Ronny Chieng
Ronny Chieng is an actor, born 1985.
Ronny Chieng holds commerce and law degrees from the University of Melbourne, class of 2009, and went into Australian stand-up rather than into a firm. He was born in Johor Bahru, Malaysia and raised between the United States and Singapore. His first hour, The Ron Way, won Best Newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2012 and sold out its run, and he was invited to Just for Laughs in Montreal in both 2012 and 2013.
The stage persona is built out of the training. He works in escalating precision, laying out an argument at speed and getting angrier as the logic gets tighter, which is a lawyer's rhythm used for comic aggression. It transferred directly to The Daily Show, where he is a senior correspondent and a rotating host, and it made him the go-to casting for a very specific type: the man whose competence exceeds his patience.
Film has used that type well and briefly. Eddie Cheng in Crazy Rich Asians plays status anxiety as a full-body condition. David, the harassed executive in M3GAN, is the only person on screen who has read the risk assessment. Jon Jon in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings runs a fight club like a hospitality manager. Add Chao in Joy Ride, Jay Wayne in Godzilla vs. Kong, and Yeon in Vacation Friends 2.
Television and voice work fill the rest: Kahn in King of the Hill, Fish in Kung Fu Panda 4, Ji Gong in American Born Chinese, Dr. Lee in Doogie Kamealoha, M.D., and a role in Interior Chinatown.
Movies (13)
TV (15)
- The Daily Show (1996)
- King of the Hill (1997)
- History of the World: Part II (2023)
- Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. (2021)
- Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai (2023)
- The Miniature Wife (2026)
- Interior Chinatown (2024)
- American Born Chinese (2023)
- Mulligan (2023)
- Grimsburg (2024)
- Aunty Donna's Big Ol House of Fun (2020)
- The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (2026)
- Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! (2026)
- John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in L.A. (2024)
- Julia Zemiro's Home Delivery (2013)
Where to start with Ronny Chieng
The efficient introduction is Crazy Rich Asians. He is on screen for a handful of scenes and walks off with several of them, which is the shape most of his film work takes.
Then M3GAN, where the persona gets its best written outlet: a corporate manager whose panic is entirely justified and entirely useless. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a smaller, sillier variant of the same energy.
Joy Ride gives him more space than any other studio comedy has, and Interior Chinatown is the most interesting recent thing he turns up in. The Daily Show is where the actual craft lives, and if you only sample one thing, make it a correspondent segment. King of the Hill is the animated left turn.
The films
Crazy Rich Asians is the one that introduced him widely and he gets one of its best scenes without doing very much. M3GAN is the funniest use of him, and Shortcomings is the closest to a dramatic part.
The television
The Daily Show is the day job and where the delivery was built: escalating incredulity rather than punchlines. Interior Chinatown is the recent dramatic series, and American Born Chinese is the family one.
The animation
A growing amount of voice work, most of it comic and most of it recent. Kung Fu Panda 4 is the biggest, and Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai is the best made of the series work.