We're listening Happy to have Joel can booster in with us comedian actor writer wrote his own now Fire Island wrote and starred in Fire Island on Hulu He's in scrubs now and also you have on Apple TV. You have loot So we're along this path here and thank you for being with us here along this path Did you end up feeling like you'd made it? You know, I think definitely Fire Island was a big inflection point for me in my life in my career But I think like I had pretty modest goals set out for myself at the beginning I think like I really had to be like reposition the goalposts for myself I think after my first Conan said like I never really expected to ever get to that point that soon And I think you know for a while I think the goal, you know was to quit my day job and be able to support myself doing this And so I quit my day job in 2016 and that was like already I think far and away beyond whatever had planned for myself You know, obviously when you're a little kid like it's about being famous and being on TV and all that stuff But I think like I quickly disabuse myself of any notion of getting there Probably in college. It just felt so far away and so unlikely So once that all started to happen in 2016 and around there, I really was already like well I this is far and away be you know more than what I could have hoped for so as far back as 2016 probably What was the day job you were quitting?
I worked for a tech startup I worked for tech startups and right after college I one of my first jobs out of college was Grubon I was like the 70-something employee of Grubon before they went public when they were still very young company And that was like that got my foot in the door with tech and so I for the all my day jobs from that point forward were At tech startups. Were you unhappy doing that because that's not exactly the best place for a creative. I mean, yes and no I think like especially early-day startup culture was very like Grubon in Chicago mostly only hired comedians and actors and creatives for this especially because I worked in customer service and customer ops and Their motto was the more successful you are outside of this place the more successful we are which makes no sense The more successful I am outside of this place the closer I am to leaving this place But I was happy that that's their at that was their attitude and that was pretty much all of my bosses attitudes and startup In startup world was we want you to you know take out take office I I have never had a day job where there was a set number of vacation days every Tech startup I worked for had unlimited vacation days And I was able to take off you know weeks at a time to go and work on a project or something like that And then come back to a job and that benefits and all that so it was never it never felt like it impeded anything for me Until it until you know it came got to the point where I was sort of you know watershed moment You know keep the job or quit the job and really dive headfirst and take a chance on myself So up until that point, I always felt very like free I was constantly I mean every script I wrote In that period I wrote you know I would spend six hours a day writing and two hours a day doing actual work Because that's the thing about corporate jobs tech jobs is it's all any email based job is a joke It's just a straight-up joke. I never Had to work very hard and would constantly get promoted because by and that's the thing is you learn is the more you get promoted in those sorts of environments the less work you're asked to do So all of these guys who get up to the c-suite like I I've seen firsthand how little work They do and I know first and how little work you have to do to get by at a job like that Like I wrote my first pilot mostly at work like five to six hours a day writing at my desk at work And then you know sending the few emails I need to send your corporate times stealing weasel on the way to your job So two hours a day that sounds ridiculous.
It sounds ridiculous But I was doing more work than most of my co-workers were so and so you said watershed mopin moment How did that happen? I quit my job to work for Billy on the street actually for Billy Echner And that was a really scary thing to do because at that time The way that show worked was it was a week-by-week contract every writer found out on Friday if they were coming back on Monday And you wouldn't know much beyond that sure. Thank you. Yeah, I had a blast writing for it My contract was two weeks to start and then after those first two weeks.
It was a roll of the dice I didn't know if I'd be asked back. I didn't know if I'd continue that beforehand So you're looking over the end of a cliff. Yeah, but the other job wasn't that fulfilling and you probably know I it was never the plan to say any of those jobs It was just one of these things where you know I had been getting some work prior to that that I would take time off to do and then it just got to the point where I needed to Pet on myself a little bit because the safety net of having those jobs wasn't necessarily holding me back like I said I was able to manage my time in a way that I was able to do a lot of creative work on the side and at work But I knew that I'd never dive first, you know if I just didn't take it's great advice to give somebody But how do you come upon the realization? I need to bet on myself because I'm not sure that a whole lot of people have that awareness Yeah, I don't know.
I think it's a different journey for everybody It's not advice that I give to everybody immediately in you know No matter where they're at in their career because I know that for me security was a huge part of it Listen like I needed to have health insurance. I needed to be able to pay off my student loans I was paying more on student loan payments than I was in rent the entirety of my post-graduation life I was upward I was paying you know thousands and thousands of dollars every month for student loans I didn't want to get behind it and want to fuck up my credit so I needed a high paying job to do that and If I didn't have that then I don't know exactly where I'd be right now But at a certain point like I knew I couldn't and it's a different decision point for everybody But I just knew instinctually at a certain point that if I did not take the leap Then I would never take the risks necessary to get to where I am now Did you feel brave in doing because you go to New York and you give yourself four years to do it, right? You're like you're starting you're and you're saying I give myself four years I mean I never gave myself a time frame like that. I knew that everybody's trajectory is a different speed And so I never I never set a time frame for myself to make it quote-unquote Because I also just saw how circuitous everybody else's path was around me Like some people had been doing it for upwards of ten years and still hadn't really broken and some people had been doing it for two and Broke really strongly, you know really quickly and so I I knew there was no set model or template for myself And so I I just I needed to get to a certain point where I was making more money outside of the job than I was in the job And once that was happening, you know pretty consistently I felt comfortable enough to leave other people are in different financial situations than I was You know some people were being supported by their families and in parts some people are being supported by their families in full And so could make you know different judgments had a very different calculus towards how they approached their day jobs And supporting themselves financially than I did because I was living in New York I was paying you know $1,200, $1,500 at some point.
