Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Joel Kim Booster: I Knew I Was Gay Before I Knew I Was Asian

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Joel Kim Booster (stand-up comedian, writer, actor) opens up about bipolar disorder, his early sexual identity realizations, and the challenges of living at the intersection of a variety of cultures. He discusses the complexities of being adopted as a baby by a white American Baptist family, his tumultuous teenage years of finding himself while grappling with his deeply religious and conservative parents, and how the arts helped him with his coming out process. Joel details how his bipolar diagnosis helped him reframe his life experiences, his “productive” hypomania, the benefits of medication, and why it can be difficult to let go of mental illness. He reveals why social media has been the biggest stressor on his mental health, how the depiction of Asian men fed into his depression, and the frustration and freedom that comes with being “stereotypically gay.” Mayim breaks down the different types of bipolar disorder and how the condition manifests. See more of Joel Kim Booster here: Fire Island is available now on Hulu. Joel’s first hour-long comedy special, PsychoSexual, is available now on Netflix. LOOT is available now on Apple TV+.  BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're in this place culturally around race where for the first time, white people are starting to have their behavior pathologized in a joking way to the rest of their race. You know, I think a great example of this is that like white people don't season their food is like something that is like a trope that you're seeing. And you're seeing white people really respond to this being like, hey, I don't like this feeling. But the fact is is that like there is no amount of saying white people don't season their food. that will actually impact the white community as a whole. White people have had to deal with, you know, these jokes now for, you know, a couple of decades, maybe at most. We're really struggling, okay? It's really hard. Whereas we're sort of up against a century of these messages and these ideas around who we are as people based on our race that are really hard to dismantle.

It's my and biologics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you Because you know she knows a thing or two And now she's going to... Hi, I'm I'm Biolic and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break things down So you don't have to. And today we're going to break down, well,

bipolar disorder, Asian American comedians, What is race? And what do celebrities owe the public specifically in the realm of mental illness? We're going to do all of these things with one incredible man, Joel Kim Booster. The New York Times named him one of the queer young comics redefining American humor. He wrote and starred in the Fox Searchlight Romcom Fire Island, which is loosely based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

And Psychosexual is his stand-up special on Netflix, which is absolutely phenomenal. He's also on the Maya Rudolph show, Lute, on Apple TV Plus. I recommend so many things about Joel Kim Booster, but mostly I hope you will listen to this conversation, which we just found so incredible. So my partner Jonathan's not here today. So without further ado, I'm just going to go at it solo. Joel Kim Booster, welcome to the breakdown. Break it down. Joel Kim Booster, welcome to the breakdown.

It is really, really nice to have you here. Thanks for having me. I typically embarrass myself on my podcast frequently. I think today will be no exception. I'm a very, very big fan of yours. Oh. And we also obviously got to work together on Celebrity Jeopardy, which is its own, you know, hilarity. But I saw your, it was your first comedy special, psychosexual.

Technically my second. I had a half hour comedy special on Comedy Central that came out. That is true. But your first one hour long comedy special. And what was the first one called? The first one is just it's a part of the half hour on Comedy Central. Okay, got it. You can watch it on, I think Paramount Plus is now the only place it's accessible, but

or YouTube even. Yeah, it was just a part of a bunch of stand-up specials that they produced. And when I saw psychosexual, I've actually watched it twice and likely we'll watch it again. I have a 14 and 17-year-old both boys. and I'm eager for my 17-year-old to be ready to watch psychosexual. I mean, I think he would say that he's ready, but I think I might give it another six months or so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is not to say that I don't like the word inappropriate when talking about comedy, because I don't like to use that word. But it definitely is mature in some of its content. Yeah, I just think it's not even so much inappropriate. I just don't know that he'll be able to relax. to a lot of the stuff quite yet, you know, and it's more, that's more the factor than it being inappropriate, I think. Right. The other reason that I was instantly really taken with you when I saw that special, and I didn't really know much else about you, to be honest, I was really taken with

the complexity of your humor, meaning it's very, very funny. You know, if you're a person who likes absurdist comedy, if you're a person who likes interesting observations that are, I want to say intellectually grounded in that you have a very, very astute intellectual lens with which you view your world. There's a level of complexity to the analysis that you do as you tell the stories that you tell and the way that you tell them. And you do something which on a first glance in psychosexual, you know, might be seen as a schick. You know, you playfully isolate a member of the audience who is a straight man. And you basically, you weave this really beautiful thread through kind of the rest of the special from the time that you identify him.

I shouldn't say isolate. You identify him. And what happens is it's an opportunity to laugh a lot. And that is something I think that as a comedian, you absolutely achieve. You give people a lot of reason to laugh. However, there's a level of what you are confronting people with with this thread that you. weave throughout that I found extremely powerful and really important for the culture that we're living in. This notion of who speaks for what and who speaks for whom. And as we're going to talk about,

you live at the intersection of so many aspects of Western culture and the melting pot that is the United States. It makes so much sense to me. Once I learned more about you and have gotten to know a bit more about you, the intentionality there. When you set out to do and write psychosexual, did you have this larger idea of like, I want to say something deeper, but also hide it in all of this laughter? No. I mean, so the special really, the genesis of it came from a lot of different places. And I think part of it was I was at a real crossroads with stand up when I started writing this special because, you know, I did the Comedy Central happen. hour in 2016. And then between 2016 and 2019, I was rebuilding and I was I was sort of writing

what would become my first hour special. And I remember in 20, it must have been 2018 or early 2019, we had started to send that hour out to networks to try and sell it as a special. And we just got a flurry of rejections back. Like nobody wanted to buy the hour that I had. And I was really frustrated with it. And I sort of went back to the drawing board in 2019. And I was in Toronto. And I just didn't know why the special, the hour wasn't working. And I realized sort of in that moment when I was in Toronto that it was basically a really good sort of hour of jokes, but there was no connective tissue for it. And in a moment of frustration in Toronto, I literally did what would become the framing device of the special, which is I found a straight guy in the audience.

