Jon M. Chu may be the toast of Hollywood, but the director still credits his hometown and the Bay Area for his enduring cinematic vision.
Cover and feature liaison, Hope Patricia Daly, hpdpublicrelations.com; stylist, Liat Baruch, @liatbaruch_; grooming, Su Naeem, @madeupbysu; NB44 red coat, nb44.com.
On the second day of 2025, director Jon M. Chu (@jonmchu) gathers a handful of meaningful items and scatters them across the desk of his Malibu home.
There’s a rare first-edition print of The Wizard of Oz gifted to him by Ariana Grande, who stars in the director’s latest film, Wicked, a model of the Emerald City train from the same movie and a signed VHS tape of E.T. given to Chu by Steven Spielberg. It also holds a coffee table book titled The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop and a stack of artistic ephemera. Multicolored Sharpies also sit atop the desk. Chu loves the writing tools for making bold, expressive marks.
Are the Sharpies a metaphor for Chu’s life? Maybe. He was born and raised in the Bay Area—Los Altos, specifically— as the youngest of five children from immigrant parents (Larry from China, Ruth from Taiwan) who encouraged complete immersion in American pop culture, music, television and film. “We took music, dance and art classes. We went to shows every weekend. The arts were always a part of our upbringing,” says Chu.
His parents supported him when he started making mini-movies with their video camera. The only caveat: “It wasn’t supposed to be a hobby. I had to study it like a craft,” says Chu, who attended Pinewood School (pinewood.edu) in Los Altos. “My mom bought me all the books and expected me to study them.”
Chu’s diligence paid off enormously, including a string of culture-shifting films like Crazy Rich Asians (2018), In the Heights (2021) and, most recently, Wicked. With countless accolades and glowing reviews, Wicked has earned nearly $700 million globally, cementing its place as the highest-grossing musical film adaptation in history. The highly anticipated second installment, arriving in November, is poised to make an equally powerful impact.
Jon M. Chu poses with one of his prized possessions (the broom from Wicked) at his Malibu home.
Chu, who is 45 but looks like he could appear in one of his films as a twentysomething, notes he’s a product of a region and an era—the 1980s and '90s—when nothing seemed impossible in a quest to change the world culturally and technologically.
His father, Larry, owns and still runs Chef Chu’s (chefchu.com) restaurant in Los Altos. “I went there after school every day and did my homework at the bar,” says Chu, who saw his first movies (including E.T. and Oliver and Company) at Old Mill. “Customers would come into my dad’s restaurant and share stories about the startup they were working on or whatever they were creating— and always in terms of what tomorrow could look like.”
Back in the kitchen, his father and the restaurant’s culinary team worked long, hard hours. Chu says he absorbed the region’s outsize dreams in this tiny tableau. “This gave rise to the notion that I could outwork anybody. And with Silicon Valley’s work ethic and the Bay Area startup mentality— once I went to Los Angeles, I was most prepared to prove myself at every turn.”
Chu wasn’t an overnight sensation; he takes pride in it. He directed movies like Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) and Jem and Holograms (2015) before making the blockbuster and culture-shifting Crazy Rich Asians. He’s put in the work to arrive at this red-carpet moment where every A-lister wants to be part of one of his projects. Says Academy Award-winning actress Michelle Yeo, who starred in Crazy Rich Asians and Wicked,“Jon’s ability to find the humanity in larger-than-life stories brings a unique sense of inclusivity and creativity to any project.”
NB44 blue bomber jacket, nb44.com; Cartier watch, cartier.com.
“Life is short, and we only get this time together on a movie to make something that can outlive us, so why not make it a beautiful journey?” says Chu, noting that Silicon Valley also taught him the tenets of collaboration. “I don’t believe in genius, but I believe that people can do genius work together. If you prep enough and you’re in the right moment with the right people, genius work can come from that. I can’t forget what I witnessed as a kid in Silicon Valley. Combining focus and discipline with the ability to be emotionally available with your work is a potent combination.”