I had seven roommates It was not like a great situation for me. So seven roommates. Yeah, that's when I moved to New York I had seven roommates for the first year and a half. So that's sharing one bathroom two back cuz that's a small that's a small place Yeah, I mean it was a duplex.
So it's two stories, but everybody I mean it was still pretty not ideal for sure What can you tell me are the landmarks in Illinois like in your upbringing and and like how you're being imprinted knowing that you might want the arts? What do you mean exactly? I'm saying your childhood when you look at the things that inspired you the things that made you dream off in the Distance of I want to be a writer. I want to I want to create my own things I mean there wasn't a lot of access to different avenues in the suburbs of Chicago where I grew up I grew up in the south of the suburbs of Chicago I remember seeing when my sister was about to go to high school We went to the high school and saw the spring musical which was the Wizard of Oz because my sister was really interested in theater and had done theater And middle school and I remember that was a real Huge moment for me was when I was like oh I want to do that like whatever This is that's what I want to do and there wasn't really a frame of reference for any way else into the industry But theater, you know community theater high school theater and things like that So being an actor and specifically being a like a on Broadway I think was like the earliest sort of realistic goal I had for myself in the arts because you just didn't know how else anybody else got into the arts and so I went to school for Theater musical theater and From there because I never thought about being a writer I never thought about being anything but an actor and it wasn't until I got to theater school that I sort of started to realize all of the Different ways in which you can be involved in the arts and I did one summer my first professional acting job was a summer stock Theater in southern Illinois where I did Musical a musical professionally for the first time and I did not enjoy it Or I did not enjoy it enough I had enough frame of reference a year into theater school seeing my friends work professionally seeing the people that were Graduating and their paths toward success And I knew that I wasn't talented enough in that area to ever really make it a profession or singing and dancing mostly and so I got back to school and I changed my focus almost immediately to play writing I wrote my first play myself more year and that was again like another big moment for me where I was like okay This is what I want to do because the response to the play was really positive and and it was the first time that I felt Remarkable I would say like I never felt remarkable as an actor at school I never set myself really apart as a performer But a writer that was like that felt really like oh no one else is doing this Well, that's ambitious for a sophomore to be able to play I mean there was a lot I mean the play went up in one of the student theaters Which was in the basement of a house that they painted black and and put up a rudimentary light plot So it wasn't like anything fancy, but the response to it was really overwhelming And so I really focused in on that because I just never I never thought that I was a good enough actor or performer in general to to pursue Performing full-time or as a profession, but writing felt a little bit more attainable to me And I would say to this day I think of of my graduating class of less than 20 people in my theater class I would say I don't think anyone thought that I would be the one to be in this position now Like I think everyone is pretty shocked Consistently because I was not the person who was getting the leads in plays and shows And I was not somebody who was standing out in classes and I was not somebody who Felt really remarkable in college It's interesting that you're understanding a bit how special it is to write a play whether it's in a basement or not as a sophomore I very early knew I wanted to be a writer but not as you know I became a journalist but not as a sophomore in high school I wasn't I needed college.
Okay, I needed I needed professors to tell me that I was good at it It wasn't anything that was self-started I wasn't like just writing because I had a play inside of me Yeah, I mean my the nice thing about my school was that there was it was a school for self-starters in a lot of ways It was a small school at Milliken University downstate Illinois And it really was like you can make anything happen for yourself if you have the if you take the initiative to do it And there were so many like student-run theaters like the spaceman Where you could you know, it was pretty open season Like if you wanted to direct and star in a play you could do that if you wanted to it was up to you Sort of cast it into it was all DIY And that was a really nice thing about going to a school that sizes that when everything is DIY Like it really teaches you how to go in and jump in on doing on your own and not have a lot of faculty support for every project that you were doing Um And so yeah, I think like I'd always want I'd always written too I'd always been writing since I was a little kid very casually lots of like fan fiction nothing serious Um, certainly never played like that was my first play that I'd written was that year Um, but I you know, I worked at I was consuming a lot, you know, I worked at a movie rental store for four years I was watching a shit ton of movies. I was consuming a lot of theater at my school student run and otherwise and I just yeah, I remember I was home. I went to break and had just finished a movie I think it was like in her shoes with Cameron Diaz and 20 class and I Wrote I got the idea for my first play and wrote it over break and came back to school and produced it What was the idea? Um, the idea it was called layover and it was this woman Um, her sister who was depressed and had committed suicide her the and they had sort of an estranged relationship Um, her sister who committed suicide boyfriend at the time had a layover in Chicago and they were not close But he you know asked to stay with her and she and he she learns who her sister was through her partner Um, and you know, there was a moment There's a moment where sort of like she'd taken all the photos down and of her sister And she just you know, just the pain of like losing a family member that she didn't even really know anymore And then learning who they were through the eyes of someone else.
Um, some light fair Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is the other thing I was not doing comedy in college at all I thought like when I switched to playwriting I was writing fucked up stuff Like everything I did was like dark and twisted in in the way that like every 20-year-old things that they are dark and twisted And comedy was not something that was ever on my radar in college I tried out for the improv group and this guy's group every year except for like my senior year and I never even got call back So it was not something I don't think everyone especially thought of me as like a funny person other than socially Um, but certainly not but socially funny. You'll go out and be funny or something Yeah, I mean like I could make my friends laugh and I made people laugh and I was like, you know A bit of a class clown and in classes and stuff like that but I never wrote comedy I will say that all of my plays like I reveled in like getting the audience to laugh in moments of really high tension And stuff like that and like this play that I wrote layover was very funny Like it was like getting people laugh and then it ended and everyone cried and like I really loved the interplay of that Um, but it was not something comedy writing was not something that or and certainly not stand up was not something that was on my radar until Much after college. It's harder comedy writing is harder. I think I think it's the hardest kind of for sure Yeah, funny.
