10 Quick Questions for Chin Han

Growing up in Singapore, did you have access to any American TV shows?

Singapore was very interesting because it was a British colony before, so when I was growing up in the ’70s [and ’80s] they still had a lot of British television. I remember watching Crown Court or the comedies like 'Allo 'Allo! or Brideshead Revisited. I watched a lot of British shows. I even watched Australian shows. [In] the late ’70s, we started getting more American shows there, and so my exposure to television is quite eclectic. And then the game changer — which was Happy Days. Everyone wanted to be the Fonz. It was so fun to get American television, and I remember loving all of it. The sitcoms were so incredible in that particular decade. Then we had Taxi and we had Cheers and we had Moonlighting. The shows that were so wonderful, wonderfully written. That’s my experience with American television.

Chin Han plays Simon Wang in the new Disney+ series “American Born Chinese.”

Carlos Lopez-Calleja/Disney

Now that you’ve worked in multiple U.S. cities, do you have any favorites?

For purely sentimental reasons, Chicago, because that was my first Hollywood movie, so to speak, The Dark Knight. So Chicago holds a very special place in my heart, including the deep-dish pizza and the amazing jazz bars that we have in that city. I’ve lived mostly in L.A. I’ve done some work in New York. I love all of the big cities.

You’ve posted photos with quite a few dogs on your social media. How many pets do you have?

I travel a lot, so it’s a little tricky to have a dog. Especially over the last few years, the quarantine situations with bringing pets to different countries has become even trickier. The last movie I did, for example, Mortal Kombat, was in Australia, and they have very strict quarantine laws. So I don’t have pets, but I borrow them from friends all the time. I’m very willing to babysit their pets and dogs when they’re away. If you do the deep dive and you see more of my photos, you see that they’re all different breeds of dogs.

You had to learn kung fu for your role in the Netflix series Marco Polo. What other skills have you had to take on for your characters?

I learned the cooking of various cuisines — from Asian street cooking to Western food to molecular gastronomy — on the movie Final Recipe, which was the first time I actually worked with Michelle Yeoh, back in 2012. I cooked up a storm in that movie.

You’re shooting a Mortal Kombat sequel this summer. Who’s your dream action movie costar?

Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger — those are the action stars for me growing up. Obviously, they're all at different stages in their career now, but to be able to do a split like Jean-Claude Van Damme with him in a movie would be amazing.

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Who were your acting inspirations?

I loved the dynamism, the vibrancy of American actors growing up — watching Al Pacino bring the roof down is amazing to behold, but at the same time, because I had such an eclectic education in film and television, I did enjoy the kind of measured and classical performances of Anthony Hopkins, for example, in The Remains of the Day, which was so precise. I enjoyed William Hurt. l still love Anthony Hopkins, Meryl Streep. Jessica Lange was amazing in the ’80s and ’90s with Frances and Tootsie and of course, Dustin Hoffman.

What would your perfect day off look like?

I’m a big museum wanderer. I can wander from one museum to another. I can do that for hours. I would like to — these are all museums in different places — I would like to first wander the Saatchi Gallery in London, take a plane over to New York and wander the Met [The Metropolitan Museum of Art], and then come back to L.A., sit at LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], have a cup of tea and maybe finish up the day with a movie at the theater at the Academy Museum [of Motion Pictures].