“All I know is that from a young age, whenever I was performing and acting on stage, I was so happy.” Yuyu Kitamura is all smiles as we connect over Zoom to talk about her new project, Dead Boy Detectives, and everything that has led her to this major career debut. She’s calling from New York, where an already infamous earthquake just shook the city moments ago, but her steadfast focus, drive, and love for what she does is palpable through the screen. “I always knew that when I was performing on stage, I would have the time of my life. And so that feeling, for some reason, I could never shake off.”

Growing up in Hong Kong as a young Japanese girl, Kitamura attended an international school whose multicultural approach and focus on the arts quickly helped her find her love for acting. With theatre opportunities built into her curriculum, she found a purpose in creating something with her classmates – and it is that same sense of camaraderie, creativity, and excitement that she exudes today. “I often wonder, if I grew up in Japan and just went to a ‘normal school,’ would I be who I am today?” She pauses. “I really don’t know. When I think about my childhood and my upbringing, I was always surrounded by such culture and diversity.”

“And within that, the arts was also something that my school really championed. I got to express myself and realise that, ‘oh, if I want to perform, that’s also important.’ It’s not just a stereotypical education that a lot of, I think, Asian standards lean towards. I found that being in the arts is also very valuable, and it’s also something that people can pursue if they want to.”

Now stateside, she chronicles her journey from an artistic kid to the rising talent she is today. “Somewhere along the line, it got into my head that I was obsessed with New York,” she tells me from the very city she used to dream about. “I needed to move here. I needed to be here. I remember Googling around the age of 10, ‘best drama schools in the world.’ NYU was on that list. And I had it in my head that this is where I was going to go.” If it isn’t already clear, once Kitamura sets her mind to something, she makes it happen.

Though even after moving to New York for university, it was back in her home city that her creativity really flourished once more. “I went back to Hong Kong right after college because of Covid and I decided to make my own first short film during that time.” Kitamura describes it as a ‘Marc by Marc Jacobs’ kind of project, where she wrote, directed, produced, and starred in it. But, behind her, there was a team of creatives eager to help where they could and reminding her what it was about the industry that enticed her in the first place.

“I came back feeling really upset that I wasn’t able to stay in the US, but getting to work with people who are incredible and happy to be part of a project made me feel like I had turned my back on my home for a second and forgot where I came from. Hong Kong has this gritty, can-do attitude. It is organised chaos, where people just get together and they do the job. It has this underbelly fire that runs in every production. Everyone’s trying to prove a point.”

While working in Hong Kong and applying for visas back in the States, Kitamura received the audition for Dead Boy Detectives from her manager. “When I read the character of Niko, I immediately knew who she was. Her soul and essence is my little sister. This girl is bright, endearing, so positive, and is always trying to give people more and be their ally and their friend.” With a bit of help from her dad, who read alongside her for the audition, she booked the role – and before long, she packed up her bags and bottled the sense of community and fire she found in Hong Kong and headed to Vancouver to begin filming.

When we first meet Niko, there is a sense of loneliness that surrounds the character. Grieving the loss of her father while trying to navigate who she is in the world, she shuts herself in as a means to combat unwanted attention she’s attracting from the outside. In Kitamura’s words, “Niko’s story is really about someone coming out of their shell and making a family for themselves.” Throughout the season, she opens up and lets people see her for who she is – and “her love of love in itself exudes out in the way that she helps her friends.”

Though she’s dealing with an unidentified supernatural force causing her to explode colours and pass out, in all other ways, her search for community and love is not unfamiliar to our own. “Getting to play that kind of character is something that really resonated with me. For me, as someone in their 20s, there’s a sense of wanting community and wanting to surround yourself with people who see you for who you are and accept you for who you are. And Niko really does that and she holds that to her core.” She pauses. “That kind of quality is something that I try to remind myself of every day – we’re all allowed to exist as who we are.”

For the cast and crew of Dead Boy Detectives, this sense of community on screen was mirrored behind the scenes as well. “The balance of doing great work but being kind to others and yourself is a feeling that I will take with me forever. It truly is corny to say, but every day was my favourite day. Getting to do this for the first time, as a first project, everything is so brand new, that there is no day like the other. I always went to set and left feeling so grateful and so happy that this is the dream job that I’ve gotten to land.” There was one day, in particular, that stands out to Kitamura as a significantly memorable one. Filming in the pouring rain on a cliffside in the cold of the night, the cast and crew worked for eight hours in intense conditions to get the perfect shot. Challenging? Perhaps. But often it’s the most difficult situations that bond people together – and under the most extreme conditions that magic is made.

“As a Japanese person, watching TV [growing up], it was nice to see Asian characters, but it was nowhere near as diverse and deep and layered as it is now.” She mentions Sandra Oh on Grey’s Anatomy and Jenna Ushkowitz on the groundbreaking-for-its-time-but-hasn’t-aged-well Glee as prime examples. “Seeing those characters on my screen was so fundamentally important to me, because it made me realise that I can pursue this. It’s people in the past that have really led me to being able to be here. I’m blessed that I get to reap the benefits of what people have done for us in the past, but I’m also excited to see where these stories continue to go.”

“Niko is a character where, yes she is Japanese and she represents so many wonderful things about Japan, but she’s also a young woman that moved to go to boarding school in the States. She’s an international girly as am I, so I don’t have to put on an accent to play her, I can still be me. It is so reflective of the modern time. I’m really happy and blessed that she exists and that Steve Yawkey created this show that is reflective of the world we live in.”

What’s next for Kitamura? “I think the biggest thing on my mind right now is how excited I am for people to watch the show. I think it’s unlike anything we have on TV at the moment. It is wonderfully wild, incredibly mystical.”

But don’t take our word for it – Dead Boy Detectives is out on Netflix now.