And so you have to be a really adept writer. Would you recommend Home schooling having done that for four years time? Not the way my parents did it. Um, I mean my parents did it because of religious reasons They're deeply conservative evangelical Christians did not want me learning about sex revolutions So they kept us home.
Um, just my brother and my sister had been going to public schools and she was in the eighth grade But something about my brother and I don't know why they kept us home for longer and um, they both my parents worked No one was watching us. No one was managing the schooling of that we were doing I was getting the answers for all my math homework quite a quote from the back of the book during the day when my parents were at work And luckily I really loved to read and that's the only reason I was able to transition into public school and not be Light years behind was because I was a huge I was an avid reader was writing and um Would sort of sit with like my history textbook and just read it like a book and like was never asked to write a paper until I was maybe a sophomore in high school when I did like online they transitioned me to online schooling But yeah, I remember the first time I ever had to write a paper was maybe when I was a freshman or a sophomore in high school And I did not know how to do it. It was a big learning curve. Um, so I would not do it that way I I will say looking at the landscape of education today It's something I think we think about my husband and I um because I'm you know, I have a growing distress of The education system in this country and you know, just the fact that they stopped teaching kids phonics until recently It's crazy to me like I have a friend who works in education in san francisco and she works at a really great school Half of her, you know, most of her eighth grade boys are reading at a second grade level, you know And this is not like an it's like uh, you know underfunded, you know, underprivileged school This is like a like uh, you have to test to get in sort of school and still they're not They're not learning how to read they're letting AI write all their papers.
Um, they're experiencing school And so like we have a whole generation coming up that can't read or write we're cooked You know, and I don't know that I want to introduce my kids into that system My husband did Montessori and he is a genius because of it. So we thought we we thought about that, but yeah, I just um It's it's really bleak. I think the state of education right now And also I think like the amount of time that we asked kids to spend in school is wild I mean it was wild when I was going as well I would wake up at like four forty five to get ready to go to school at seven And then you know have something and have an extracurricular rehearsal before school And then stuff after school and then a whole course load of homework to do it's insane And it's it's crazy and and I worked I've had a job since I was 14 years old And I was doing all of that juggling all of that as a teenager and it's insane And so I don't necessarily think I believe in the structure of education as we know it for kids today I don't I don't think it's working very well for most kids and I would it's so ironic that like I'm even that homeschooling is even on the table because I had such a negative experience with it And I hated it and I um You know got out by the skin of my teeth knowing how to do anything and having any sort of academic potential And it was a real learning curve once I was in school because I didn't know how to do homework I didn't know how to study for a test. I barely knew how to write a paper um So yeah, it was not an easy transition.
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Yeah, I was um in 2019 I just been cast in an NBC sitcom Which has this distinction it was called sunny side the distinction of being the lowest rated premiere in NBC history It was pulled off the air after three episodes, which they hadn't done in like eight years Like networks had stopped pulling things off the air early by the time this had happened for many many years They did they made a rare exception. There's a lot of conspiracy theories around why which I won't say on mic But yeah, it was really it was not like it felt like a gigantic flop at the time But I got paid a lot of money to do it and I paid off my loans Which is again like something I never fathomed ever doing after paying more in rent more in loans than rent for You know almost 10 years at that point. Maybe yeah, maybe slightly right at 10 years Maybe and um, you know, and I barely paid it I barely put a chunk in my actual like I always paid most of that was Interest payments and so I just I always constantly look at it I realistically would not have paid paying at the rate that I was paying I would have paid them off maybe in my late 40s Um early 50s, um certainly we never have been able to buy a house Um, which is another huge sort of milestone that I never thought I would be able to accomplish in my lifetime certainly not this soon and um Yeah, it was um, and it's interesting because sunny side that show Um at the time felt like the biggest career flop of my entire life, but um Matt Hubbard wrote on that show who also created loot they they wrote loot with me partially in mind Uh because they liked working with me on that show and knew me from that show and I got that part You know, I had to audition for it But it was one of those things where it was like just don't fuck this up and it's yours And then a scene botra was also a staff writer on that show and she is now the show runner of scrubs And it was the same situation when scrubs came back They she had me in mind for this part and it's because she worked with me on sunny side So it's one of those it's a big lesson that I always try to Communicate to people, which is you don't really know the end of the story until you've zoomed out and you have some distance from it Because if I only paid attention to the like that year of when the show was canceled Of course, it feels like a flop failure But now that I've had you know, many years of distance from it. It's the best thing that ever happened me really So when you look at um the things that feel like the most like accomplishment on the other end of the spectrum I don't know that paying off the loan would be that maybe it would it's just a huge one I imagine the pressure of that was a relief when you're doing the math on all I'm paying here is interest.
I'm not making up any ground Yeah, no, I mean it was a huge Thing for me. I changed my life. It changed the course of my life Being able to pay off my loans because I mean I went to a private liberal arts school for theater At a time before we were talking about predatory student loans and specifically private student loans too I took out up the wazoo and I had scholarships I had you know grants and stuff like that too, but it wasn't enough certainly not for this school And it certainly wasn't a good idea to do that getting the major that I was I mean I took on debt that like a med school student took on to get a theater degree It was insane and I remember my senior year It was a small enough school that everyone there every senior who had debt had to sit down with Nancy Askin So it was the financial advisor at our school and go through our plan for paying off our debt And I remember her looking me in the eyes looking at my debt load and looking at my major and saying what were you thinking? And I wasn't because I mean I was emancipated at 17 I didn't have an adult in my life telling me to hey slow down don't sign on that dotted line And I without parental support I needed that money even with again.