And I was like, hey, you're a straight guy. You're the ones who, you guys are the ones who are making most of the decisions about what gets seen in stand-up comedy. Let's talk about my set. And so I rearranged the set and I did it. I rearranged it in the three sort of acts that it's broken up to, broken into in the special. And after each act, I would just sort of find a straight guy and really interrogate him about, you know, what he thought was working and what he thought was relatable, because that's a word that I had heard a lot. And then tried to, you know, and then it sort of coalesced from there. And the other thing is, is that I spent a lot of time abroad doing stand-up in Melbourne. And over there, there's a lot of comedians from the UK who work the

festival circuit there and the Australians. And they write a new hour of stand-up. every year. Wow. And they really, they look, and it is, the tradition is much more connected to theater over there than I think it is over here. And so a lot of their shows have a point, you know, and I think like, that's why, like, you saw it when Hannah Gatsby released Nanette. I think a lot of people were sort of take, like, they didn't know how to process it as a stand-up special because it was in parts quite serious and it did sort of tie itself together in a point at the end. And to me, when I watched that, having seen so much stand-up from the UK, I was like, oh, this is just how they do it over there. And I think for a lot of people didn't know how to

process that as a stand-up special. And so between those two things, that's sort of where the special came from was this like trying to sort of ape the traditions of stand-up from the UK and then also that moment of frustration trying to rebuild that set. And just finding it really interesting. I mean, crowdwork has always been a huge part of my stand-up, and this was just sort of taking it to the next level and sort of really interrogating somebody, not just about like their life, but really involving them in my set. Well, and so, you know, my question was like, did you realize when you kind of set out to do this, the deeper implications? And, you know, your initial response was like, no, not really, but the fact is it feels like a little bit yes. Not that you were looking to be like,

I'm going to make a statement. But to say, like, there's something about the structure of what you do and the way that you can present it that has this opportunity for like these other layers. And that's, I guess, what, you know, me as a viewer and a fan gets to look back and say like, wow, this is a really, really, it's a masterful crafting, you know, of what otherwise would be a fantastic hour, you know, of hilarious comedy. Before we kind of get into a little bit of your background, I do wonder the, the, the crowdwork aspect, you're one of those people who, you know, in your stage persona, because obviously

you have another persona, which is also you. But when I see you interacting with a crowd, there's a certain amount of healthy fear that I have if you were to, you know, talk to me in a crowd. And, you know, I think when any comedian single someone out, you know, I go to a lot of Eliza Schlesinger shows, you know, there's a definite kind of playfulness. But there's a pointedness to the way that you speak and the way you put words together. Like you, it comes so quick to you, you know, the, the kind of the banter. And I wonder, is that something that you always had honed? Because I think about it also in terms of, you know, what we talk about here is, is mental health. We talk about the way that we form words and relationships. And I wonder, was this like a feature of you?

Were you always like quick with a word and quick with a comeback? Because it is such an important part of psychosexual. I have always been pretty quick on my feet in terms of that. But I will say with regard to the crowdwork that I do do, especially as you see it in the special, is that I don't want to take away some of the magic, but it is practice. It is a bit like close-up magic where the secret is to make them think that they are in control when in fact, I've done it so many times. I've asked these questions so many times. I've navigated these conversations by the time I filmed the special so many times. that it is there's like sort of a branching like choose your own adventure tree going on in my head where it's like I've asked the same question so many times I know exactly the three responses

that I will get no matter what and from those and I and so I know I have like a bank of responses to sort of control the conversation from there the secret of it is is to make it seem really scary and spontaneous in the moment when in fact I feel very much in control by the time I the special because I had done it so many times. Now I feel like I learned the magic trick, and now I have to go back and watch it with that in mind. My MBialx Breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office

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Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention Myambiolics Breakdown to help support the show. That's a great place to kind of jump off. from and go back because a lot of your story has a lot of these kind of twists and turns. And, you know, your bio is, it's just one of the most interesting. I'm sorry, I hate to say it. It's like, it's just such an incredibly interesting story. You're younger than I am. But, you know, I grew up in

Los Angeles. I went to public school my whole life where I was mostly one of the only white kids in a lot of my classes. Most of the kids were immigrants from South Korea or from San Francisco. America or from Mexico. I also grew up with, you know, a generation of families that began adoptions from, among other places, from South Korea. And I think one of your quotes was you thought that every white family had an Asian child. But for people who don't know, tell us kind of your, your origin story, as it were. Yeah. So I was adopted when I was about three months. sold from Jiju, South Korea, which is a little island off the coast. And it's really fascinating, actually.

I found this out as an adult. Jiu is known in the region for being one of the only places in Asia that had for many centuries a matriarchal power structure on the island because women drove the economy. They were called Hanyayo, which is, it means sea woman. And these women would free dive without equipment for minutes at a time. collect these pearls and the men would stay at home and sort of make the house. And that's how it worked for a while. And they still exist. I think their numbers are quite dwindled now. I think it's somewhere in there. There's like 60 of them left in J-JJu's. J-Ju is now largely a tourist sort of trap in Korea,

but it's still quite beautiful. And I was adopted when I was about three months old from there. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with my family who was an eclectic. sort of situation. My mom's side of the family. A lot of them are from live in the South. And so we were the only ones in Chicago. And they were very, very deeply religious people. So because of that, we were homeschooled until I was a junior in high school, at which point I had been begging to go to public school pretty much my entire life, because I was a fairly social creature. And I really wanted to be around people. And finally, I sort of broke them down after years of asking. And they sent me to public school. And at which point, after about a month of being at public school, I came out of the

closet, smoked weed for the first time, drank for the first time, hooked up with a guy for the first time. Pretty much everything they feared would happen when I sent to sending me to public school happened within the span of about a month. Flash forward a year after that, they read my journal in which I detailed a lot of these events and happenings. And they discovered, you know, this sort of double life that I was living at school. And it was a really tumultuous time. They did not handle it well. I did not handle it well. I ended up moving out of my house when I was a senior in high school and sort of living with friends and didn't talk to them again until I was really pretty much in college. At which point, we did end up reconciling in college and things are much better now,

you know, still not completely perfect as they are still deeply religious and very much conservative people. Like they don't, I don't, I think Celebrity Jeopardy might be the first thing my mom has ever seen me do on TV. And so, yeah, that was a big moment for us. And, yeah, and that's sort of where I am at now. Okay. So, I mean, that's, that's so much.

