South Beach Sessions - Joel Kim Booster

- You're listening. (upbeat music) To draft games, not work. (upbeat music) - Happy to have Joel Kim Booster

in with us comedian, actor, writer, wrote his own, fire island. Wrote and starred in Fire Island on Hulu. He's in Scrub's now and also you have on Apple TV. You have Lute.

So where along this path here, and thank you for being with us here. - Thanks for here. - So where along this path did you end up feeling like you'd made it well behind your dreams?

“- You know, I think definitely Fire Island”

was a big inflection point for me in my life and my career, but I think like I had pretty modest goals set out for myself at the beginning. And I think like I really had to reposition the goal post

for myself, I think after my first cone in set.

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 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 disappointed 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 or around there,”

I really was already like, well, this is far and away more than what I could have helped 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 right after college. I wanted my first jobs out of college was Groupon. I was like the 70's something in play of Groupon, before they were in public when they were still a 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 Groupon in Chicago, mostly only hired comedians and actors and creatives. 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 was their attitude. And that was pretty much all of my boss's attitudes and startup in startup world.

I was, we want you to take off as 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 weeks at a time to go and work on a project or something like that. And then come back to a job.

And I've benefits in all that. So it was never, it never felt like it impeded anything for me until it, until 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 head first and take a chance on myself. So up until that point, I always felt very like free. I was constantly, I mean, I 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. 'Cause 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, 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've seen firsthand how little work they do.

“And I know firsthand 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 needed to send to the corporate times.

- Do you work corporate times? - I'm stealing Weasel on the way to your job. - Yeah, very privately.

- It sounds ridiculous, but I was doing more work than most of my co-workers were.

“So, and so you said watershed, moment, moment,”

how did that happen? - I quit my job to work for Billy on the street, actually for Billy Eggner. 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. - That's true. - And so,

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, I'd kidding. - And you knew that before. - And you knew that before, and so you knew that before. - I knew you were looking over the end of the cliff.

- Yeah, but the other job wasn't that fulfilling and you probably wouldn't. - No, it was never the plan to stay in 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 bet 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 head first,

you know, if I just didn't take plans. - 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 in student loan payments than I was in rent, the entirety of my post graduation life. I was paying, you know, $1,000,000 of dollars every month for student loans. I didn't want to get behind it and want to fuck up my credit.

And 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 and stink surely 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 and doing? 'Cause you go to New York and you give yourself four years to do it, right? You're starting, and you're saying,

I've given myself four years to finish everything. - 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 have been doing it for upwards of 10 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 knew there was no set model or template for myself. And so 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 part, some people were being supported by their families in full.

And so could make different judgments, how to very different calculus towards how they approached their day jobs and supporting themselves financially then 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 bathrooms. Two bathrooms? 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 how you're being imprinted, knowing that you might want the arts? Um, what do you mean, exactly? I'm saying you're a childhood when you look at the things that inspired you, the things that made you dream off in the distance.

If 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 West 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.

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, 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 towards success. And I knew that I wasn't talented enough in that area to ever really make it in fashion 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 a 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 sent myself really a part as a performer. But a writer that was like, that felt really like, oh, no one else is doing this. That's my school. That's ambitious for a sophomore to be able to play. Yeah.

I mean, there was a lot. I mean, but the play went up in one of the student theaters, which was in the basement of a house that they painted black 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 pursue performing full time or as a profession. But writing felt a little bit more attainable to me.

“And I, 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 an abatement 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, I needed professors to tell me that I was good at it. It wasn't anything that was self-started, I wasn't just writing because I had a play inside of me.

“Yeah, I mean, my, you know, I think about my school was that there was, it was a school”

for self-starters in a lot of ways. It was a small school in Millican 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 this basement, 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 to sort of cast it into, it was all DIY. And that was really nice thing about going to a school of that size is that when everything is DIY, like it really teaches you how to go in and jump in, undo it on your own and not have a lot of faculty support for every project that you were doing.

So yeah, I think like, I'd always, well, I'd always written to, I'd always been writing since I was a little kid, very casually, lots of like fan fiction, nothing serious, certainly

never played, like that was my first play that I had written, was that year.

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, remember, I was home on winter

and Tony Clay.

“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? The idea was called Layover and it was this woman, her sister, who was depressed and had committed suicide, her, and they had a sort of an estranged relationship. Her sister, who committed suicide, boy friend 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 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.