Another Silicon Valley lesson that stuck with Chu is perseverance. “Steve Jobs said we’re here to put a dent in the universe. I mean, I grew up in a restaurant, so everyone who worked and ate there had a passion and a desire to change something in the world,” says Chu. “Part of that is learning to survive everything that gets in your way when creating the dent. You need a lot of heart. You have to love what you do, and you have to work your butt off, stay up all night and suck it up when things aren’t going well and the whole world is doubting your invention. You have to see it through.”
One thing Chu continues to see through is his cinematic style, which continues to evolve. I’m curious about his camera use and its progression, as it looks at once familiar and unconventionally nuanced in a way that feels uniquely his—almost like dance choreography. This is true for musicals In the Heights and Wicked but also for Crazy Rich Asians, which reflects a fish-out-of-water experience.
Chu agrees. “I learned how to use the camera from my dancer friends. They were the only ones who would help me make my movies,” he says. “They had certain things they were trying to communicate with dance, and I had to learn ways to enhance their message. By doing that over and over, I learned where to position the camera and give them room to tell their story."
Chu's desk includes a collection of cameras and items like a first print edition of The Wizard of Oz, gifted to him by Ariana Grande, star of Wicked.
Does Chu recognize a turning point in his filmmaking? “The thing that scared me the most was my cultural identity crisis,” he says. “Crazy Rich Asians confronted my crisis of being Asian and American—and one in Hollywood—and I had this beautiful vehicle to use through the character Rachel Chu [actress Constance Wu] for an Asian American to visit Asia for the first time and force the audience to be on her side by experiencing a culture they hadn’t seen before. It changed the landscape of what an Asian American movie is with Asian American actors, or Asian actors from all around the world.”
Once audiences experienced the film, Chu says there was no turning back. “You know the power of movies? The world’s perspective can change over one weekend, and it did. It’s something I hadn’t fully understood until I experienced it. I have limited time because of my work and kids, so why waste it on anything other than something with purpose?”
The director is currently editing the second part of Wicked. His upcoming projects include an animated film adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go! and a Broadway production of Crazy Rich Asians, which had its first table reading with the cast this winter.
Chu will draw on the foundational lessons of his family and home throughout these projects and those that follow.
He tells the story of a press junket at his father’s restaurant to mark the release of Crazy Rich Asians. The press showed up in droves, and Chu’s mother brought all his awards from grade school through high school (think Stanford basketball camp and team mascot school) and displayed them on tables. It was her declaration of affection and a way of saying she understood her son’s singularity and drive.
Chu shakes his head and smiles at the memory, and he grows sentimental about his parents’ devotion. “For the press event at the restaurant, they had so much stuff from my childhood that they couldn’t even fit it on all the restaurant’s tables, so they put the overflow in the trunk of their car,” says Chu, who says his parents opened the car’s trunk for reporters to view.
Loro Piana gray jacket, loropiana.com
Last fall, Chu couldn’t attend the premiere of Wicked. His wife went into labor the same day, so he welcomed his daughter Stevie Sky into the world while audiences got their first glimpse at the blockbuster and paparazzi swirled the red carpet. However, 20 of Chu’s family members flew from the Bay Area to attend the event and support him. “I was very scared, because I’m usually the one to manage the situation produced by [this big group],” Chu laughs. He needn’t have worried. “They became fast friends with Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo and Jeff Goldblum—and they already knew Michelle [Yeoh]. My family owned the red carpet!”
And now, so does the world’s favorite director from Los Altos.
A few days after our photoshoot, Chu attended the Gold Globe Awards. During an acceptance speech where Wicked reeled in a statue for Cinematic Box Office Achievement, the director said, “We can still make art that is a radical act of optimism, that is empowerment, and that is joy.” In other words, we should all defy gravity.
Chu defies gravity in his home's library.
Photography by: TRACY EASTON