So just to clarify, because I don't know if you, if you, you know, explicitly said, your family was not, you were not adopted into a South Korean family. You were not adopted into an Asian family. You were adopted into a white. A white Anglo-Saxon, as it were, Protestant family. You don't have to say the denomination, but was it standard? Oh, Baptist. Okay, great.

Baptist, yeah. How many siblings did you grow up with? I have two siblings. I have an older brother and an older sister. They're both biological to my parents. Got it. I was sort of a bonus baby at the end of the day. And they, yeah, like you sort of alluded to this,

But in the late 80s, early 90s, like Korea was the spot to internationally adopt. And I talk about this in my first special, but Korea, it was like the Uber Eats of babies because it was the only place internationally where you didn't have to fly to the country to pick up the baby. They would deliver the baby to you at the airport. And so that convenience, I think if you grew up around the same time that we grew up, that's why you see a lot of Korean adoptees. That's changed now.

but it was and there's there's actually and the more you dig into it is kind of dark there's there's a lot of problems i think with the sort of transracial adoption international adoption industry basically from that time because there was a lot of coercion going on in south korea and a lot of separating of families that maybe necessarily i i don't think we we like to think about i think for most people the fantasy is is that like they couldn't take they had too many kids they couldn't take care of them. And so they adopted one of them out. And I think that is, that is like a really positive idea of what was happening and, and the likelihood of that happening for all of those babies is very low. But, you know, my parents probably had no idea. They just wanted to, you know,

adopt a baby. And there I was. This is just a totally satellite question. Do you, I don't know how, what your kind of spiritual or kind of holistic view of the universe is. do you have any sort of attachment to what those months of your life were like? You know, some people believe cellularly we hold on to information. I'm just curious if that's something you've ever explored. Yeah, no, I mean, it's definitely something that we've unpacked in therapy, which I'm a big advocate and fan of. I think that there is like a trauma.

I was very young when I was adopted. I was, I was, like, I likely did not spend a lot of time with my birth mother. after birth. And I think that, you know, it's not the only thing that developmentally affects your, you know, personality and attachment, I think. But I'm a very anxiously attached person. And I think that that has always been true. That's been true for as long as I can remember. And I think it seems unlikely that my separation from my birth mother very early on doesn't have anything to do with that. you know, it just seems like it's probably in some, in some, you know, not so small part, very much connected to who I am as an adult now. And I should say really quickly, too,

my parents were wonderful parents growing up, you know, the sort of handling me coming out and all of that aside, they were really loving parents. They did a really good job of making me feel very much like a part of the family and like never really, to the point where, when I was young because I wasn't spending a lot of time outside of my family, I, you know, as you alluded to, I thought it was completely normal to be Asian in the middle of this white family. One of my earliest jokes is that I knew I was gay before I knew I was Asian because I just didn't think about race at all, you know, when I was growing up. I didn't think about the differences because my mom and my dad did such a great job of making me feel like I was just one of their

kids, just another one of their kids. And it wasn't really until I went to a family reunion in Alabama when I was quite young. And we took like a giant composite photo of all of the cousins and all of the entire family, basically. And it wasn't until that moment when I looked around and realized I was the only Asian person in the sea of white, the Baldwin family. That was the moment where I was like, oh, something seems off here. Yeah. And that was sort of my journey with that. My children, were homeschooled their whole life. My 17-year-old recently did start going to school. But we do not homeschool for religious reasons, per se.

Many Jewish people do homeschool for religious reasons, as do, you know, Christian people. But for us, that was not, you know, our motivation. But living in Los Angeles, you know, there are a lot of other homeschool people who are secular, you know. There also are, you know, obviously religious homeschoolers everywhere. I think it's very interesting the way you take. talk about it, though, because the fact that kind of you had this desire, you know, to be around other kids, you had this desire for sort of a larger social experience, you know, the notion that, you know, what your parent, I think what you said is, you know, what your parents most feared,

you know, all happened. And obviously, I think about that with my kids, with alcohol, with drugs, because they have been in a pretty insulated environment, you know, and that's one of the reasons that a lot of people do homeschool is to have kind of closer tabs on their kids. And hopefully a positive way. But in terms of your sexual identity, I would think you agree with me that school doesn't make you gay. You were, right. But I think for some, you know, and I have very, very religious family myself. I'm 47. So I've been through many decades of us learning about how to talk about homosexuality, how to understand it. And even my religious family, you know, they've come quite away, you know, since the 80s, as it were, when it kind of became part of the

vernacular. I remember the day Rock Hudson died. You know, I remembered that conversation my parents had with us. I was curious in terms of your sexual identity and sort of what that was like. You know, many people talk about kind of knowing you're gay just like you know you're straight. You know, the old adage of like, well, have you tried it out? It's like, no, but like most of us don't try out heterosexuality if we're heterosexuals and say like, I'm not really sure I want a prince to carry me off, you know? It's like it's so ingrained. And, and yeah, and reinforced for a lot of people. Can you talk about, you know, in kind of whatever way you think might be helpful, you know, especially for our listeners. You know, we have a lot of young people listening. We have a lot of

