Everywhere you look lately, Zoë Chao is there. Last year she starred in the Apple TV+ series “The Afterparty” and more recently she showed up in the rom-coms “Your Place or Mine” and “Somebody I Used to Know.” She also joined “Party Down,” the ensemble comedy about cater-waiters that is back on Starz after 13 years. Chao plays a new character: A chef who leans into experimental (possibly inedible) ideas instead of your more standard hors d’oeuvres.
“When I was auditioning, I was shooting ‘Your Place or Mine’ and I was staying in an Airbnb and the person above me was a personal chef,” said Chao, “and I told him I needed some help and did he have any tools I could use as props? And he said: ‘I’ll one up you. I’ve got tools and I’ve also got my chef’s uniform.’ So he gave me a hat and the shirt and a cravat and he got me ready for my audition, which was really sweet.”
Everything’s coming up Chao these days. But all careers have low points. When asked about one, she recalled an audition that went terribly awry because she simply didn’t know what she didn’t know.
