TV Writer/Podcaster Jessica Gao & Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir
Hollywood isn’t exactly teeming with Chinese-American writers. So Jessica Gao makes up for it by doing the work of several people: writing on shows like HBO’s Silicon Valley and Comedy Central’s new sitcom Corporate, doing feature rewrite work, and co-hosting the Whiting Wongs podcast alongside Community creator Dan Harmon. While helping us drink Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir, Jessica talks about the time her parents sent her back to China on a plane by herself as a child to learn the language, when she quit her job as a marketing temp because they offered her a full-time job with benefits, and the inside-the-room genesis of Silicon Valley’s infamous “middle-out compression” joke.