people who are exploring things possibly with the support of people who choose to be public about their own experience. So, well, I guess what was it like and sort of what was that coming out process like to yourself and then, you know, kind of to the larger world? I mean, I like, like, you said, I knew from a very, very young age that I was attracted to men. Like, as young as you can be attracted to someone, I remember telling my brother and my sister when I was four years old that I liked looking at naked boys, basically. And this was in response to like a Baywatch episode that we watched with like David Hasselhoff. And they laughed it off because, you know, I was four and they just thought I was being silly. But really, from that point on, I knew. And then you

go through this phase when you're in, you know, sort of junior high and you sort of understand the implications of what you're feeling, especially in the backdrop of being in a very, very evangelical conservative house and church, you know, you try and suppress it. And I, you know, I would pray every night, you know, to not be the way I was. And then it wasn't until I was in public school when I was around people that were, you know, not as religious or completely secular. And how to had the opportunity to be accepted by people who really wanted to meet me on my terms and didn't, you know, ask me to, you know, bend to fit their idea of what a good Christian was or a good person was that I felt comfortable enough coming out. And it happened very quickly because I was

involved in like theater and choir and the arts and stuff like that in high school. That's really why I wanted to go to high school was to experience the arts. And it was really really there that I found people that, you know, for the first time in my life really accepted me for who I was. And that's, you know, I think like we take it for granted now in a lot of ways because we are living in a time of greater acceptance for, for, you know, being gay. But at the time, like, that is why there's like such a deep ingrained love of like the arts and why I think it's so important is because I do think it attracts people who are accepting and, and who want to meet people where they are.

Your story includes treatment. I think initially, many of us know about it kind of documented from the 50s, the 1950s and the 1960s. And obviously, it continued this notion that there's first of all, something to fix about individuals who are gay and then that there is some sort of scientific method by which to reverse this, which is also, you know, a fallacy.

what was that experience and you know you don't have to go into tremendous detail i i hope you know i'm not looking for drama here but but i think there's some value to maybe if you could share a little bit about what that process was like for you to say no i i don't want to or need to be fixed yeah i mean so i think what you're alluding to is when my parents found out i was gay there was a lot of tumult. And what I alluded to do is I didn't handle it very well either. I had sort of an emotional breakdown when my parents confronted me about this. And so they sent me to an inpatient mental hospital for teens, which was really known in my community at the time as like the place where like if you tried to commit suicide, that's where you would go. And when I was sent there,

I also met kids who had like literally tried to, you know, murder their parents or things like that. Like, it was a really intense place. And so a lot of things were going on. My parents, I think, conflated my sort of instability with the gayness. And so they sent me there in the hopes that, like, you know, I would change. And I think they, I got there and almost immediately the people that worked there understood that I was struggling with no small amount of like mental turmoil after, you know, a lifetime, my entire life growing up in this environment and hating this big part of myself and understanding that

like I did need help but this wasn't the place to get it and my parents were fairly anti-secular therapy or secular psychology psychological help and so I didn't you know really go to a real therapist until I was in college I was going to see a lot of like pastors and and Christian therapists and things like that that were really you know the treatment was largely prayer based, which was not super helpful for me as an adolescent. And, you know, it was like the first time in my life going to that facility where I talked to people about the possibility of mental illness. And, you know, it is one of those things now. Like I was diagnosed bipolar when I was in my 30s, my early 30s. And it was one of those things. The diagnosis, you know, is, it's upsetting. It's not

something you want to hear. But it did also at the same time really reframe a lot of my experiences growing up and as a younger adolescent and as a young adult. And I found it very helpful because it was like putting words to feelings that I didn't know how to manage. It really recolored a lot of those experiences specifically that one instance when I came out and really had like my first sort of like true meltdown breakdown that would go on to sort of I would re-experience moments like that throughout my life. And I didn't ever really know why or how to deal with it. We've talked a lot about bipolar disorder on this podcast, but I think it's really important

for people to hear that sometimes even into our 20s and 30s, even in this era, it can be very hard to pin down what is essentially a spectrum of chemicals that sometimes fall neatly into a category and sometimes don't. So some people will look very, very textbook bipolar 1 or very textbook bipolar 2, Some people will have a mixture. Some people will have mixed episodes. Some people will have different features of a disorder at different points in their life depending on hormones, depending on relationship status, depending on, I mean, so many things. You know, just like people during the pandemic and really throughout COVID have seen a spike in anxiety and in this kind of, you know, anticipatory anxiety. You know, those things are also dependent on our culture and what's going on. Obviously, depression is one pole. Did you experience mania? Were you aware of hypomania or did you have extreme mania? What was that like? So that's the interesting thing about my diagnosis is that I would say for most of my life, mania was sort of how my bipolar manifested, hypomania mostly. And like I was never depressed. And that's why I think it was really difficult for me to find what was going on in my life mentally because depression is something I think that has talked about.

quite frequently, at least like in the time that I was coming up in my 20s and 30s, like, you know, everyone I knew was on Lexa Pro and I tried it. And it didn't really, it didn't really work for me because depression wasn't the main sort of way my bipolar manifested. It was mostly in mania. Like the reason I was diagnosed was because I was on a very short-lived NBC sitcom in 2019, called Sunnyside. And right before we went into production, I had a, I had an, I had an actual manic episode where I tried to quit the show before we even started filming. And it was at that point, like the biggest opportunity in my career that had ever come along. And like no one in my life understood what was going on. No one understood why I was doing this. And and that was really a wake-up

call moment where I was like, okay, I actually need to talk about what this means. And it wasn't, as you alluded to, it wasn't until the pandemic. It wasn't until lockdown that depression became like another sort of thing that I had to really focus on. And it was really frustrating, too, because it was really hard to pinpoint because hypomania especially was so, I was so productive. And as a person who's very social as well, like I was always, it's really hard for a lot of people to pinpoint that as a problem sometimes. Because when I was hypomanic, I was funny. I was charismatic. I was, you know. My garage has never been cleaner. I was in a hypomanic episode.