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 the way that like every 20 year old thinks 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 the sketch 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, anyone, especially thought of me as like a funny person other than socially, but socially funny, you'll go out and be funny or yeah, I mean, 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, lay over 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, 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, it's harder, I think it's, 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 homeschooling, having”

done that before the time not the way my parents did it, I mean, my parents did it because of religious reasons, they're deeply conservative, evangelical Christians did not want me learning about sex or evolution so they kept us home. 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, I don't know why they kept us home for longer.

And 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 would sort of sit

with like my history, text book 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, they transitioned me the 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.

So I would not do it that way, I will say looking at the landscape of education today, it's something we think about, my husband and I, because I am, I have a growing distrust of the education system in this country and just the fact that they stop teaching kids phonics until recently is crazy to me. I have a friend who works in education in San Francisco and she works at a really great

school, however, most of her eighth grade boys are reading at a second grade level and this

is not like an, like, you know, underfunded, you know, underprivileged school, this is like

“a, like, 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, their experiences 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, 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 ask kids to spend in school is wild.

to go to school at 7 and then, you know, have something and have an extra curricular 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 an negative experience with it and I hated it and I, 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 testic barely knew how to write a paper, so yeah, it was not an easy transition, so it's not something that I take lightly when I think about it. I have a lot of follow-up questions, do you remember the particulars of when you got the student loan paid off? Yeah, I was 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. It made a rare option for me.

They did, they made a rare exception, there's a lot of conspiracy theories around why which I won't say on Mike, 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 loans than

rent for almost 10 years at that point, maybe yeah, slightly, right at 10 years, maybe. And I barely paid, I barely put a chunk in my actual, like I always paid most of that was vicious payments. And so I just, I always constantly look at it and 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, early 50s, certainly would never have been able to buy a house, 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 yeah, it was, and it's interesting, because Sunnyside that show, at the time felt like the biggest career flop of my entire life, but Matt Hubbard wrote on that show who also created Loot, they wrote Loot with me partially in mind 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 Batra was also a staff writer on that show and she is now the show runner of Scrubbs, and it was the same situation when Scrubbs came back, they, she had me in mind for this part, and it's because she worked with me

on Sunnyside. So it's one of those, it's, 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 that year of when the show was canceled, of course, it feels like a flat failure. But now that I've

“had, you know, many years of distance from it, it's the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Really. So when you look at 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 was, I mean, I took on debt 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,”

every senior who had debt had to sit down with Nancy Askins who 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

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 in 17. So how is that coming to be?”

I mean, my parents, I was, I came out of the closet at at school. When I was 16, my parents sent me to school when I was a public school, I was a junior in high school.

Very quickly, came out of the closet, drank for the first time, smoked weed 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 all happened. Because you can't keep a kid under lock and keep for 16 years. And then give them an ounce of freedom and not expect him to sort of explode. And so I was out for a full year at school. And then going into my senior year, my parents are 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 going to live

the way we want you to live or you can't stay here. And I said, OK, fuck it, 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 without help for 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, 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 businesses who I am. And, and I guess when you're leaving the house, is it because they think you are a bad kid, or is it the gay and the religion? It's mostly that. It's mostly that.

“I think like, I, it was a, maybe a little columnary, a little column be 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. And I don't know. Meanwhile, I had a job. I was doing well in school for the most part other than math and science. And, 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, you know, yeah, yeah, spinning out. And I, I don't think that was the case looking back

on it even now. But, 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. They 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. It was all very much, like,

underlocking key for the most part. While I was drawing up, like, um, and my childhood is just marked with moments where I was sneak culture 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. Yeah, because I was going to 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, they were not a lot of direct supervision going on. It's, while I was home, uh, 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. Um,

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 modern day, Alice, in Wonderland, reboot. It was like an early, before reboots were a thing. But I was doing, like, an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. I showed like the first chapter of my mom. And um, she basically was like, you shouldn't be pursuing this. You're not going to have to do this. Um, and I was like nine or 10 at the

time. Um, so I just remember my mom being like, you really want to focus you time on this? Um, because it wasn't very good. I'm sure at nine or 10. Um, but, and so I wasn't really encouraged to do creative stuff growing up. Well, you, when you, when you bucked on the, I did this myself,

“you walked it back because I know I didn't the community about the art you have to have had.”

No, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you're bucking up specifically against your parents and the idea of you didn't think I could do this. Yes. Like, and, and that's not, that's not support. Like,

paint them into harsh light. 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, I 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 just like, who's going to pay you to do that? Like, it's, it's not practical. No. Uh, but less so now than then, but not then either. Yeah. Uh, 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 to that? That's like an early stand-up bit. And it's true. I mean, I was adopted when I was a baby from Korea, likely stolen. And I, I just like being homeschooled growing up in an all-white community,

I didn't mean another Korean person my age until I was 13. 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 and”

Birmingham, Alabama were most of my mom's side of the family is from, and currently lives. And we were taking a composite photo of the entire, you know, of 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'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. 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 so fast, passed lightly, Scotland. Yeah. You know, I mean, you're probably aware of right now all the 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 and years ago. There's just no record of my birth in Korea, which is like right now, it's not the moment in America where I want to have like no birth certificate. I'm sorry to laugh. 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 no longer accept that as a birth certificate under this administration. So, yeah, 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 her new real IT recently and they wouldn't accept it. So, it's a tricky, tricky moment right now. 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 sorting through with your husband on what love you're supposed to look like? I mean, I will say, I don't have a lot of angst around being adopted. 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. 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 a nice relation 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. So, I, I feel really, I regretful that I didn't take advantage of some of those opportunities when I was younger. And it is a bit of

I, like, have, you know, have my entire life been treated differently because of my race. I'm less connected to my ethnic identity and I'm really deeply, 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 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, you know, a cultural sort of block of people. And it's just not the same because both the Latinos and Asians, most of our culture within even America still is connected to the 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, there is no such thing as Asian-American culture. And like, I think, like, Tony Hinge-Clif, saying that Puerto Rico is a floating island of Garbage. Is there a really good example of this 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 the end of him getting the Latino vote.

“And you have to understand that like, the person who cares the least about Puerto Rico being called”

in 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 again and meet, you know, Korean, like, second, third-generation Koreans, Americans, it was really hard for them to connect with me and meet and act with them. Like, 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,

“even in Chicago because they could, 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, almost everything you mentioned there, the Cubans, Dominican, and yeah, because 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, 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 connection 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, 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 or something. It's hard, it's hard because like, you know, being a transracial adoptee, you experience racism and then you come home and there's not really anyone who understands it

on the same level. It's 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 this 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, 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

where I was born. And I known by that point that I was going to propose and I thought, I'll do it in

Korea. We went to Jeju. 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 box is upside down. I almost dropped the ring into the ocean. My heart will go on. It's 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 jet 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 imagine, you imagine the deeply romantic feeling. Sunset. Like, yeah, on the island of my birth, yeah, the whole nine. And it just, and it was more fitting that it happened the way it happened for sure. The messer by Tag-leptor-bücher soft-behind the internet. It's a master's. I tell you,

you can say that you're right. Yeah, you're right. But you can't do that. Egal, it's just a lost-for-track. It's just like this story. And when you then work, it means catching. Yes, it goes. Safe, like this story. Hold it, then get back to it. Now, just try it out. So how do you come upon comedy specifically? If you're thinking to yourself, I want to be a

fespion, 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. See, 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. There's so much access to so much different kind of theater. And again, 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

Fringe Fest after college. I went to Chicago to do that, joined a theater company very quickly there. And was working on a play called Five Lesbians Eating a Keesh as a writing assistant. 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 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 assistant on that show. And Beth Stelling, who's a very, very prominent comedian, who's still working today, 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. Had a wonderful show that she ran with this duo of the Potter Boss sisters in Lakeview called Entertainment Julia. It was a dive bar. You could fit maybe 60 people max, and that was uncomfortable into this show every Sunday night,

but like Robin Williams would drop in to do this show. Like it was like, we're every major

“comedian wanted to do a set on Sunday night's Chicago. And I remember going to see that show.”

And it was the first time that I saw a stand-up where it was like, quote unquote,

what then was considered alternative stand-up comedy because it was in the space. And it was grungy. And it was also the first time that I'd seen a stand-up that wasn't on a special. You know, that wasn't filmed in a comedy club. And it was the first time that I was like, oh, I really like 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, 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-minute slot. They needed to fill. They were like, Joel, 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 writing that set very hastily on the train

of the 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. 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 unfortunately, it's not tenable to try and do both because, especially to become a really seasoned comic in Chicago, requires a lot of face time. Like you don't just go to the open might 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 on orthodox places. I at one point was opening at the step-in-law theater. I would like open, if they did a comedy play, I would do stand-up for like 15 minutes before the play started to warm up the audience. And so I was doing really

on orthodox, on traditional, non-traditional avenues in stand-up that way. And it would just became this point where it slowly became the more interesting thing I was doing. It started as like, it 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 in casting now. And it just felt really free 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 in the only way to do that”

is to completely start over in New City 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 was like the biggest show in Chicago at the time and I hadn't done the show yet. And they were like, 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 upper classmen 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 a stand up for almost a decade at this point,

