Ken Jeong as Mr. Chow in The Hangover (2009): The Gangster Who Climbed Out of the Trunk

The scene is the one most viewers of Todd Phillips’s The Hangover remember first. Three groomsmen are stranded in the Nevada desert, and a small man in a suit leaps out of a car trunk and attacks them. That was the film’s introduction to Mr. Chow, played by Ken Jeong, a Vegas gangster who is polite for a sentence or two and then wildly volatile. The part was small on the page. It ended up as the one people quote back at Jeong in the street.

Who Mr. Chow is in the story

In The Hangover (released in the United States on June 5, 2009 by Warner Bros.), Phil, Stu and Alan wake up in a wrecked Las Vegas suite with no memory of the night and no sign of the groom, Doug. Phil is played by Bradley Cooper, Stu by Ed Helms, Alan by Zach Galifianakis and Doug by Justin Bartha. Their search for Doug brings them into contact with Chow. He is a crime boss who believes they have taken something of his, and he is the film’s most erratic threat.

Chow works as the story’s pressure valve. Every time the plot risks settling into a tidy mystery, he turns up and makes it more dangerous and funnier. The screenplay is credited to Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, and Phillips directed.

A part written for someone else

Jeong has said the role was originally written for a man of about 60, with the bodyguards as his sons. The character, in his words, was “fairly indistinct.” Jeong came to the audition with a nothing-to-lose attitude. He said the scripted lines felt odd to say, so he improvised the whole audition, and that Phillips could not stop laughing. He told Yahoo Entertainment he thinks he was “crazy enough to get the part.”

Even the character’s first name came from the set. Jeong said he floated joke names during multiple takes, and either Cooper or Phillips suggested Leslie. Leslie Chow was born from that exchange.

How Jeong played him

Jeong has described the performance as a meta-joke on the Asian-gangster stereotype, and he has cited Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat as an inspiration. The character was controversial at the time, and Jeong has acknowledged the criticism. His answer is that the irony was deliberate and that he approached it with the sensitivity of someone who had been active in Asian student groups at Duke.

The trunk entrance was his own push for a bigger entrance than the script’s. Jeong has said the film had already gone through Mike Tyson and a tiger, and that this was the moment to go further. He has called the film “a series of happy accidents” in which everyone was willing to improvise. Phillips agreed, and the scene has defined the role ever since.

The comedy comes from Jeong’s volatility: the sudden screech, the abrupt shifts from courtesy to menace, and phrases in Vietnamese that he told Variety he worked into the dialogue to make his wife laugh. Variety quoted him calling the performance his “most primal.”

What the role changed

Before The Hangover, Jeong was a working physician who had moved into comedy. His first major break was a doctor’s part in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up (2007). The Chow role changed his standing. The film took $469.3 million worldwide, and it set a record as the highest-grossing R-rated comedy at the time. It also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy.

Chow came back in The Hangover Part II (2011) and The Hangover Part III (2013). By the third film he was a central figure rather than an interruption. Jeong has said the success of the first film made his later career possible. It led to a regular role as Ben Chang on Community, the sitcom Dr. Ken, which he created, a judging seat on The Masked Singer, and a part in Crazy Rich Asians (2018).

Ken Jeong today

On July 26, 2026 Jeong appeared in the Discovery special K-Pop Shark Heroes, which opened Shark Week 2026, alongside REI AMI. The same week he became one of the partners in Team61, the group led by former pitcher Park Chan-ho that invested in Major League Baseball’s Athletics, a deal the Korea Times reported on July 27, 2026. Mr. Chow remains the character he is most often asked about, and he has said he is happy to be.

FAQ

Is Mr. Chow’s first name Leslie?

Yes. Chow is called Leslie Chow, a name that, by Jeong’s account, came out of improvised takes when a co-star asked for his first name.

Did Ken Jeong improvise Mr. Chow?

Much of the character grew from improvisation, starting with the audition. Jeong has said the film as a whole was full of happy accidents. In the sequels he has said more of Chow was on the page, though he still improvised some of it.

Which Hangover films feature Mr. Chow?

All three. Jeong played Chow in The Hangover (2009), The Hangover Part II (2011) and The Hangover Part III (2013).

Header photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0, modified: resized and blended with an AI-generated background. The person in the header is a real photo; only the background is AI-generated.