The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Joel Kim Booster

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

If you've watched any comedy since the pandemic... then you already love Joel Kim Booster. He's had a hand in everything from "Fire Island" and "Loot" to "KPop Demon Hunters" and "Big Mouth" and now, the new "Scrubs" reboot. Joel tells Dan about the challenges of understanding and owning his identity being adopted by a deeply conservative and religious white family... and how he navigated not being accepted by his parents for being gay and finding an outlet through acting and comedy. He also talks about his transition from the startup world to the world of comedy, and why even after creating original and authentic (and successful!) work… to maintain a career in entertainment, you never really escape having to prove yourself over and over again. Joel also reminisces about his recent marriage to his husband, the clarity and comfort it brings, and how love really can make any situation better. Watch new episodes of "Scrubs" Wednesday at 8/7c on ABC and streaming next day on Hulu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Save the Everyday with Amazon. Welcome aboard Via Rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste. View.

And enjoy. Via Rail, love the way. Happy to have Joel Kim Booster in with us. Comedian, actor, writer, wrote his own. Now, Fire Island wrote and starred in Fire Island on Hulu. He's in Scrubs now. And also you have on Apple TV, you have Lute. So where along this path here, and thank you for being with us.

Where along this path did you end up feeling like you'd made it well beyond 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 up. for myself at the beginning. And I think like I really had to re like reposition the goalposts for myself. I think after my first Conan set. Like I never really expected to ever get to that point that soon. And I think, you know, for a while, I mean, I think the goal, you know, was to quit my day job and be able to support myself doing this. And so I quit my day job in 2016. And that was like already, I think far and away beyond whatever had planned for myself.

You know, obviously when you're a little kid, like, it's about being famous and being on TV and all that stuff. But I think like I quickly disabused 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 be, you know, more than what I could have helped for. So, um, as far back as 2016, probably. What was the day job you were quitting? I, I worked for a tech startup. I worked for tech startups, um, right after college, I, one of my first jobs out of college was Groupon. I were, I was like the 70-somethingth employee of Groupon before they went 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 we're at tech startups. Were you unhappy doing that because that's not exactly the best place for a creator? Um, 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. Uh, for the especially, because I worked in customer service and customer ops. And, um, 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 in startup world was we want you to, you know, take office. I have never had a day job where there was a set number of vacation days. Every tech startup I worked for had unlimited vacation days. and I was able to take off, you know, weeks at a time to go and work on a project or something like that and then come back to a job and have benefits and all that. So it was never, it never felt like it impeded anything for me until, you know, it 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, every script I wrote in that period, I wrote, you know, I would spend

six hours a day writing and two hours a day doing actual work. Because that's the thing about corporate jobs, tech jobs is it's all, any email-based job is a joke. It's just a straight-up joke. I never had to work very hard and would constantly get promoted because by, and that's the thing, is you learn is the more you get promoted in those sorts of environments, the less work you're asked to do. So all of these guys who get up to the C-suite, like I'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 it to make a team.

I'm stealing weasel on the way to your dreams. Yeah, very proudly so. Two hours a day. That sounds ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous, but I was doing more work than most of my coworkers were. And so you said watershed moment. How did that happen? I quit my job to work for Billy on the street, actually, for Billy Eichner.

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 show is so great. Thank you. Yeah, I had a blast writing for it. My contract was two weeks to start. And then after those first two weeks, it was a roll of the dice. I didn't know if I'd be asked back. I didn't know if I'd continue to have this job. And I knew that beforehand. So you're looking over the end of a cliff. Yeah. But the other job wasn't that fulfilling and you probably didn'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 headfirst, know, if I just didn't take the plunge and do it. 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 upward. I was paying, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars every month for student loans. I didn't want to get behind. I didn't 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 instinctually at a certain point that if I did not take the leap, then I would never take the risks necessary to get to where I am now. Did you feel brave in doing it? Because 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 hit as a comedian. I mean, I never gave myself a time frame like that. I knew that everybody's trajectory. is a different speed. And so I never, I never set a time frame for myself to make it, quote, unquote. Because I also just saw how circuitous everybody else's path was around me. Like some people had been doing it for upwards of 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, I knew there was no set model or template for myself. And so I, I just, I needed to get to a certain point where I was making more money outside of the job than I was in the job.