I wrote some of the best things I've ever written while I was hypomanic. And so it's a hard thing to let go of when you start treating it. We don't talk about that a lot either, where it's like I went into treatment. And before in the beginning stages of it, you know, you miss that mania a little bit, you know, because and I struggled a lot with whether or not my medication was dampening my creative ability or suppressing a part of myself that I felt was very sort of core to who I was, you know, and it's scary. And obviously, now that I've sort of, you know, gone through the process of figuring out what

the right medication is and the right cocktail of medication is and the dosages and things like that, I'm a much happier person, I think, just like living in stability for the most part. And I think it is part of the trick of the disease that, like, you sort of grow to really appreciate and love certain parts of yourself when you're you're manic. And it's scary to let go of that. The way that you just described it, I don't think I've heard, you know, a better description of hypomania in particular. And I think it is, it's something that doesn't get as much buzz as, quote, you know,

proper mania, right? The bipolar one, which is like these very, very severe and debilitating swings between, you know, when we think of mania, we often think of, like, you know, people maxing out credit cards or like having sex with strangers in cars, which if that's the thing that you do normally, no insult, but meaning what we call kind of out of character, you know, sexual behavior, out of character, financial behavior. The thing about hypomania, and this has, you know, been my experience is you do get the pressured speech, you get the racing thoughts, you get the thoughts that are coming faster than you can write them down. You know, it's a very bubbly,

overflowing, kind of effervescent, you know, feeling. But I do also know that the notion of how quickly I can shift to manic irritability when people don't understand what I'm saying or they don't understand it as quickly as I'd like. That is something that, you know, has indicated to me that it can very quickly kind of sneak into a dangerous place. And for people listening, they might say, like, why would you want to get rid of that? So what's your, what would be your response? Why would you want to get rid of that? Like, I think it's really easy to live with, for a while until you start damaging relationships in ways that it's really hard to walk back. You can only apologize so many times for similar behavior before people really start to

question whether or not you mean it. And whether or not, you know, like apologies really have to come with a change of behavior. And I will say, too, that I've, you know, gone through periods where I've been off my meds because, as I alluded to, I think, especially during lockdown, it was so funny. because I was convinced that the medication was the reason I wasn't able to write during lockdown. Meanwhile, I was locked down alone in my house for a year. And I was like, certainly that couldn't be the reason I'm struggling to be creative right now. It has to be my antipsychotic medication.

That's making me this way. So I've gone through periods where I've been off of it and I've gone through periods where I've been on it. And especially now that I've been in a relationship for a year and a half and he's seen me in periods where I've been on it and off of it, I think like it's a real close up picture of the ways in which my hypomania, whereas like before when I was single and it living alone, I could really contain it to certain spheres of my life. Like really only, you know, airline employees were privy to the measure of how quickly I could swing between pleasant and unpleasant. I'm sorry to laugh, but I think we're the same person. And it wasn't until I had this person in my life who was experiencing these swings very, very

up close and personal that I understood just how, you know, minute some of the changes can be when I'm off medication versus on it and how impactful those changes can be. I medicate because I want to be in control of my life and my emotions and my reactions to things. But I won't lie, like having him in my life really does, it's a stabilizing presence because I have this person sort of who is a barometer for my emotions at all times. And it's difficult. But it is something that I'm really glad that I've landed on and am able to put a name to. And I don't want to be a horrible person to airline employees. But so, you know, that's sort of where I'm at with that.

That's really, really well said. And I did want to touch on one more thing before we move on from this, but I really appreciate your honesty about this. And you're so articulate, you know, in describing a very hard to understand, you know, kind of set of fluctuations, which for some of us are just our norm, you know, it's sort of our norm. But when you mentioned that, you know, you hadn't really lived a lot in the Depression, you know, hadn't really kind of focused a lot on that.

You know, one of the things that people, you know, that lay people often say about comedians is like, oh, they're all a mess. Like, they're all depressed, blah, blah, blah. But when you started kind of describing, you know, what you were able to achieve, you know, kind of in that hypomanic state, you know, and either the boldness or the creativity or whatever, in some ways, I kind of wonder, and this is, I'm not trying to pathologize you, but in some ways I wonder if part of that, you know, was masking, you know, kind of this deeper set of emotions that many comedians experience. And you talk specifically also about, you know, kind of like the depiction of Asian men, for example, or, you know, Asians in comedy and how that sort of chips away at a lot of aspects of yourself.

And I wonder if kind of that sort of conglomerate, you know, of self-criticism or, you know, what can spiral into depression in many ways got sort of hidden by the ability you had to transform it. Does that make sense? No, absolutely. And I think it really does because I definitely experienced a lot of the same emotions that I was experiencing during lockdown. But my life was moving so fast that it was really easy to just sort of speed past those emotions and ignore them and then cover them with, you know, all of the.

the things that I would always usually know that a bout of hypomania was coming if I was experiencing them. And I was like, okay, it's just got to push through to win the eureka moment, which is what I probably, you know, which is how I really saw my hypomanic states for a long time would come. And I just had to push through to that moment. And it wasn't until the pandemic when I was alone, quite honestly, alone and then really living most of my social life online in deeply toxic places like Twitter that I really found myself. And then, you know, I should say to my dad passed away in March of 2021. And that was another big thing that really dragged me down into, you know, experiencing this depression on a really visceral level for the first time. And so that was

really difficult. I think like I was, I don't think I've ever been lower than like probably, you know, April May of 2021. It was a really, really dark time. And that was, again, another reason why I realized I really needed to stay on top of my treatment in that period. I'm very sorry for your loss. And, you know, COVID was such a mess on a global level, such a mess on a countrywide level. And, you know, when you hear of individual loss, you know, we forget that besides the whole mess of everything going on, there also was personal grief. And so I'm very, very sorry. you, although I agree that Twitter, well, Twitter already was an increasingly toxic space,

and many of us have chosen to no longer hide that. But there is a quote that you posted that I really want to mention, and then, you know, I have a couple other things I want to ask you about. I just, the way you put words together is really, it's marvelous. You said, mentally ill people don't owe the world informed normalcy. to disabuse you of whatever notions you may have formed about us based on anecdotal experience with a celebs online presence. And I love this quote so much for so many reasons.

