Rosalind Chao & Ebon Moss-Bachrach Talk Sci-Fi Tropes and Preparing for New Roles | Guest Spotlight
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You're listening to Comedy Central. Hey, welcome back to The Daily Show. Our guest tonight is an accomplished actor in film, television, and theater who currently stars in the hit Netflix series Three Body Problem. Please welcome Rosalind Cha. ♪♪

Ross. Yes. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. I've been trying to get you on the show forever. We are so excited to have you on. Thank you. I don't know if you know this, but Ronnie is only interested in having Asian guests on, and I only am interested in having women on the show. So you were the only guest that we could agree on. Yay! Yay, bigotry. Yay!

So, yeah, I've been watching you forever. I've been watching you. Careful. I have so much blackmail on you. We've been talking a while now. So, Roz, I saw her in Joy Luck Club and loved that movie. What a classic.

American movie. The only movie I can watch with my mom. Really? And we both enjoy it just as much. And so...

When I moved to America, I think I-- can't remember how I reached out to you or-- Yeah, you reached out to me first about food recommendations in New Zealand. In New Zealand, yeah. And you didn't use any of mine. We have different tastes in food, I realize. No. Yeah, you like sausages and like really greasy. What? And then you said--

This is slander. I'm known for good food choices. I know. You sent me the list. You sent me-- I looked through my texts. You sent me your list four times. I have not liked a single place on that list. Wow. Wow. I'm sensing some conflict in this friendship. Yeah. Our taste-- and then the place I took you to, when I went back, you said, really? You went back there again? What? Oh, in Chelsea? Yeah. But OK. Anyway. OK. All right.

You're skipping ahead here. You're skipping ahead here because I reached out to you on Instagram. I was like, oh, Roz, big fan of yours on Joy Love Club. And then you came back and you called me and you said, why don't you have an American accent? I didn't say it that way. You said... I did not say it that way. You called me back and you said, Ronnie, your accent... No, I'm not an accent. Okay, you tell me what you told me. Okay, I'll tell you what I told you. You called me just to yell at me about my accent. No, no.

Because you asked me about this, the accent coaches I used on Three Body Problems. And I said, Ronnie, you really should try because you could be a movie star. You could play. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know if you know this. I forgot. I kind of already managed to get into movies. I forgot.

So I thought I was doing okay in America. You are. This is slamming it here. This is slamming it here. I thought he could be a box office star. Yes. This is very Asian mom, by the way. I know you're hosting a daily show, but you could be. This was before hosting the daily show. Remember, I said you should be one of the hosts of the daily show. Okay, okay. It's very political. We can't talk about this in the air. You're embarrassing me in front of the co-workers, mom. Sorry.

- No, keep going, keep going. I like it. Bring out the blackmail. - No, but the accent, I'm sorry. - And then we worked on the accent a little bit. I turned you on to these accent coaches. You never called them. - Yeah. - And you wanted a freebie. - And now you're here. - He wanted it free from me. - Yeah. - And so he would record himself saying, "I hate myself. I hate myself." Over and over, over text. All different versions of it. Southern accent. - No, not just that. Not just I hate myself. I also said,

Make America great again. No, but so great my American accent. Okay, let's hear it. Has it improved? I heard a couple missteps earlier on. Okay, fine. But the Boston accent is... The Boston accent is killing. Gotta party with clam chowder. Oh, God. Okay, here's my American accent. I hate myself. I hate myself. You're back to the effete version of yourself. It's very feminine. Okay, well, coach me. Coach me. All right.

-I hate myself. -I hate myself. -I hate myself. -I hate myself. -The L. The L. -Oh, I hate myself. -Better. Better. -I hate myself. -Yeah, there you go. -I hate myself. -There you go. -Thank you. -That's better. -Thank you. -This is... -I'm just making him feel good. -Yeah. -It's not good. -Thank you for all the encouragement. It's never getting better. I've just given up. -Okay, let's talk about your project right now. -Okay, all right. You have a project.

What are you trying to promote now? Just go. He's mad at me now. No, I'm not mad. No, I just talk in caps. Yes. I'm not mad. Oh, that's the other thing. His texts are all caps. And it's very stressful when you get it. Rosalyn, all caps. Heart palpitations.