I worked my way through school I had two jobs The entirety of my college career and so it was just none of it was enough to cover the costs of going to this very expensive private school Emancipated is a heavy word especially at 17. So how was that how was that coming to be? Um, I mean my parents I was I came out of the closet at school when I was 16 My parents sent me to school when I was a public school when I was a junior in high school Very quickly came out of the closet drank for the first time We for the first time shop looked for the first time hooked up with a guy for the first time within the first month of going to public school That'll happen because you can't keep a kid under lock and key for 16 years And then give him an ounce of freedom and not expect him to sort of explode So I was out for a full year at school and then going into my senior year my parents were in my journal They found out all of the things that I had been doing in the year previously and it was a real tumultuous moment for our family And it just sort of ended in me moving out and calling their bluff because they're they didn't kick me out but it was very much a If you're gonna live the way we want you to live or you can't stay here and I said, okay, fuck I'll leave And so I I left and didn't talk to them again until college and have not taken a dime of my parents money since I was 17 Which is now the cornerstone of my personality Because everything I have I made myself without any help well with help I mean that's that's that's without help from my family. I had plenty of help There are plenty of people, you know along the way who helps me out and I and I owe them a debt of gratitude But um, you know like I said like I was not somebody who was coming up in the comedy scene Who could afford to be a dog walker as their day job because my parents were paying my rent You say that with a good amount of both pride and defiance on this is who I am and and I guess when you're leaving the house Is it because they think you're a bad kid or is it the gay and the religion?
It's mostly that it's mostly that I think like I what I it was a maybe a little column A a little column B for sure Because they knew I was drinking they knew I was partying they knew I was doing stuff that they really didn't want to do I don't know I mean what I had a job I was doing well in school for the most part other than math and science and Um, you know, I was like a good kid all for all intents and purposes But in their eyes because I was doing xyz I was out of control and and you know, um Yeah, yeah spinning out um and I I don't think that was the case looking back on it even now, but um, yeah It was a it was a tough senior year for sure You're talking about the earlier years though like how restrictive was all of that when you're talking about the explosion that comes with All of a sudden I have freedom like how what did what are the details that are worth mentioning? I mean they controlled where we went who we saw what we watched what we listened to what we read Um, it was all very much like under lock and key for the most part Um while I was drawing up like um and my childhood is just marked with moments where I was sneak culture in in without them knowing about it And that was like my focus for much of my adolescence was trying to figure out how to get around my parents rules over what we could consume Um Yeah, because I was gonna ask you whether the writing and the reading were escapism. Yeah for sure I mean they had less control over what I was reading for sure I was an avid reader and they definitely like I said there was not a lot of direct supervision going on it While I was home being homeschooled, but I worked at the library that was my first job And that was like a gateway drug to the world for sure And so reading was like a huge part of it more so than writing. I think like I was not encouraged to write I remember I like wrote a story.
It was like an out of modern day Alice in Wonderland reboot It was like an early before reboots where I think but I was doing like an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland I showed like the first chapter to my mom and um She basically was like you shouldn't be pursuing this you're not gonna have to do this Um, and I was like nine or ten at the time. Um, so I just remember my mom being like, you really want to focus your time on this? Um, because it wasn't very good. I'm sure at nine or ten Um, but and so I wasn't really encouraged to do creative stuff growing up Well, you when you bucked on the I did this myself you walked it back Because I know I didn't the community of all the arts you have to have had a number of help But you're bucking up specifically against your parents and the idea of you didn't think I could do this Yes, like and that's not that's not support like that I don't know what are the most important very practical things I don't want to paint them into harsh alike like yes my mom said that but you have to understand that my parents were like You know, my dad was the first person in his family to go to college You know, he had the first person in his family to have a middle-class job Which was you know, and the first person, you know, the sort of right at the edge of people Understanding that a middle-class job didn't actually support a middle-class existence anymore.
My mom was a nurse Um, you know, they were very practical people and they like we were not rich growing up We were a paycheck to paycheck family for the entirety of my growing up And I think my family was just really practical about like, you know They didn't want me to pursue something that wouldn't be able to support myself doing I mean my father didn't want me to be a writer like he comes to this country from Cuba And he's an engineer and he thinks of the stable and safe paths And he's like who's gonna pay you to do that? Like it's not practical. No, uh, less so now than then but not then either I read a quote from you where you said you knew you were gay before you knew you were Asian How is that how does that come? That's like an early stand-up bit and it's true I mean I was adopted when I was a baby um from korea likely stolen and um, I I just like being homeschooled growing up in an all like me.
I didn't mean another Korean person my agent till I was 13 Um, I just didn't know I didn't understand race in the same way that a lot of kids do Because it wasn't something that they talked to us about like my mom I knew I was adopted but they never focused on the transracial part of the adoption as much as you know Other families might have and I remember I was at a family reunion in Birmingham, Alabama Where most of my mom's five side of the family is from uh and currently lives And we were taking a composite photo of the entire you know with my mom's side of the family And I just remember being like four or five and being like what's going on here? This is something that's different And it was before that that I can remember telling my brother my sister that I like looking at naked boys more than naked girls Um, and so I had a really hyper awareness of being different in that way much before I had an awareness of being different racially from my family You skipped stuff so fast past likely stolen. Yeah, um, you know, I mean you're probably aware of right now All this stuff that's coming out about you know the hundreds of thousands of babies from the mid-80s to the late-90s that were stolen in korea They can't locate my birth certificate in korea the state department can't find it the korean government can't find it No one can find my original birth certificate in korea. The adoption agency that my parents used was like shuttered years and years ago There's just no record of my birth in korea.