I didn't talk about my challenges, you know, for most of my life. It was people like Will Wheaton and Grace Halbig who really inspired me in this space. There's also something about not being a white male in the space that I think is special, meaning there's something about, you know, when when a white male says he's suffering from something that has a different response than if someone who's not a white male says it. And I have total respect for white men. I was, you know, I know many of them. I interact with many of them. I love humans. But to be a person who already is, you know, either a person of color, a woman, you know, a person in an underserved population, when those kind of arenas speak up about mental illness, it is different. I always fear there's, people are going to make more assumptions about women, if I say anything. Or they're going to make more assumptions about Jews, if I say anything. Or they'll make more assumptions about celebrities or, you know, just like fill in the blank. And we're all doing this as humans, whether there's Twitter or not, whether we're celebrities or not.

We're all concerned with what other people think. But for some of us, it does weigh more heavily because of our chemistry and our sensitivity or whatever. But this notion of where we choose to share or where we don't and sort of what the purpose is. And also, it's often not enough for people, you know, they want more of it or they want, you know, the gritty details. And so whenever Jonathan and I speak to people, I always make, I try and make clear that I'm not looking for dirt. I'm looking for whatever someone is comfortable sharing. But I wonder sort of with that quote, Mentally ill people don't owe the world informed normalcy to disabuse you of whatever notions you may have formed about us based on anecdotal experience with a celebs online presence. So many celebrities post things about their mental health status now and their gender identity and I mean like everything.

What's your feeling about sort of the publicness of what you experience? I used to live very much online. Like there was a lot of and I think a lot of the my online like. brand was really built around radical transparency, you know, like I was an overshare. I was an early adopter of being an overshare on social media. And that felt really radical. Like I said, at the time, you know, to be sharing, you know, these windows into my very personal parts of my life, my sex life, my dating life, my family life, you know, like all of those things, I think really helped me Garner a lot of the following that I have because people found that to be really interesting at the

time. And then it turns into this thing where because I'm telling people like the idea is, the lie is, is you're seeing 90% of who I am as a person right now when in fact it was always just 15%, you know? And but because I was selling it as radical transparency and my entire life is is an open book for you. I think people began to expect a lot of different things, or they had this idea that they knew who I was on a really deep level when in fact they didn't. And so it's one of those things where I just needed to walk it back in order to regain control of my own narrative, you know? And especially as I think like a mentally ill person, it was really scary because you are so used to having yourself already everything I was doing was being pathologized as like anything I did

was like, oh, that's a gay guy thing or that's an Asian guy thing or et cetera, et cetera. And I was so worried that like now being public about this, everything I would do would be colored by this lens of mental illness too. And I didn't want to step into becoming like a spokesperson, basically and some sort of model of what mental disease looked like. I just want to wanted to be honest and be me as much as I could be. And I've really taken a step back from social media just because it is the most stressful, biggest stressor, I think, on my mental health. There's something you talk about being Asian that I think also, you know, with the proscenium of you kind of, you know, not really thinking that much about being Asian, right? Meaning, you know,

you were part of your family. You were part of your family and you, you know, assumed that maybe every family had an Asian child in it. I mean, the example I think that you used was on, you know, on dating apps, no Asians. You know, it's something we typically don't talk a lot about. And I'm really glad that you do speak about this because I think especially it's kind of, I don't mean to sound like a total hippie, but it's like, what is race anyway? You know, like, like what, like we have all these words and we have all these terms and you, you hail from a genetic, you know, mother and a genetic father and you, you know, were brought

to this country, you know, and raised in a family that was very different from the family that you would have been raised. You know, this is where also, especially for Jewish people like myself, who are not Jews of color, you know, this is what it means to have white privilege, you know, this is what it means to be able to say, I can go on a dating app and for the most part, I mean, I might be an exception because I do have very prominent features. Like a perfect Eastern European mutt. But this is sort of, this is fascinating to me. And I think your quote was, we're never being sent subliminal messages that you're attractive, you know, if you're an Asian person in the media.

I grew up with, you know, 16 candles being one example of one of the most well-known, you know, kind of egregious, complicated depictions of an Asian person in. in, you know, mainstream media, as it were, at that time, which was completely not upsetting, meaning it is upsetting. And at the time, I mean, so many things about our culture just sort of fed into this notion that we kind of didn't talk about. It's kind of like, oh, we're allowed to do this. And the attractiveness thing, I think, is so, it's so interesting to me because also, you know, historically white people have a very specific sense of what's attractive.

and it's really only when I started to meet, in particularly men, you know, from other ethnic backgrounds or from other races where I was like, oh, not everyone wants to date Pamela Anderson, you know, because I was raised to believe that there's only one way to be attractive, you know? So can you speak a little bit to that? And I also know that there's probably so much complexity as, you know, as a gay person. Because there's also a whole different set, you know, of culture, you know, surrounding that. For me, it's largely connected to this idea, I think, for both heterosexual Asian men and gay Asian men, that attractiveness in Western society is largely connected to masculinity. And there's a lot

of sort of emasculation that goes on in popular culture around Asian men. And then that becomes even more difficult for me to sort of parse out and navigate because I am not somewhat, like, there's a lot of toxicity surrounding masculinity within the gay community just in general. And so it's one of these things where it's like, I don't want to be thinking about how I am acting and how it's affecting the image of all Asian men all the time because I just want to be me and who I am is someone who is quite stereotypically gay, you know, and I feel like I'm selling out, I don't want to feel like I'm selling out my entire race by just having the interests that I have and being the person that I am. And yet, I do feel that pressure. And that is one of the things that I think it's really funny. We're in this place

culturally around race where for the first time, white people are starting to have their behavior pathologized in a joking way to the rest of their race. You know, I think a great example of this is that like white people don't season their food is like something that is like a trope that you're seeing. And you're seeing white people really respond to this being like, hey, I don't like this feeling. But the fact is, is that like, there is no amount of saying white people don't season their food that will actually impact the white community as a whole. I was going to say, people are, people are so outraged. Like, you're saying our food, our food doesn't have flavor. How about your entire existence as a people being questioned based on literally what your skin looks like? Yeah.

