novelist and also completely switching mediums and doing what he's been doing on Interior. It's a pretty incredible display of talent. Obviously alongside someone like Taika, it's a really, really wild buffet of creativity. And it gives so much more perspective, you know, it really makes you view the medium of TV, which is something for me, that's my thing, I love TV. I love the challenge of telling stories over a long period of time and working with crews in that way, and with writers and with cast in a long– You know, it's much harder to do, maintaining relationships over the long period of time. And so for that to be translated, the book, and to see how they're changing it from the book and how things are being interpreted, it's pretty special. It's really, really special. Charlie is a genius, Taika is a genius, and I hope that we're capturing it because it's definitely– we're in the thick of it. I can't wait for people to see, honestly.

I don't know where you are in the filming process, are you near the end? How is this writers’ strike affecting your show?

BENNET: Like every production, the writers’ strike, it is what it is, and all I can ask is that writers get compensated for their work and get paid in a way that's fair. And you know, the show, everything was submitted before, so we are trying to finish what we're doing. But yeah, I mean, we are all in support of the strike and it's unfortunate that it has to fucking get here, to be honest.

Yeah, it's terrible. Do you only have a little bit of time left of shooting?

BENNET: I don't know how much I can say about where we are in the shooting process just because of other things, but yeah, we are shooting.

For me, I am concerned more about when shows still have months left of shooting and they're relying on scripts. But if you only have a few weeks left then it's definitely a better position.

BENNET: We have about a month left, but they were ahead of it, and luckily, again, we have a great team of people around us where they can kind of stand up for themselves as writers, but also follow through and support the rest of the crew that still have jobs and have to shoot.

Completely. I think you and most people, everyone is supporting the writers, and are going to support the directors and the actors if that were to come up at the end of June. I think that the streaming model, not to put myself in this, but there needs to be more transparency on the data and more compensation for people working on streaming shows.

BENNET: Yeah, I don't know how versed enough I am in all the details, but I do know, simply, that people deserve to be compensated for their work. And if you know the structure and the system of Hollywood has changed and shifted, which it clearly has, then that needs to change and shift and reflect and still compensate the workers across the board.

We're on exactly the same page. My last thing on Interior, what was it about the project that said, “Oh, I have to do this?”

BENNET: Actually, when I read the book I actually had to stop reading it because I get pretty bad anxiety about – I think it's maybe part of just being on something for seven years knowing you're not available, and watching the scripts and movies go by that you can't do because you're on a show – but I remember reading Interior and actually having to stop the book because it spoke to my understanding of the psychological effects of, particularly, Asian American racism, and the ways that that kind of trickles down into your own psyche and the way you view yourself. The way that Charlie wrote about it with such a specific tone and such beautiful nuance that was not taking itself too seriously. I mean, it was just kind of like a hit in the face of like, “Wow, I need to be a part of that,” knowing, obviously, this is written in script format, this is definitely gonna be developed into something. And that was years ago, when the book first came out. I actually stopped reading it because I was like, “Oh, I'm gonna get too much anxiety because I'm gonna want to be part of that so much.” So I stopped, and then a couple months later, I was like, “Oh, I gotta finish it. I need to know what happens.”

Then years later, I saw that the show was moving forward and I just fucking went after it, pretty much with everything in me. I very deeply identified with a mixed race woman on a procedural show, and towing the line between two worlds that she's very much a part of, but also between two worlds that she's also kind of not a part of either. So it's definitely something that I couldn't have identified with more, and was pretty aggressive about being a part of it, to be honest.

What was it like for you then when you found out you got the role from Charlie, or however you found out you got it, being such a passionate fan of the material? What were you feeling and what was it, like finding out?

BENNET: It's weird, it's weird because it's one of those things where it always felt like it was gonna be mine. So I had that fear and feeling of like, “Okay, I can trust my gut when something feels like it's the right thing for me,” and then there was also that like, “Holy shit, okay! For a second there, I didn't know!” So there's like two kind of parts of my brain that operate at the same time, which is that feeling like this was always mine, that like deep-seated, like, knowing when I first read the book I had to be a part of this, and I was like, “I think I will be a part of this,” but then you have to do it, right? You still think about it and you have to go and get it. And then having that feeling and being like, “Okay, like I trusted my gut and I knew and I followed through and worked really hard,” and that was a really special feeling. Then also that feeling of going like, “Wow, okay, well, I didn't know I could do that, but that's cool,” you know?

I actually had booked Interior before doing Dave and Interior didn't start shooting for a few months. And part of why I started doing Dave was because I had time to kind of in between, and so we shot Dave after I got Interior. So that was like a really fun thing to kind of come out. Because at the end of the day, you know, I wrapped SHIELD in 2019 right before we went into a pandemic. And so for a long time, I was like, “Okay, the show is gonna end and I'm gonna really get out there, and I have big ideas for what I wanna do, and the stories I wanna be a part of, and the tone of the things that I wanna be a part of, and I'm excited to kind of explore that!” And then, you know, we went to a global pandemic. I think that was like a beautiful time to kind of just take space to really unpack everything from the past seven years, and being on SHIELD,and then between Rally Road Racers and Dave and Interior, it feels like really like starting a new chapter creatively, and with the work that I want to do, so I could not be happier.