Nine Perfect Strangers’ Manny Jacinto unpacks Yao’s precarious love triangle

This post discusses plot points from Nine Perfect Strangers’ fourth episode, “Brave New World.”

In the opening minutes of Nine Perfect Strangers’ fourth episode, “Brave New World,” Masha’s big secret (or, rather, one of them) is out: She’s been drugging the guests of Tranquillum House, micro-dosing them with “magic mushrooms” without their consent. This bombshell goes over better than expected—no one immediately storms off, at least—and, before long, the guests have accepted the drugs as a necessary part of their treatment, their healing.

Surprisingly, those most willing to pump the brakes on “the protocol” are Masha’s dedicated employees, the couple Yao and Delilah, played by Manny Jacinto and Tiffany Boone, respectively. Delilah, especially, takes issue with the rushed nature of the treatment, as well as the fact that she’s been kept in the dark, all of which appears to drive a wedge between her and Yao. Also getting between the two: Masha. In “Brave New World,” we come to learn just how intimate things have gotten between the Tranquillum founder and Yao. Delilah may be aware of their occasional sexual encounters, but there’s a creeping concern about where her partner’s true loyalties lie.

For further insights, The A.V. Club spoke with Manny Jacinto about the latest developments in the apparent Masha-Yao-Delilah love triangle and why his character feels so connected and utterly devoted to his leader, whose life he allegedly saved:

Indeed, Tranquillum is a far cry from Jacksonville, FL—there’s a lot more mystery to Yao than there was to The Good Place’s Jason Mendoza, who frequently wore his heart on his sleeve. As Jacinto sees it, Yao, too, was a broken person, and his own treatment began the minute he and Masha first met: “Through Masha, he has been able to find a different purpose, a different future. And he’s committed to this and he’s found that it’s worked for him—through the past iterations of Tranquillum. And this is probably the… most risky iteration of Tranquillum that they’re currently going through, but he’s on board. He’s on board and willing to take the risks much more than Delilah just because of that strong connection.” As for the sexual nature of Yao’s relationship, well, Jacinto teases that he’s only human, after all: “He can definitely be blinded by desire, by beauty. He can maybe mask his devotion for lust.”

For more about Yao’s human nature, you can watch our fully conversation with Jacinto in the video above. In it, the actor also discusses the longer locks he sports for the role, and why he opted to keep his “quarantine hair” for the Nine Perfect Strangers shoot.