And so it is funny that, like, you, white people have had to deal with, you know, these jokes now for, you know, a couple of decades, maybe at most. We're really struggling, okay? It's really hard. Whereas, whereas we're sort of up against a century of these messages and these ideas around who we are as people based on our race that are really hard to dismantle, you know? Like I would love to be able to just be able to think about or not think about these triangulations of my various identities every time I step out on stage or every time I, you know, do anything pretty much in the public eye because I'm worried about how that is reflected upon on the rest of my, you know, identities, you know. And it's a constant, you know, I'm doing the calculus of it all constantly. And I don't think that we realize that I know a lot of people who are doing this where it's like, I want to do this as an Asian man. I want to appear this way.

But if I appear this way, then as a gay person, that will look weird and different. And, you know, having to go through those thoughts, it takes its toll emotionally and it's exhausting. And I don't think that like we sort of address the mental exhaustion that people of color and people of different identities. that labor that we have to go through every day to try and like stay ahead of people's assumptions about us. So well said. And I don't mean to ask you this, but I want to. What do you think it means to be stereotypically gay? Like what is it for you? I'm not asking you to speak for all, you know, gay men or gay women. But what does that mean to you? I think it's a, for me, it's about there's a certain level of freedom that we have in our, the way we express ourselves,

that straight men aren't afforded. So this is a positive almost. I think if straight men acted a little bit more gay, they'd feel a little bit freer because we have access to a wider range of being in a lot of ways than straight men are allowed to have in the culture. And I think it comes down to a lot of like interests and sort of ways of being.

Like I think, you know, I idolize women. And I always have, always like always, like always, looked to strong female figures of empowerment and related to those women for some reason that that is a mystery, I think, to me even now. And I think, yeah, those are those are sort of the two big ones that I think you can sort of connect many different stereotypes about the gay community to those two areas of interest and sort of see how they were birthed from just our ability. And because once you come out as gay, you are suddenly now, there's a lot. all these expectations thrust on you of how you're going to be or who you're going to be,

that can be at once very oppressive and frustrating. And at the same time, like, very freeing. For me, it feels very freeing to just not have to be where the expectation isn't that I'm going to be this like ideal masculine figure in the world that is, you know, has to go out and do a certain set of very specific things to be an ideal. straight man. I don't have to deal with that anymore. And I think for some people, that's really scary. But for me, it was really freeing to just have those expectations lessened a little bit. Would you ever play a straight man? Yeah, I have, in fact. There's a lot of characters that I've played where the sexuality isn't specified that I, you know, I probably have conceived of them as

gay just because I can. But I have played straight men in the past. And I, and I would again, I think the question of like, will I, will people be able to suspend their disbelief enough to get past that because I am so publicly gay is the question. And that's why it's frustrating with regard really quickly to like casting straight actors and gay roles. I don't actually find anything morally wrong with a straight actor playing a gay role, especially if they're good at it, then that's fine. What I find frustrating is that we are so often locked out of getting cast in those roles and then also locked out of getting cast as straight people because people can't suspend their disbelief for us. They don't extend that suspension

of disbelief for us, whereas it's very comfortable for them to watch a straight person play gay because in the back of their mind, they're like, oh, that's a person acting. And that's why it's more for me an economical thing of if we are getting locked out of playing gay roles, but also not allowed to be called in for straight roles, then like, that's a, that's, that's the problem. It's more of an economical issue for me that it is a moral one. I think especially with where our culture is moving in, in understanding gender, you know, as a, as a spectrum, as a fluid spectrum, my assumption now is that everyone is on some part of that spectrum, and at any moment someone could come out, they could feel different, maybe

they don't want to announce it. I'm just good with, like, everybody living their best life and me not thinking as much. about who they're having sex. It's not my business anyway. You know what I mean? Sorry, this is a weird question, but I'm going to ask it. I wonder if you experience

any sort of fetishization of Korean culture, in particular South Korean film and cinema. There's been, you know, so much, and obviously Parasite was hugely, hugely monumental, not only for Korea,

but for the world and for our industry. But, you know, my boys and I, we just finished school, Squid Game. I had watched it alone and we just watched it together. And my older son also has seen Parasite and was so fascinated with the filmmaking, which is masterful. And I believe Squid Game, you know, follows a lot of similar, you know, kind of tropes in terms of cinema. And in addition, we happen to do Taekwondo. And so we have a limited Korean vocabulary, but that is,

you know, a martial art. And so we've been able to identify, oh, words that we knew only in our studio are in movies. They're in television. You know, we're recognizing. words. I'm curious, especially because, you know, you talk about not growing up with this notion of like, I am South Korean. I wonder, you know, how that feels to you. I mean, I don't want to put anything on you, but that is, you know, that's where you were born and it is, you know, the culture that you came from and that your ancestors came from. I have a lot of pride about being Asian, American, and, you know, that extends to pride about being Korean American specifically. But it's always because of, I didn't culturally grow up Korean.

It's always been sort of difficult. I always sort of wonder how much I'm allowed to own any of that, you know? Like I've always felt much closer to being like and I identify as Asian American before I identify as Korean American because I don't have the specifics of the culture ingrained in me. I didn't grow up with them. And so it's always been, it's always been interesting to me because what is Asian American culture, you know? Like what is the culture that we have created for ourselves as immigrants and otherwise in this country as a racial group? I think there's a less clear idea of that than there are for our specific diasporas, you know? And I think it gets sort of muddied the conversation because so many things, many white people or Americans in general of any race don't understand are connected to specific countries or cultures within Asia.

