Typescript interface default values

Can I tell the interface to default the properties I don't supply to null? What would let me do this

No. You cannot provide default values for interfaces or type aliases as they are compile time only and default values need runtime support

Alternative

But values that are not specified default to undefined in JavaScript runtimes. So you can mark them as optional:

interface IX {
  a: string,
  b?: any,
  c?: AnotherType
}

And now when you create it you only need to provide a:

let x: IX = {
    a: 'abc'
};

You can provide the values as needed:

x.a = 'xyz'
x.b = 123
x.c = new AnotherType()

You can't set default values in an interface, but you can accomplish what you want to do by using Optional Properties (compare paragraph #3):

https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/interfaces.html

Simply change the interface to:

interface IX {
    a: string,
    b?: any,
    c?: AnotherType
}

You can then do:

let x: IX = {
    a: 'abc'
}

And use your init function to assign default values to x.b and x.c if those properies are not set.