‘It’s hot right now to have an Asian lead’: Manny Jacinto on The Good Place, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise
On YouTube, you can see Manny Jacinto getting the surprise of his life. During a break from filming, the stars of The Good Place are informed of the smashhit comedy’s mind-boggling plot twist. Castmate Jameela Jamil covers her face with her hands. William Jackson Harper shouts out loud. Jacinto jerks his head around frantically, as if trying to make sense of this astonishing development purely through the power of repetitive neck movement.
“I wish I could bottle up that feeling and have everybody experience it,” says Jacinto wistfully, five years later. “It was incredible.” Fans of the heaven-set sitcom will know what he means: the revelation was up there with the best plot twists of all time (spoiling it would be a crime). Yet for Jacinto the show did far more than pull the rug from under him. Winning the role of nicebut-ridiculously-dim DJ Jason Mendoza sent shockwaves through his entire life, catapulting the 33-year-old from relative obscurity to the kind of stardom that invariably accompanies a Netflix success story.
Now, Jacinto is set to appear in another twist-laden TV show. Nine Perfect Strangers is the latest star-studded collaboration between Nicole Kidman and writer David E Kelley, who previously worked together on Big Little Lies. Kidman plays Masha, the mysterious Russian leader of a wellness retreat called Tranquillum House, with Melissa McCarthy, Regina Hall and Michael
Shannon among the troubled guests. Jacinto plays resort worker Yao, who, for reasons not immediately clear, is utterly dedicated to Masha’s vision.
In fact, in Nine Perfect Strangers few things are immediately clear, and it seems the set was a similarly confusing place – largely because Kidman rarely broke character. “I didn’t necessarily know who I was speaking to whenever Nicole and I were working together,” says Jacinto. “Sometimes I’d be talking to Masha and maybe I might get a glimpse of Nicole but I wasn’t sure, it was a weird line. Some of the cast would joke that they didn’t actually meet Nicole until they wrapped.”
Despite the bizarreness both onand off-screen, Nine Perfect Strangers is essentially a serious drama, and quiet, dignified Yao is the polar opposite of Jacinto’s most famous role, the exuberant and perennially clueless Mendoza (think Joey Tribbiani but far, far slower on the uptake). Did he always see himself as a funny man? “Absolutely not,” he insists, albeit with perfect comic timing. “When I got The Good Place, my agents were like, are you sure they got the right guy?”
That said, it took a while for Jacinto to see himself as an actor at all. Having moved from the Philippines to Canada as a young child, he studied engineering at the University of British Columbia, where he developed a passion for hiphop dance. He had never done anything remotely similar before, and is well aware of how strange his sudden obsession must have seemed. “I was 19, the point where most sane people would be like: what the heck are you doing with your life? But I couldn’t help but move. When I would take naps people would tell me I was twitching.” He soon started participating in dance competitions, aiming to become a backup dancer for an artist like Justin Timberlake, but eventually grew disenchanted with the industry. “It was a little overwhelming. There aren’t regulations so a lot of the jobs are through word of mouth and I’m not good at networking – that was a disadvantage.”
Jacinto moved into the apparently more meritocratic world of acting soon after. He had initially taken classes in order to improve his stage presence, but found the character psychology and emphasis on revisiting past memories profoundly therapeutic. The industry wasn’t wall-to-wall positive self-realisation, however. Initially, the scripts he received tended towards Asian stereotypes: “an IT technician that just spits out jargon or a martial artist, purely there for physical purposes.” Growing up, Jacinto didn’t consciously notice the way Asian actors were typecast, but now thinks it’s no coincidence that he latched on to the handful of less reductive examples, including Justin Lin’s student crime caper Better Luck Tomorrow, and cult stoner comedy duo Harold and Kumar. When he read The Good Place script, he was simply relieved that his character “had depth”. He pauses. “When I say depth, in Jason Mendoza’s case it’s a very shallow pool.”
Since that breakthrough role, the parts he has won have been increasingly varied. Later this year he will appear as a pilot in Top Gun: Maverick, another shoot led by a charismatic Hollywood star. “Tom Cruise is a very intense man and he expects no less from his co-stars,” explains Jacinto. “Once he shakes your hand you’re just entranced. It’s almost like a Masha thing.” (Kidman was, of course, married to Cruise for a decade.) Jacinto seems genuinely giddy about his latest project, a romcom with Jenny Slate and Charlie Day called I Want You Back, in which he plays the love interest of Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez.
In the past, he has spoken about the ways Asian actors are rarely cast as romantic leads: does he think things are changing? “It’s better,” he says, citing the success of 2018 blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians. But he remains cautious in his optimism. “Some people might argue there’s an overcorrection, trying to get an Asian male lead just because right now it’s the hot thing. I’m hoping it won’t just be a little blip in the timeline.” With the versatile and very funny Jacinto in the frame, you’d hope that such regression would be one narrative curveball too far.
Nine Perfect Strangers is on Amazon Prime on 20 August.