You mean pan-Asian cuisine isn't a thing? Yeah, like growing up, like, you know, if someone was doing karate, if anime, anything, they were like, that's Joel's because he's Asian. And it wasn't until I grew up later that I was like, oh, no, no, no, anime is actually specifically Japanese. You know, karate is not a Korean martial art. No. You know, there are actual, like, deviations and quite specific cultural, you know, sort of signifiers within each of these countries. and cultures, and it's not all just Asia, you know? Not to mention that South Asia is part of Asia, but most people don't think of Indians and then

Malaysians and Balinese people, like, you know, it's very, yeah, but that's also just like the U.S. Like, we barely know where Canada is, you know. Yeah. I want to touch on just a couple other projects of yours. I know we spent a lot of time talking about psychosexual. You also play Nicholas Maya Rudolph's quirky assistant on Lute, which is on. Apple TV Plus. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. And how long have you been doing that? Just a little over a year now, actually. We started shooting the first season of Lute in September

of last year and we're going to start shooting the second season in January of 2023. So a little over a year now, we've been doing that project. And that's obviously really exciting because Maya Rudolph is a legend and an icon. She's phenomenal. Is one of the loveliest people and humans that I've had the privilege of working with. Like, frequently leave set because she has to go and take her kids to soccer practice. You know, like, is that real of a human being, which is, is so nice to, it was so nice to learn because you never know with celebrities of that caliber, how much they're actually living a real life outside of their work.

And it was just always nice to, you know, learn that she, you know, still very much cared about being a mom before being an actor, which is, is, you know, it's encouraging. Because I don't know, you know, I want to have kids someday. And I would like to think that that would be how I would operate as well. And also wanted to give a special shout out to Fire Island, which you wrote. And the premises, a group of queer best friends gather in Fire Island Pines for their annual week of love and laughter. But a sudden change of events might make this their last summer in gay paradise. And I mean, Margaret Cho is in it, who I'm obsessed with.

And Bowen Yang. It is a twist on pride and prejudice, correct? Yeah. It is loosely based on the point. plot of Pride and Prejudice. This happens to be an appropriate thing to talk about because I just went to a Jane Austen improv Christmas special where the entire improv troupe has to improvise in the style of Jane Austen, whatever, and they do a long form. Anyway, so I'm definitely in a Jane Austen kind of holiday mood right now, but was this something, is that how you really conceived of this? Yeah, it's funny.

I brought Pride and Prejudice to read with me the first time I ever went to. to Fire Island in 2015 or 2016. I can't remember which. And I had obviously, I grew up watching the BBC miniseries with my mom. I love the Kyra Knightley version as well. And I had never really read the book before. And so I brought it with me and I was reading it there. And it really just sort of blew my mind how relevant many of her observations about class and specifically the ways in which people sort of communicate across class lines felt to me in that moment, in, you know, the mid-2010s just on Fire Island. I was like, wow, these are the ways in which we're communicating here on this island as

well. And it started as a joke. I say it started jokingly, it started as a threat. I sort of offhandedly said, wouldn't it be funny if I made an all gay pride and prejudice set on Fire Island? And everyone was sort of like, that's a dumb idea. Don't do that. Because on paper, it does not sound very good.

And it just was an idea. I kept bringing Jane Austen books back with me every year that we would go to Fire Island. And I would read them and just like, again, continually come back to how prescient she was as a writer. And just like how incisive she was about the ways people act. And, you know, I wrote a version of this script on spec without it, basically meaning I wrote it on my free time and then tried to sell it. nobody wanted it. And then, you know, Quibi happened. And Quibi, for those of you don't know, was a very short-lived, short-form streaming platform that then, you know, bought the project and then folded shortly after. And we were able to take it to Hulu, who produced it, which was really

a like, really, really shocking to me that it actually made it through, you know, the many layers of development that you have to go through and then to get something greenlight. Really incredible. Well, you know, I have to say, I'm assuming your parents did an excellent job of homeschooling you because your vocabulary, the way you speak and the way your brain works is really, really magnificent and so just such a breath of fresh air. You know, we have a really, really nuts, so crazy industry. And I am just so grateful for talents like you, who are really owning the space so authentically. I just, I think you're phenomenal. And it's just been such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much, Ma'am. It was really, really lovely to be here. Also, I completely am wearing a yin-yang sweatshirt. I just need everyone to know. I didn't know. I didn't think about it. It was a gift. I just hate myself. Didn't even notice. Didn't even notice. But now it's the only thing I'm taking away from this interview. Since I'm by myself, I have so many things I would want to talk to Jonathan about. But suffice it to say, I really, really enjoyed that interview. As many of you know, I really am a connoisseur. of all things stand up, and I was just so blown away by his special. I do recommend it very,

very highly. And I hope that after hearing just how intelligent and insightful and reflective this man is, I hope you will check out the special because it really is such a beautifully crafted bit of comedy. And highly recommend Fire Island as well, which you can get on Hulu and Lute on Apple TV Plus. I don't know that we've had a guest talk in that depth about specifically bipolar two, what it's like to have hypomania and not kind of full-blown mania as your primary kind of feature of bipolar disorder. And I just thought the way he described it was just so fascinating and human. And I love that he's comfortable with medication. I know a lot of people want to do things other ways and his life may change in ways that may make him do other things

as well. But I just really am impressed with him so much. And it's just, I said, refreshing. I hate when people use that word. But I just went ahead and used it. because it's really refreshing to meet someone who is so funny. Like, also so, like, he's viciously funny. Like, he's not, like, a delicate comedian. He's so funny, and he's so bright and just so self-aware. What a story. I'm just really fascinated with what he's going to do next, you know?

I cannot wait to see what else he creates. And follow us on Instagram, if you don't already. And from my breakdown to the one I hope you never have, I'll see you next time. It's my Mbiolic's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a new. Neuroscience Ph.D. or two. One, fix you more.

And now she's going to break down.