Īnd we talked about it, and the role of Erin, which was written for a man initially, was something that we could move and Joel worked with it, and it was so fun. I don’t know if you know … I’m not sure if your reps told you, but I’m actually in this!?” And I bulldozed my way into movie. Margaret Cho: Well, when it came out on social media that Joel had written this script, that Bowen and Joel were starring, and that Andrew was gonna direct, and it was called Fire Island, I reached out and I was like, “I’m in this movie. Margaret, Joel has said that he can draw a direct line from All-American Girl to Fire Island in terms of your influence as a queer Asian comedian. I think in terms of the gift that Joel gave, in terms of giving me this opportunity to show this different side of my performance or what I’m able to do, I think that was just a really nice boon by the end-it was a benefit of the whole thing. And I was like, “Wilson?” And then, he was like, “No, that’s Conrad’s character.” I was like, “Oh, what about Howie?” And then, I think there was just something that felt right about that, and I think he had already picked out Noah at that point and loved the biblical connection, I guess.īut I didn’t realize how I needed to re-gauge the distance between how much this was mined from personal life and how much I actually did not completely identify with Howie’s journey anymore, but that was all a big lesson. So it wasn’t until a few months before we started shooting that Joel and I had discussed what the options were, if we wanted to go with different names, and I remember being on the subway and sending Joel a list of names that could be a gay Asian millennial’s first name. What were some of your initial impressions of Joel’s screenplay, and how did they ultimately compare to the final product?īowen Yang: I didn’t realize how thorny the work would be, because those early drafts of the script, the characters were named Joel and Bowen. In a joint interview with, Booster, Yang, and Cho speak candidly about how their own personal experiences informed the making of Fire Island, and how the film explores the racism and classism that can arise in a queer mecca while also capturing the unapologetic joy of the LGBTQ+ community.īowen, a lot of this script was mined from your own personal conversations with Joel about Fire Island, and you were forced to relive some of the experiences that you had moved past in your own life. Darcy role), a handsome lawyer from Los Angeles. While Howie begins to fall for a charming doctor named Charlie (James Scully), Noah finds himself both repelled and attracted to Charlie’s best friend, Will (Conrad Ricamora in the Mr.
But after discovering that their friend Erin (Margaret Cho) is planning to sell the place they consider a second home, the friends become determined to make the most of what could be their last summer together on the island. Written by Booster and directed by Andrew Ahn, Fire Island follows two best friends, Noah (Booster in the Lizzie Bennet role) and Howie (Yang), who travel to the picturesque enclave every summer with their friends-Luke (Matt Rogers), Keegan (Tomás Matos) and Max (Torian Miller). But now, that pipe dream has become a reality with queer Asian creatives on both sides of the camera. When Joel Kim Booster took his first ferry to Fire Island, the 32-mile barrier island that lies off the south shore of New York’s Long Island, the rising comedian brought a copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with him to read on the beach.Īs he reexamined the storied courtship of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, Booster discovered that he could map Austen’s incisive observations about class and status in 19th-century English society onto his own experiences as a gay Asian man in the 21st century, especially in a place like Fire Island, which can be, as he puts it, “oppressively white and inherently classist.” Over the years, Booster joked with friends-including Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang, who accompanied him on that fateful first trip to the Pines-that he would one day create a gay adaptation of the beloved Regency-era romance novel.