“we all started 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 these are the people like you're living these are the people that I moved like you're saying you're not. We moved at the same time. We did we were not roommates. So you're roommates are strangers you're seven. Yes strangers. Yeah. You were living with six strangers? Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. And so it was just like we we had 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 in my my development as a comedian because I already I was nothing in Chicago. So at 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. Yeah. Sure. 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 comedian say about how rare it is to do at the way that I was you know. 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 later on. I didn't know the system and the hurdles

that I was supposed to be jumping through and the milestones that 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 sign up kind of siloed off 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 I still in some ways. I think I was chasing the high of that first set for the first few

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 well. Yeah. I mean it's a different. It was a completely different thing that I had to learn though. I don't think that this kills that I had as a script writer 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 of years of my career and it took a long time and it really wasn't until late or early in moving to New York. Then 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 just

wasn't doing that. So I wasn't learning in Chicago necessarily. Like I was writing in my own way 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 wasn't New York. When you talked 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 step in and wolf might have been awful. 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 theater 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, thundrazers. I did a lot of burlesque shows and like poetry slams and stuff like that. That was where 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 New York in Chicago. What can you tell me about in so in 2020 you get a diagnosis? It's got a name. It's by polar. 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 so calm. A little calm. Be 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. It was a lot of it was relief to finally have a name to put to it and to finally have

a sort of a plan in front of me on how to deal with it. Take me through some of that though right because you're uncomfortable in your skin somebody tell me that somebody tell me that this is okay that we know what this is that I'm not I 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 to especially like I didn't have any I was in self-conscious about being remarkable at that by that point.

It was just like you know there were 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 adept 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 were 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 into the pressure and it never made any sense because it wasn't nests 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 into myself until I realized I was like oh those were a manic episodes. That's okay so but for it to be something that's strange to everybody else that they can't understand it's one thing for you not to understand it makes the diagnosis something we of relief because oh it's not it's not that I'm weird I'm bad it's not it's not that I don't understand myself it's that there's there's something here that that can be a plague if you

don't get it diagnosed right and so when you say that you it illuminated some things for you is there

understanding and compassion with yourself yeah I mean like the outbursts were huge part of it but

“I mean like the moment before like being and 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 it 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

didn't none of it lined up you know 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 until after that diagnosis then I had a framework to really understand that behavior and to those who don't understand the high end of mania that you feel monster confident right like into it it's very positive

but it makes the despair of the damage yeah I always describe it to people who maybe don't

understand it is like rolling on molly and in some ways and chemically is very similar too so you know it feels really like you fork 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 can really take care of yourself yeah I mean it's been fits and starts 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 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 and it's just been a it's been a real journey figuring all of that out uh 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

too 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

imagine that I would meet someone fall 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 the 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 then 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 suck but we'll write him out until the next iteration after that and when I realized I think I realized that it was like love in 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 taking care of yourself

in terms of self love like I know that that's yeah no absolutely and 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 too 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 doing open yeah yeah doing open mics until 2 a.m. you know stuck at a job 50 hours a week

really stressful and I was working like up to 50 hours a week my first job in New York but that was a different story than most of my other jobs 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 paned 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

“never it never feels as good as you imagine it will feel I think to arrive at that place”

because by the time you arrive in a place you've already moved to the goalposts beyond that place so I think yeah it's not exactly it's not it's it certainly hasn't like satiated any need in myself to continue pushing 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 satis five yeah bind with happy right right and so you're yeah so you're saying

it never it it always feels like a hold that you are yeah I mean even like I mostly like

“I don't consider myself like Uber successful in this moment in my career I find I'm very I'm”

more often than not frustrated and feeling like a failure right now than even I did when I was coming up is a comic so from sunny side described 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 I'm not shooting the right now I do 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 Bible I mean that's the thing it's like fire island felt really like

fire island felt really gratifying it 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's summer I turned I had a standoff special come out luke 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 what acting does right it's not actually downhill it I mean maybe it may be in terms of feeling but I've talked to any number of people who have arrived at 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 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 got to end on a liner no we can't end with I feel like a failure I feel it's all been downhill no I mean and 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 yeah thank you appreciate time work the vulnerability the honesty appreciate all of it thank you