Heart palpitations. Heart palpitations. And then also the other thing that happens is once he starts texting, he doesn't stop. No, no. It's incessant. It's incessant. For a good 45 minutes. Okay, okay. Stop bonding. Stop bonding. For days. Stop bonding. Stop bonding. Let's talk about.

What is what what what. What is what what is what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what WHAT I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'LL I'

how would you describe the show to someone who hasn't seen it without spoilers? - If you haven't seen it yet, I'm very disappointed in you. And I might ruin it for you, but you're still gonna have to watch it. So it's about, oh, Ronnie, I can tell, I can feel you judging me. Okay, you do it. - What? No. - You do it. - No, no, in my head, I'm just thinking, wow, you are such an Asian mom.

You literally told the audience they're disappointed in them for not watching your project. I was like... Yeah, just like... Someone has to. Just please describe... Okay, all right, all right. But don't judge me. Okay, so it's what happens... And you can interrupt if you don't think... I'm not going to interrupt. Okay, all right. He will. It's what happens. So basically, my character makes a decision early in her life...

that changes the course of humanity.

And the decision is made through trauma, extreme trauma. Am I allowed to say what the trauma is? -It's a daily show. -I'm not the boss of Netflix. -We did not find an answer. -Oh, okay. I'm not Ted Sarandos. You can talk about anyone. But you took a sip, so I thought that was a judgment. -No. -Okay. No, I think you can do it. I think you can do it. My mom literally criticizes everything. I can't even drink water without being in trauma. I can tell. See? See? That's judgment.

Is my drinking water accent okay enough here? Is this American enough? -Can you drink and say, "My soul"? -I hate my soul. Tell people about the TV show. So, three body problem if you haven't watched it yet.

is about basically what happens when someone makes a decision. Stop breathing so heavily. -What the... -Um... -You do breathe very heavily. -You're breathing... I can feel you, like, when I said so. -All right. I'm gonna come on. -Okay. -You go... You go with your thing. -I got this. -Okay, so, basically, my character makes a decision early in her life that changes the course of humanity. And, um, it starts a whole... Stop!

It starts a whole sequence of events that involves people from Oxford, this young group of people from Oxford. It involves basically bringing an end to life as we know it. Let's put it that way. It's a light comedy.

I'll tell you what. But you know what? It's not sci-fi. I'm so not into sci-fi. And this is really about how people react under extreme circumstances, which we are enduring right now, right? Yeah. It does feel that way. It feels like... Stop. Stop. Behave yourself. Yeah, we have a three-body problem right here.

No, but I wanted you to talk about it because I love the project. You do. You do. It's based on a book. Yes. I'm sorry. For like eight years now, people have been telling, white people have been telling me to read this book.

And when people tell you to read a book, you go, whatever, I'll read it when I'm dead or whatever. And then last year, I finally, because you announced that you were in the project, I was like, oh, I love Roz. I want to see what this is about. So I started reading the first book of three. First. First book of three. Okay. Okay, keep going. Correcting my pronunciation. I'm trying to plug your stuff right now. Can you stop? And then I read the first of three books. That was good. And...

I couldn't stop reading it. I finished all three in like a month because it was-- like, I don't say it's lightly. It's probably one of the best books I've ever read in my life. Yeah, you remembered every detail. And you remembered-- I was telling you about it. I was quizzing you about it. Yes, well, because I read the first one. I still haven't finished two and three. Don't admit that on TV. OK, OK. But-- You're a media rookie. Don't say you don't read the project. Say, yeah, I loved everything. I am about to. But he-- Ronnie remembered every detail of the books.

and was texting me parallels of each item. -In all caps. -In all caps. But you forgot some major storyline points, and I went back and I said, "Ronnie, you need to watch it again." So you watched it twice, right? -Yeah, I guess, yeah. -Yeah. And now you get it. -Sure. -It took you a while. -Yeah.

It is, it's fascinating and it's a little dark, you know. It does feel like are we potentially getting a glimpse into our...

extremely dark, apocalyptic future. - Yeah. - But at the end of the day, underneath it all, it feels like it's really about humanity and what human beings do in times of crisis. - Exactly. - See, why couldn't you have said that? - No, but that's exactly true. And there's a love story intertwined. There's a mother-daughter relationship that if I start to talk about it right now, I might get a little verklempt. But yes, there's...

so much drama, so many surprises in there that, um, if you had watched, you would know about. - -It deals with very... It-it deals with a lot of big concepts. -And, um... -Big concepts. Environment. You know, and people are gonna say... People are gonna think I'm saying this to be all woke-v-woke and whatever, but, like, I... When I read the book, it...