And once that was happening, you know, pretty consistently, I felt comfortable enough to leave. Other people are in different financial situations than I was. You know, some people were being supported by their families in part. Some people were being supported by their families in full. And so could make, you know, different judgments, had a very different calculus towards how they approached their day jobs and supporting themselves financially than I did because I was living in New York. I was paying, you know, $1,200, $1,500 at some point. I had seven roommates. It was not like a great situation for me. So seven roommates? Yeah, that's when I

moved to New York. I had seven roommates for the first year and a half. So that's sharing one bathroom? Two bathrooms. Because that's a small, that's a small place. Yeah, I mean, it was a duplex. So it was 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 like how you're being imprinted knowing that you

might want the arts? What do you mean? Exactly. I'm saying your childhood, when you look at the things that inspired you, the things that made you dream off in the distance of I want to be a writer. I want to 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 southwest suburbs of Chicago. I remember seeing when my sister was about to go to high school, we went to the high school and saw the spring musical, which was the Wizard of Oz, because my sister was really interested in theater and had done theater in middle school. And I remember that was a real huge moment for me was when I was like, oh, I want to do that. Like whatever this is, that's what I want to do. And there wasn't really a frame of reference for any way else into the industry but theater, you know,

community theater, high school theater and things like that. So being an actor and specifically being a, like, 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 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 a profession. Singing or singing? Singing and dancing mostly.

And so I got back to school and I changed my focus almost immediately to playwriting. I wrote my first play my sophomore 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 and it was the first time that I felt remarkable I would say like I never felt remarkable

as an actor at school I never set myself really apart as a performer but a writer that was like that felt really like oh no one else is doing this at my school that's ambitious for a sophomore to be yeah play um I mean but there was a lot I mean the play went up in one of the student theaters which was in the basement of a house that they painted black and and and put up a Dementry 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 would say to this day, I think of my

graduating class of less than 20 people in my theater class, I would say, I don't think anyone thought that I would be the one to be in this position now. Like, I think everyone is pretty shocked consistently because I was not the person who was getting the leads in plays and shows, and I was not somebody who was standing out in classes, and I was not somebody who felt really remarkable in college. It's interesting that you're understanding a bit how special it is to write a play, whether it's in a basement or not. As a sophomore, I very early knew I wanted to be a writer, but not as a, you know, I became a journalist, but not as a sophomore in high school. I wasn't, I needed, I needed, I needed professors to tell me that I was good at it. It wasn't anything that was self-started. I wasn't like just writing because I had a play inside of me. Yeah, I mean, the nice thing about my school was that there was, it was a school for self-starters in a lot of ways. It was a small school in Milliken University, downstate Illinois.

And it really was like you can make anything happen for yourself if you have the, if you take the initiative to do it. And there were so many, like student run theaters like 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. could do that if you wanted to. It was up to you to sort of cast it and to it was all DIY. And that was a 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 and do it on your own and not have a lot of faculty support for every project that you were doing. And so yeah, I think like I'd always I'd always written too.

I'd always been writing since I was a little kid. Very casually, lots of fan fiction, nothing serious. Certainly never a play. 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, you know, Yeah, I remember I was home on winter break and had just finished a movie. I think it was like in her shoes with Cameron Diaz and Tony Clef. 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, it was called Layover. And it was this woman, her sister who was depressed and had committed suicide. her, and they had sort of in a strange relationship.

Her sister, who committed suicide's boyfriend at the time, had a layover in Chicago, and they were not close, but he, you know, asked to stay with her, and she, and he, she learns who her sister was through her partner. And, you know, there was 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 fare. 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 twilight. 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 callback.

So it was not something. I don't think anyone, anyone especially thought of me as like a funny person other than socially. But certainly not. But socially funny, you'll go out and be funny or socially funny because you interacted oddly? 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.

in classes and stuff like that, but I never wrote comedy. I will say that all of my plays, like, I reveled in, like, getting the audience to laugh in moments of really high tension and stuff like that.

And, like, this play that I wrote layover was very funny. Like, it was, like, getting people to 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 certainly not stand-up, was not something that was on my radar

until much after college. It's harder. Comedy writing is harder. I think it's the hardest kind of writing. For sure, yeah. Funny. And so you have to be a really adept writer. Would you recommend homeschooling, having done that before the time we're talking about?

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 revolution, so they kept us home. Just my brother and my sister had been going to public schools since she was in the grade, but something about my brother and I, I don't know why they kept us home for longer. And both my parents worked. No one was watching us. No one was managing the schooling that we were doing. I was getting the answers for all my math homework, quote unquote, from the back of the

book during the day when my parents were at work. And luckily, I really love 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 textbook and just read it like a book and like was never asked to write a paper until I was maybe a sophomore in high school when I did like online, they transitioned me to online schooling. But yeah, I remember the first time I ever had to write a paper was maybe when I was a freshman or a sophomore in high school. And I did not know how to do it. It was a big learning curve. 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 you know, I have a growing distrust of the education system in this country and, you know,

just the fact that they stopped teaching kids phonics until recently is crazy to me. Like, I have a friend who works in education in San Francisco and she works at a really great school. Half of her, you know, most of her eighth grade boys are reading at a second grade level, you know, and this is not like an, like, uh, you know, underfunded, you know, underprivileged school. This is like a, like, uh, you have to test to get

in sort of school. And still, they're not, they're not learning how to read. They're letting AI write all their papers. Um, they're experiencing school and a huge problem. 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 about that. But yeah, I just, 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. I mean, it was wild when I was going to school. I would wake up at, like, 4.45 to get ready to go to school at 7 and then, you know, have something, have an extracurricular rehearsal before school, and then stuff after school, and then a whole course load of homework to do.