Um, which is like right now is not the moment in america where I want to have like no birth certificate Um, yeah, it's a weird time for me right now I have a provisional birth certificate that illinois issued when I was adopted but they got they no longer accept that as a birth certificate under this administration Um, so that's a yeah, that's a that's a real fear. Yeah, I mean I have a passport I have like, you know They accepted it before before enough for me to get the passport But now you know, I had to go and get a new real IT recently and they wouldn't accept it. Um, so it's a it's a tricky tricky moment right now Uh, what are the things that about adoption that you feel are still formative for you in adulthood? Like some of the things that you still wear or or or are sorting through with your husband on what are you supposed to look like?
Um, I mean, I will say like I don't have a lot of angst around being adopted Um, so much of the issues that I you know and the conflict that I had with my parents was so much more about my sexuality than my race And so I don't think about it too deeply to be honest. Um, I mean the the the transracial adoption thing is very complicated That but that had very little to do with my relationship with my parents Like in isolation that my parents were actually really great about that They were really great about explaining that difference and being very open to me, you know Learning about my heritage and my culture if I wanted that but like you're at years old You're 11 years old and your parents are telling you that you can take Korean lessons if you want But you already feel like the most different person alive the last thing you want to do is highlight that difference by going and taking Korean lessons Um, so I feel really I regretful that I didn't take advantage of some of those opportunities when I was younger Um, and it isn't a bit of a mindfuck now because you know, I I'm deeply connected to being Asian American racially I like have a you know, have my entire life been treated differently because of my race I'm less connected to my ethnic identity and a really deep way because growing up in the midwest and in all white community going to a mostly white school I didn't know the difference between being Korean being Japanese being Chinese being Filipino being any of these specific diasporas and I think it's interesting now because I mean You see it in politics a lot like I think like people try to tend to try to approach Asian Americans and Latino Americans Like a monolithic ethnic group or a racial group in the same way that African Americans are treated as Of you know, a cultural sort of block of people and it's just not the same because both Latinos and Asians Most of our culture within even america still is connected to our specific ethnic identities and communities rather than as a racial group But you know, there are people when I say I'm Asian American that say that's not even a thing That's not that's that's that there is no such thing as Asian American culture And like I think like Tony Hinchcliffe saying that Puerto Rico was a floating island of garbage Is a really good example of this um on the Hispanic Latino side because there were so many people that were like oh He's losing the Latino vote like he's like this is this is the end of him getting the Latino vote And you have to understand that like the the person who cares the least about Puerto Rico being called in our garbage Island is like a Dominican person, you know, like it's just not they don't they don't have the same It's not the same and you can't approach it the same and it's I feel that specifically as someone who identifies really as being Asian American first and Having and coming up against people who you know, it was very difficult for me until I moved to New York and started meeting queer Asian Americans You know queer Koreans queer Chinese people, etc Because when I would come up I'll get and meet you know Korea like second third generation Koreans Americans It was really hard for them to connect with me and me connect with them like I I did not I did not feel welcomed by most of the Ethnically identifying Korean people that I would meet through college in high school Um even in Chicago because they could smell on me that I was not ethnically Korean that I did not have those ties to the culture That I didn't speak the language I didn't have the background that they had and it wasn't until I moved to New York And I started meeting a huge amount of queer Asian people that I really felt in touch with that side of my heritage It's not that different with Hispanics and almost everything you mentioned there that Cubans Dominican Yeah, those are all very different. Those are not the same community No, and you can't you can't approach them like that Because obviously African Americans are an outlier for a very specific reason because they came to this country in a very specific way And formed a very specific culture together because of the way, you know For those specific reasons and you know, we just didn't come here in the same way Well, you specifically what everything you're describing suggests to me that you feel like an outsider Maybe theater or the community of theaters the first time you feel like an action of any sort with anybody because everywhere you're going You're different you're an outsider and you're feeling like you don't fit Which is hard enough a teenager's already feel like that before without that even being true And so it sounds like a real lonely searching place and you don't feel like the parents are supportive of something It's hard it's hard because like, you know being transracial adoptee you experience racism And then you come home and there's not really anyone who understands it on the same level as like my friends who experience racism Growing up and then come home and process it with their families who also experience racism And I didn't have that growing up And so there was no place for me to process it There was no place for me to really Understand it from a 360 sort of point of view And so I was dealing with that and then I was dealing with the sexuality of it all and the church of it All and like I just felt really not like yeah, I just didn't feel like I belonged anywhere Well speaking of belonging I you're when you when I read about what it is that happened with your proposal and your husband I'd like to know what that was in your mind when you imagined it what you were thinking it was going to be and then To share the details of what actually happened. Yeah, I mean, it's funny.
So I went to Korea for the first time About a year and a half ago almost two years ago My husband was there for work and we were like let's just stay in Seoul And then we can go to Jju, which is the island where I was born And I'd known by that point that I was going to propose and I thought I'll do it in Korea We went to Jju. I got a what was supposed to be a private What was advertised as a private yacht right around the island And then we're getting on this boat where I knew I was about to propose and Jessica our tour guide I see like 10 other people get on the boat and I was like I thought this was private and she was like it is private It's just like 10 other people and I was like, okay, culturally I think we have a very different understanding of that word And then like we're on this ship. There's all these like old koreans fishing around us I get down on one knee. The ring is boxes upside down.
