Alan Yang

Writing

In 2009, Variety magazine named Yang one of "10 Screenwriters to Watch."^[7] He worked on Last Call with Carson Daly and South Park before landing a job in 2008 as a staff writer for the then-upcoming NBC comedy Parks and Recreation. During the six months before that job began, he wrote two screenplays, White Dad and Gay Dude.^[7] White Dad was sold to Sony in 2008,^[8] and Gay Dude was on the Hollywood blacklist before being sold to Lionsgate Films in 2011 and released in 2014 as Date and Switch, starring Nicholas Braun and Dakota Johnson.^[9]

In 2012, Yang started writing a sitcom about a father-son relationship; when Parks and Rec producer Greg Daniels suggested he make the characters Asian, Yang declined as he assumed it would not be successful.^[10] On Parks and Recreation, Yang became friends with actor/comedian Aziz Ansari, and the two later co-created Master of None, which was well received—especially for its diverse cast and subject matter—and earned four Emmy nominations.^[11] Yang and Ansari won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for their Master of None episode, "Parents." Yang said in an interview that Brian's character in the episode, played by Kelvin Yu, was largely based on himself and his family. "It's based on my dad, Aziz's dad, and our families in general. A lot of that stuff was written as conversations that Aziz and I would have."^[3] Yang and Ansari were also awarded a Peabody Award in May 2016.^[12][13]

According to Yang, while topics on the show include racial diversity and racism, the main goal is to be authentic to their life experiences. "We try to do a blend in our show of what we talk about in our real lives," he told Variety in June 2016. "There's an episode or two about being Indian or Asian on TV, about dealing with your parents who are immigrants — but we fall in love, we have work trouble, we have all these other stories that make the characters more well rounded."^[14]

In 2016, Yang wrote the second episode of The Good Place and directed an episode in the show's second season.^[15]

In 2018, he reunited with Matt Hubbard, who worked on Parks and Recreation with Yang, to create Amazon's Forever, a comedy-drama series starring Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph.^[16] Yang and Hubbard collaborated again in 2022, co-creating Loot for Apple TV +, also starring Maya Rudolph.

Directing and producing

For Parks and Recreation, Yang directed two episodes: "New Beginnings" (2014) (Season 6, Episode 11) and "Swing Vote" (2013) (Season 5, Episode 21). He also occasionally appeared as the bassist of Andy's band, Mouse Rat.

In 2017, Yang directed the Jay-Z music video "Moonlight," which depicted the show Friends with an all-Black cast.^[17]

He was as an executive producer for Master of None, a co-executive producer, supervising producer, producer and co-producer on Parks and Recreation, an executive producer on Date and Switch (2014), a consulting producer on South Park (the episode "Miss Teacher Bangs A Boy" (2006)), a producer on the Funny or Die short Parks and Recreation is the Wu Tang of Comedy (2010), and as an associate producer on Last Call with Carson Daly. He served as a consultant for the 2007 MTV Movie Awards.

Yang co-created and executive produced the Amazon series Forever, which is a drama/comedy about a married couple and their adventures in Riverside, California, Yang's hometown.^[18] Yang was also an executive producer of Little America, a show he describes as "like Black Mirror, but instead of being super-dark sci-fi stories, it is immigrant stories."^[18]

Other work

He is friends with chef David Chang and was featured in the Netflix non-fiction original series Ugly Delicious episode "Fried Rice," where he discussed Chinese cuisine. On November 29, 2020, Yang served as David Chang's expert lifeline on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and helped Chang become the first celebrity to win the $1,000,000 top prize for the Southern Smoke Foundation charity, along with Mina Kimes, who was Chang's phone-a-friend lifeline.^[19]

Film

Television