I have more of a direct relationship with Joel and with Sherry, and with Bowen, and Conrad ,” Cho says.
“I didn’t have the generation of elders to look to. She views their successes as a positive sign for the future. And she takes her role as an inspiration and comedy elder to Booster, Yang, and Good Trouble’s Sherry Cola (Cho plays the comedy mentor to Cola’s character on the Freeform series) seriously. While Cho cites actress Nancy Kwan as someone who made inroads for her in entertainment, she’s the first of her kind as a queer Asian comic. I’m like the Empress Dowager weird comedian,” she says. “Asian-American comedians really look to me. We really have that in the film, but also in life and in comedy, too.” “So, you have to make your own way in creating that chosen family. Yet, Asian culture oftentimes is pretty much the most patriarchal and the most homophobic,” Cho says.
And then for Asian-Americans, there’s such a strong need for familial bonds. “In terms of growing up and when your family rejects your homosexuality, you turn to curating your own family.
It’s something she says Fire Island portrays well. The comedian grew up in San Francisco where her parents owned a gay bookstore, but as a groundbreaker in her communities, she’s aware of the role that chosen or logical family holds for a lot of young queer Asian folks. Long a queer icon, she discussed being bisexual as early as her 2004 comedy show Notorious C.H.O.
Cute young guys in gay pride colors on tumbler series#
And you know, spray on sunblock and mosquito spray,” she says, painting a picture of her surrounded by a bevy of queer men laughing and lathering lotion on one another.Ī stand-up comic and actress, Cho kick-started her career in the early ’90s, appearing on The Golden Girls spin-off The Golden Palace and her own series All-American Girl, which, ahead of its time, featured a primarily Asian leading cast. It was so great to just hang with everyone by the pool. “We got so close like a family when we were shooting on Fire Island. Shooting the film during the pandemic in the summer of 2021 amid two hurricanes and cold weather - while the men were mostly shivering in their Speedos - strengthened their bonds further. And that’s what sort of makes our bonds strong,” Cho says. “I can claim that they really are my children and my grandchildren. But the dynamic within the film is rooted in the off-screen chosen family they’ve made. A leader for queer Asian visibility in comedy, Cho plays a mother figure of sorts to Noah and his lost boys onscreen. Banished from the lesbian enclave of Cherry Grove for reasons that may include arson and a bad breakup (although not necessarily related), Erin owns the home where Noah, Howie, and their friends have gathered each summer for years. Indeed, Cho’s lesbian character Erin is the doyenne of queers in the film that stars Booster as Noah, a handsome young gay man who dons his Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennet persona and sidelines his Fire Island hook-up plans until he helps his friend Howie (Bowen Yang) get laid. “Do I get to be their guest?” she self-queried, perhaps picturing a dramatic entrance in a wide-brimmed hat. When veteran comic Margaret Cho was approached for the rom-com Fire Island - from writer Joel Kim Booster and director Andrew Ahn, with a cast of queer Asian men - she was proud to lean into what she calls her “Joan Collins phase.”