I almost dropped the ring into the ocean My heart will go on is randomly playing in the background Which is like a weird thing to be hearing on a ship And Jessica is taking video of this, which is very sweet of her He says yes, and then at the end of our engagement video, you can just hear Jessica go Now everyone please clap, please clap It was a full Jeb Bush moment and no one does And it was I couldn't have asked for a better video of our engagement because it was so funny. It was really really good But you you imagined you imagined deeply romantic Sunset like yeah on the island of my birth Yeah, the whole nine and it just uh and it was more fitting that it happened the way it happened for sure So how do you come upon comedy specifically if you're thinking to yourself I want to be a thespian or I want to be a playwright or I want to take the arts seriously How do you find the ability to make fun of yourself or find the funny and now I'm not going to do it I'm going to care about it deeply, but this is something that inherently is liked Yeah, no I mean, so I moved to Chicago after college because I wanted to be a playwright and a storefront theater Actor and I wanted to be I loved the theater scene. I still love the theater scene in Chicago I think it's one of the best theater scenes in the country if not the best Um, there's so much access to so much different kind of theater and again It's it came Chicago comes with the diy spirit of like we'll just put it on ourselves and we'll find a storefront And we'll just do it and that was the background that I was coming from from my school And so my first full-length play was accepted to the Chicago French Fest after college I went to I moved to Chicago to do that joined a theater company very quickly there Um and Was working on a play called five lesbians eating a quiche as like a writing assistant um, this theater company that was part of which was then called the new colony I believe they have now since changed the name for obvious reasons and um, they the thing they only did new work They only developed and did new work and that was really exciting for me So I was writing a system on that show and Beth Stelling who's a very very prominent comedian, um, who's still working today Um was in that play. She was also sort of splitting her time.
She was mostly a comedian She was a very big deal in Chicago at the time. Um, had a wonderful show that she ran with This duo of the Potter Boss sisters in late view called entertaining Julia. It was a dive bar You could fit maybe 60 people max and that was uncomfortable Um into this show every Sunday night But like Robin Williams would drop in to do this show Like it was like where every major comedian wanted to to do a set on Sunday nights at Chicago I remember going to see that show and it was the first time that I saw stand up where it was like Uh, quote unquote What then was considered alternative stand-up comedy because it was in this space and it was grungy and it was also the first time that I'd seen stand-up that wasn't on a special You know, um, that wasn't filmed in a comedy club And it was the first time that I was like, oh, I really liked this and Beth was really the person who sort of encouraged me to try it Because she was like you're a writer. You're already comfortable on stage.
You're halfway there and then one year uh In my first year of being in Chicago our theater company had a fundraiser that was a variety show Someone dropped out they had a five minutes slot they needed to fill and they were like, oh, you can do whatever you want for five minutes We just need someone to do this and I said, okay, I'll try stand-up And I remember, you know, writing that set very hastily on the train that the day before and then You know cold having never done stand-up before I performed in front of this audience and I crushed And I think like crushing that first time was really again Sort of changed the course of my entire life because if I had done poorly, I don't think I would have tried it again Um, and then for the next couple of years or the next yeah, I guess like two years in Chicago I was splitting my time trying to do theater and then trying to pursue comedy But it unfortunately it's not tenable to try and do both because especially to become a really Seasons of comic in Chicago requires a lot of facetime Like you don't just go to the open mic you stay after your set and you hang out and you make friends And you have to be in really like in that community to get booked to go to come up to rise whatever And I just found it really difficult because I was so by that point In the theater community and that's where all my friends were that was what I was interested in And so I was doing stand-up at really unorthodox places. I I at one point was opening Um at the Steppenwolf theater. I would like open if they did a comedy play I would do stand-up for like 15 minutes before the play started um to warm up the audience And so I was doing really unorthodox untraditional non-traditional avenues in stand-up that way But it would just became this point where it slowly became the more interesting thing I was doing It started as like fully just like this will be an artistic outlet for me to like have total freedom because you know The parts that I was getting called in for were not always super interesting as an Asian-American man This was well before we were having the kind of diversity discussions we're having and casting now And it just felt really freeing because I was like oh I can get up on stage right a version of myself that feels authentic And you know have full creative control over what I was doing at the time And then that control just became more and more alluring to me and to the point where about two and a half years into living in Chicago I said I need to move to New York because I need to do this full time And the only way to do that is to completely start over in a new city and and start this process again And everyone in all the comics I knew in Chicago told me not to do it that I was too green that I hadn't done You know Comedians you should know which is like the biggest show in Chicago at the time and I hadn't done the show yet And they were like you you know you haven't done xyz show You haven't hit these Chicago milestones yet. You're not ready to go to New York You'll get swallowed up And the thing that happened is I moved with a bunch of quote-unquote like upperclassmen in the Chicago comedy scene Like these were like the kings and queens of Chicago comedy scene I happen to move at the same time as them And the thing that they don't tell you about moving from Chicago to New York is no one gives a fuck Which you did in Chicago once you're in New York We the credits do not transfer So me and all these people who've been doing stand up for almost a decade at this point We all started at zero We all were going last at the open mics You know they at this point were used to like rolling into the open mic Going up immediately and then like chilling and hanging out and being like These are the people you're living with These are the people that I moved like you're saying you're not saying we moved at the same time We were not roommates so you were making strangers you're seven strangers.