Most most I didn't realize that all the sci-fi I've watched and read my whole life has come from Westerners because I don't even associate sci-fi as the Eastern or Western thing I just think of sci-fi a sci-fi But I didn't realize it was all everything I've ever consumed from sci-fi is from Western point of view and that's and and the Western point of view is very individual hero is gonna save the day right and this was like

No one's going to say today, we're all in this together. Yes. You know? And it takes the, it's global. Yes. So it basically, it takes place around the world. It's not one country or another country against another. We all are joining together to save humanity. Okay, great. So. Well, I'm sure, I'm sure you deeply regret coming on, but we are thrilled that you did. I so appreciate you being here.

Thank you for having me. Oh, Ronnie. You can see Rosalind in Three Body Problem and Sweet Tooth. Both are streaming on Netflix. Rosalind Chow. Welcome back to The Daily Show. Our guest tonight is an Emmy Award winning actor you know as Cousin Richie on The Bear. Please welcome Evan Moss McGrath. They love you. That was very nice. You guys are very, very nice. Thank you.

Must be nice. Must be nice to be a... An Emmy winner. All these Emmys on the best show in America. Congratulations.

Congrats on your huge Emmy win. I don't know if you know this. We were sitting down the way from you. Okay. And we looked over and we said to each other, we're like, oh my God, the bear is right there. These are really good seats. Yeah. We were kind of peppered throughout the Top Chef team too. There was a lot of Top Chef folks, I think. Oh yeah. At the Emmys. Yeah. Well, right in my row. I don't remember. All I remember is you ignoring me.

Yeah, yeah. He's very upset about this. Yeah, I have no memory of you guys being there. I was like, hey, man. I was like, love you on the bed. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Next time. Don't feel bad. Next time. It's the usual reaction that Ronnie gets, so don't. It's okay. No, no, you have like a profoundly forgettable face. Forgettable face. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Totally forgettable. We're such huge fans of the show and huge fans of your character. The clip that we saw was from your episode Forks last season, which you, Cousin Richie goes on this like epic journey just in the course of this one episode. You have such a beautiful arc. Does Cousin Richie get to continue down that path?

path of evolution in the next season? What are you allowed to say? Say whatever I want to say. What I feel like saying. Exactly. You know, I don't know what your personal evolution is like. I think for Richie, he's

become aware that there's a path for him to find purpose and sort of live a maybe fuller life, a richer life in a way. But just because he's like aware of that path doesn't mean that he's like cruising up to the top. You know, I think it's like a struggle forward, back, you know, uh,

When he yelled for 46 years, you know, I think it's hard to maybe put the outdoor voice totally, like, to retire it totally. No, I think it's like a... Is that kind of liberating for you, though, to play a character like that? Do you ever just want to mouth off in real life?

- Yeah, like I'm, I think of myself as a fairly socialized, polite person. I live in New York, you know, with many millions of other people and you kind of have to, you know, fall in line. And if you sort of say what you feel every second of every day,

You hear that, Ronnie? That's great advice. So it is nice. It is nice to walk in the shoes of this man who is fully expressed to a fault most of the time. It's nice. Yeah, I blow off some steam. Yeah, nice. I mean, I'm not just saying this to be nice, but I feel like it is very beloved show. At the moment, I feel like America can't agree on anything other than the bear is good.

like everyone's always like oh the bear yeah everyone else is there great show and um when you when the just as an actor when the script comes in like when you read that script do you see did it pop on the page or were you like i just need some money yeah like a combination you know no um uh it was like one of those rare scripts where i did i read it and like within a few pages especially of this character he just felt

so vital and alive. Like, a lot of the time, I find myself, like, having to create a character a lot. You know, like, the script is kind of open-ended, and you sort of have to figure things out and build and create a lot. And this one, he just felt really fully formed, and I just had a...

I also felt like I knew people like this. I've run into folks like this a lot and spent some time and loved dearly some Richie kind of characters throughout my life. - And because the director is also the writer of this. - Yeah, correct. - And so how much of that came off on the page when you, 'cause it's a very distinct visual style, the pacing, a lot of this in the edit. - Yeah. - And it's so fast paced, it's anxiety driven, honestly, when you watch it. Sometimes it's like worse than watching the news.

when you're watching, there was one episode, I don't think there was any cuts in it. Or at least there were shots, so there was no cuts. It's trying to mimic a restaurant at its worst, like anxiety-driven energy. So did that come off on the page when you were reading it?