Yeah You were living with six strangers? Yeah Oh god Yeah And so it was just like we we all moved at the same time around the same time And so it was really humbling for them in a way because suddenly they had to start over And redo a lot of the same milestones that they did in Chicago in New York But for me it was like well going last at the open mic was sort of already my life And so it was a much easier adjustment for me to move from Chicago to New York at that point I'm like my development as a comedian because already I was nothing in Chicago So then being nothing in New York was a lot easier for me to swallow than for some of these people that I moved Well and in some ways had felt like nothing all your life if you're always an outsider Yeah, like so you're you're arriving in New York Can you take me back to the killing and it altering the trajectory of your life What did those comedians or any comedians say about how rare it is to do it the way I was there were no comedians on that show There was nobody on that show who was like in the comedy community And so I didn't really know that I was supposed to go to open mics Until like later on I didn't know the system and the hurdles that I was supposed to be jumping through And the milestones I was supposed to be reaching to get success in Chicago I was just sort of doing stand-up at in the theater community and like alone Kind of siloed off from the rest of the comedians in Chicago And so I would do these random shows and like listen I bombed plenty of times after that first set But you're I still in some ways I think I was chasing the high of that first set for the first few years of doing stand-up after that I mean how seminal is that you had the shortcuts of you already are comfortable in front of an audience and you're a writer So you know you know how to write well, you know how to write? Yeah, I mean it's a different it was a completely different thing than I had to learn though I don't think that the skills that I had as a scriptwriter were necessarily translating into stand-up I have to really learn a different way of writing very quickly after that And like I think being comfortable like I think most stand-ups when they start out are good at one of two things either They are good and charismatic and great at being on stage But don't really know how to write a joke yet Or there are these incredible joke writers who are so uncomfortable on stage And the learning curve for them is to learn how to be comfortable on stage And I was definitely in the charisma like stage presence camp for the first couple years of my career And it took a long time and it really wasn't until late or early in moving to New York But I felt like I was like, okay, this is how you write a joke This is how you develop it And it was from moving to New York and suddenly consuming every single night hours and hours of stand-up comedy And I wasn't doing that so I wasn't learning in Chicago necessarily I was writing in my own way and and doing okay But I wasn't seeing a lot of stand-up I wasn't consuming a lot of stand-up in Chicago not in the way that I was in New York When you talk about playing these strange places What is the weirdest or the funniest of the situations that you found yourself in Where you're siloed away and you're doing I mean Steppenwolf might have been Steppenwolf was definitely Yeah, but do you remember some of the details of like this is weird that I'm doing this Yeah, I mean I was doing a lot of like, you know, like Theaters was much more connected to like clown work at the time So I was doing a lot of like clown shows where I would be the only stand-up I was doing a lot of like theater, thundraisers I did a lot of burlesque shows And like poetry slams and stuff like that was like Were people that I knew from the theater world were involved And it was more tangentially related to theater than stand-up was at the time And so I was doing a lot of really unorthodox shows I wasn't doing a lot of like straight stand-up shows in Chicago What can you tell me about in so in 2020 you get a diagnosis It's got a name, it's bipolar I don't know whether you felt like some of the things happening in your life Before then our product of environment, brain chemistry, whatever it is It's a little colony, a little colony for sure I mean the diagnosis was really helpful because it did give me a framework Around which to look at a lot of moments in my life And suddenly they all made a lot more sense And so it wasn't like I mean, I definitely like I cried when they diagnosed me But it wasn't even so much out of like sadness or being upset A lot of it was relief to finally have a name to put to it And to finally have a sort of plan in front of me on how to deal with it Take me through some of that though, right? Because you're being uncomfortable in your skin Somebody tell me that this is okay, that we know what this is That I'm not, maybe I am remarkable or I can be remarkable I don't think I connected it to that sense By that point, by the time I was diagnosed too, especially like I didn't have any, I was in self-conscious about being remarkable By that point It was just like, you know, there were moments in my life that were really difficult And really like, you know, I was a pretty well-liked, like, gregarious, like, socially Adapt person and then I would have moments of really flying off the handle And being out of control and I didn't ever really understand it And it was always sort of these blips that like didn't make sense to the people around me Because they're like, we know this guy who's so dependable and so grounded And then occasionally I would have a week where I'd just be flying off the handle And like, or a moment where I'd fly off the handle or I would break down Or I would just completely crumble under the pressure And it never made any sense because it wasn't necessary There was never any through line in terms of like the situation or the environment Or any of like that, it just felt completely at random To most of the people in my life and to myself Until I realized that I was like, oh those were a manic episodes That's okay, but for it to be something that's strange to everybody else That they can't understand is one thing for you not to understand It makes the diagnosis something of relief because, oh, it's not, it's not that I'm weird I'm bad, it's not that I don't understand myself There's something here that can be a plague if you don't get a diagnosis Right, and so when you say that it illuminated some things for you Is there anything beyond the outbursts where you now could look back in your life And have more understanding and compassion with yourself?