I don't understand your question. Oh, sorry. I don't even know if that was a question. I'm asking when you read words, do you know what the words mean? That's really what I'm asking. How is your reading comprehension? We don't have to memorize. We just read whatever they put in the prompter. So it's very...

Yeah, that's true. I thought, you know what? Okay, the level of anxiety, I didn't find that when I read the script. Because I love what I read. I read the first two scripts through the audition process. And I just thought it was really funny and very sort of tender in a way. This story about this kind of found family, a bunch of freaks in a way, or misfits or whatever you, whatever we're...

I'm supposed to say-- that found this home. And only when I watched the first episode many months later, and it was so frenetic and crazy and super-cutty and choppy, it reminded me a lot of skate videos from the '90s. It was so kind of wild. And especially in the first episode, where they're cutting video games into it, and it was super loud. I was like, oh, wow, that is not--

in any way what I envisioned the thing to be like. And I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I called my wife in and friends. I was like, is this viable? Are we going to go back? Because this was just the pilot. I was like, what do you think? We're going to make that season or what? And they were into it. But it took me a little while to marry the thing I saw with the thing I read. Oh, wow. Interesting. There's such good chemistry between all

all of you in the cast. It really, really feels like a tight-knit family. It is, yeah. Now, for Ronnie and I to reach this sort of palpable chemistry, we do trust falls in the back. Is it natural for you all to fall into a rhythm, or did you have to really work and rehearse to get there? We did--

I think we did have, like, innate chemistry. I think that's just one of, like, the strengths of the show is that Chris and our other showrunner, Joanna, and our great casting director, Jeannie, they put together a company. And, I mean, I don't know. Everyone weirdly does really love each other and get along. And obviously through shared experience and time together, that's how friendship grows. Is that instructive for you guys? There's also something about

like getting to travel and shoot somewhere else where you don't live. You guys shoot in Chicago. Yeah, that's a good point. Woo, one person from Chicago. Two people, two people. We have a very important question for you, and I hate to get political, but deep dish or New York pizza?

Careful now. I don't know. I've met a lot of Chicagoans who would say that deep dish is trash. They think, I don't know, they got a tavern style thing over there, which is thinner, which I like. There's also Detroit style. There's a lot of these Detroit style.

In Chicago, there's a lot of Detroit. I kind of have-- I like that more. I've had some good deep dish. That's a very politically safe-- Yeah, that was some-- that was nothing. That was some flip flop bullshit. We buy it. We buy it. Chicago serious. Chicago serious. You're about to start a Marvel movie. Mm-hmm. Yep. Fantastic form. The thing? Yeah. What kind of training do you get to do?

Yeah, I'm playing Ben Grimm, who becomes the Thing, who's a man encased in rock. So, yeah, I don't know, I've just been looking at rocks, you know, like, just kind of like... So you like the Stonehenge bit? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And he's scraping them orange, because my guy's kind of orange, too.

I should maybe take this trip out there. He knew. Yeah. What am I doing? I don't know. I've been reading a lot of comics. It's kind of nice. Just, you know. They gave me like this kind of Marvel Unlimited thing so I can just go on my iPad and go to any comic book that Marvel's ever released. That feels-- That's cool. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if someone was in Shang-Chi for five seconds, I want to welcome you to the Marvel Universe. You'll have a great time.

Thank you. Oh, man. You know, I did-- so I did a Marvel thing for Netflix years ago called The Punisher. I did The Punisher. You were great in it. Thank you. But when I was on a summer trip with my family in Croatia when I got, like, the-- when they asked me to do it. And so I got a call at 2:00 in the morning from this, like, Beverly Hills number. And it was the head of Netflix Marvel. And it was, like, 2:00 in the morning. And my, you know, my wife and my daughters were sleeping in the same room. And he was like, Eben.

I'm going to tell you three words that are going to change your life. Welcome to Marvel. And I was like, oh, thanks so much, man. That was great. And it was so disappointed in me. I was so like. Now you can scream. Now you can scream. Well, congratulations on all of your success. Thanks, thanks, Liz. Cannot wait. Love everything you do. Sun Hulu, June 27th. Evan Moss.

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