Yeah, I mean like the outbursts were a huge part of it But I mean like the moments before like being, I'll be specific hypomanic I'm bipolar too, so I don't necessarily experience manic episodes In the same way someone who's bipolar one does Those are a little bit more extreme, but hypomania is like a step below that And you know, I was the best version of myself in some ways when I was hypomanic Because I was so charismatic, I was so outgoing, I was so funny, I was so full of energy And then like something would destabilize me And I would go from being that person to like a dark, dark, angry, you know Person who didn't, none of it lined up But then like in hindsight, it's like in the days leading up to the thing that destabilized me, I was having sex with someone like five guys in a day And buying a shit ton of online goods and like Didn't really connect those dots until after the diagnosis And I had a framework to really understand that behavior And to those who don't understand the high end of mania That's, you feel monster confident there, right? Like it's very positive, but it makes the despair of the down I always describe it to people who maybe don't understand It is like rolling on Molly in some ways And it chemically is very similar too So, you know, it feels really like euphoric even at times Until it doesn't Beyond the relief of having a name for it, how has now knowing it And having tools been something over the last five years Where you feel like you could really take care of yourself Yeah, I mean it's been Fitzenstarts for sure I, you know, finding the right medication Finding the right dose of the medication, staying on the medication It's all been sort of in and out I think like the last two years have been like the most consistent I've been consistently medicated and had a like real handle on the dosages And what works for me and what doesn't work for me Because it's all trial and error and there's a lot they don't understand about this disease Still, and so a lot of it is just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks And I think like a big part of it has been being in a stable relationship And finding the line and balance of like doing it to make sure that I can, you know Keep it whole, like make sure that the relationship stays healthy But also not doing it for him, doing it for myself It's just been a it's been a real journey figuring all of that out Broad question, but what have you learned about love in a stable relationship? I would say that you know, it's funny I realized I Wanted to propose to him when I had my entire life sort of imagined He's also my first adult relationship to like I never dated in my 20s or early 30s Because of my career I was very career focused and then once I was you know Sort of settled in the career was when I finally had the room But I always imagined that I would meet someone falling in love with that person And then be in love with that person for the rest of my life And then three years in or so We had this realization that even in just a short three years since we'd met We'd both changed a lot and we're not the same people that we were when we met But I still really loved him and I loved this new version of him And I realized then and I was like oh I want to put in the work to make sure that I love the next iteration of him And the iteration after that and our joke is that iteration five will stop but we'll ride him out until the next duration after that And when I realized I think I realized that it was like love and that kind of commitment was so much more about Growing with the person and not about stasis but about change and When that shifted in my brain, I think that's when I really understood Why I wanted to be married in the first place Has it made you better in taking care of yourself in terms of self-love? Like I know that that's yeah No, absolutely It has I think like it's very important for me and the strength of our relationship to maintain stability But it also I've had to learn like that maybe that's why I started to you know focus on stability But the stability just feels so much better outside of even the relationship to obviously And that's but it's like so obvious to say but like it doesn't always feel that way when you're in it When you were saying though that you weren't dating throughout a through a decade there You're basically so focused on yeah, I mean I was working 50 hours a week at my day job And then you know you're working two hours a day doing open.
Yeah. Yeah doing open mics until 2 a.m You know stuck at a job 50 hours a week not necessarily doing a whole bunch of work there But you know um there was one job I think that was really stressful and I was working like a full 50 hours a week my first job in New York But that was a different story than most of my other jobs Um, but I was just like I would I was so focused on making it that I didn't have room for a Relationship really I tried maybe a couple times But it just never panned out and I I was much more interested in my career than I was in a relationship Has the success had the fulfillment in it that you've imagined? I don't know what the dreams looked like exactly my guess is that even as your dreams come true. It doesn't look the way No, yeah, it never feels Um as good as you imagine it will feel um I think to arrive at that place Because what by the time you arrive in a place you've already moved to the goalposts beyond that place So I think um, yeah, it's not exactly it's not it's certainly hasn't like satiated any need in myself to continue pushing Um, I still haven't I still don't feel very successful I still don't feel like and successes in this industry has the picture of it has changed so much in the last decade that it's like I don't even know what How what how successful I'd have to be to be happy because I'm not so Satisfied mind with happy right right and so you're yeah, so you're saying it never it always feels like a whole that you were Yeah, I mean even like I mostly like I don't consider myself like uber successful In this moment in my career.
I find it. I'm very I'm more often than not frustrated and feeling like a failure Um right now than even I did when I was coming up as a comic So from sunny side describes doesn't you like you can't step back from it? No, because I look I work like I'm not booked busy. I have like one job.
I have one show I'm a guest star on scrubs right now. Like um, I'm not shooting me right now I don't it doesn't feel like my life or career is as full as a lot of my peers Did it when you wrote and starred in fire island like when you're in the yeah, but I mean that's the thing It's like fire island felt really like fire island felt really gratifying in a lot of ways Because it felt like you know being an executive producer writing that and being the star of it It felt like this is exactly what I should be doing the entire process of that from start to finish from inception to premiere That all felt like this is what I should be doing And I feel like I've turned all of that momentum into nothing that summer I had a stand up special come out Lute came out and fire island came out and that is and then that was my peak and it's been downhill since then it's a plague though It's it's what acting does right? It's not actually downhill. It's it I mean maybe it maybe in terms of feeling but I've talked to any number of people who have arrived It's something that felt like fire island did and then they look around like okay, so where's all the stuff that comes now And it's not the way that hollywood works.
No, totally I and I understand that on an intellectual level But I've been trying I sold my next movie the fall after fire island came out and I still have not been able to get it made And so I'm like by the time this movie gets made and comes out It'll have been like five or six years in between and it just feels awful We gotta end on a lighter And with I feel like a failure I feel it's all been downhill No, I mean that's the nice thing about being married and and our wedding recently is that I'm able to say all this and I'm able to articulate all of this and it feels very much like it doesn't necessarily matter Because my husband is a very grounding presence in my life He does not work in this industry Our focus is not as a couple like about my career success And whether or not I'm feeling good about it or not because I have this this really amazing Powerful lovely thing in my life that is far more important to me now than my career ever was so you fixed it Thank you appreciate the time to work the vulnerability of the honesty appreciate all of it. Thank you