It's insane. And it's crazy. 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 think it's working very well for most kids.

And I would, it's so ironic that like I'm even, that homeschooling. is even on the table because I had such a negative experience with it and I hated it and I, um, you know, got out by the skin of my teeth knowing how to do anything and having any sort of academic potential. And it was a real learning curve once I was in school because I didn't know how to do homework. I didn't know how to study for a test. I barely knew how to write a paper. So yeah, it was not an easy transition. So it's not something that I take lightly when I think about it. Folks, listen up. The NBA playoffs. are here and Draft King Sportsbook.

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We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. Binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. I have a lot of follow-up questions. Do you remember the particulars of when you got the student loan paid off? Yeah, in 2019, I had just been cast in an NBC sitcom, which has the distinction.

It was called Sunnyside, the distinction of being the lowest rated premiere in NBC history. It was pulled off the air after three episodes, which they hadn't done in like eight years. Like networks had stopped pulling things off the air early by the time this had happened for many, many years. They made a rare exception. 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 in loans than rent for, you know, almost 10 years at that point. Maybe, yeah. maybe a slightly right at 10 years maybe and um you know and and i barely paid i i barely put a chunk in my actual like i was paid most of that was uh interest 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 um early 50s um certainly would never have been able to buy a house um which is 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 Lute. They wrote Lute 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 Assam Batra was also a staff writer on that show. And she is now the showrunner of Scrubs.

And it was the same situation when Scrubs came back. She had me in mind for this part. And it's because she worked with me on Sunny's side. So it's one of those, it's a big lesson that I always try to communicate to people, which is you don't really know the end of the story until you've, zoomed out and you have some distance from it because if I only paid attention to that year of when the show was canceled, of course it feels like a flop failure. But now that I've had, you know, many years of distance from it, it's the best thing that ever happened 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 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 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 that like a med school student took on to get a theater degree it was insane and I remember my senior year it was a small enough school that everyone there every senior who had debt had to sit down with Nancy Askins who was the fit night chill 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 I was emancipated at 17. I didn't have an adult in my life telling me to, hey, slow down, don't sign on that dotted line. And without parental support, I needed that money.

Even with, again, I worked my way through school. I had two jobs, the entirety of my college career. And so it was just none of it was enough to cover the costs of going to this very expensive private school. Emancipated is a heavy word, especially at 17. So how is that coming to be? Um, I mean, my parents, I was, I came out of the closet at school, um, when I was 16. My parents sent me to school when I was public school when I was a junior in high school. Very quickly came out of the closet, drank for the first time to book weed for the first time, shoplifted for the first time, uh, hooked up with a guy for the first time within the first month of going to public school.

That all happened. Um, because you can't keep a kid under lock and key for 16 years and then give him an ounce of freedom and not expect him to sort of explode. And so I was out for a full year at school. going into my senior year, my parents were in my journal, they found out all of the things that I had been doing in the year previously. And it was a real tumultuous moment for our family. And it just sort of ended in me moving out and calling their bluff because they 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, okay, fuck it, I'll leave. And so I left and didn't talk to them again until college and have not taken to die on 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 helped 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 is their day job because my parents were paying my rent. You say that with a good amount of both pride and defiance on this is who I am. And I guess when you're leaving the house, is it because they think you're a bad kid or is it the gay and the religion? It's mostly that. It's mostly that. I think like it was maybe a little column A, a little column B for sure,

because they knew I was drinking. They knew I was partying. They knew I was doing stuff that they really didn't want to do. Now, 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 X, Y, Z, I was out of control and, and, you know, yeah, yeah, spinning out. And I don't think that was the case, looking back on it even now. but yeah, it was a tough senior year for sure. You're talking about the earlier years, though, like how restrictive was all of that

when you're talking about the explosion that comes with, all of a sudden I have freedom. Like how, what 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 growing up.

And my childhood is just marked with moments where I would sneak culture in without them knowing about it. And that was like my focus for much of my adolescents was trying to figure out how to get around my parents' rules over what we could consume. 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. an avid reader and they definitely, like I said, there was not a lot of direct supervision going on while I was home being homeschooled. But I worked at the library. That was my first job. And that was like a gateway drug to the world for sure. And so reading was like a huge part of it. More so than writing, I think like I was not encouraged to write. I remember I like wrote a story. It was like an 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 to my mom and she basically was like, you shouldn't be pursuing this. You're not good enough to do this. And I was like nine or ten at the time. Oof. So I just remember my mom being like, you really want to focus your time on this? Because it wasn't very good, I'm sure, at nine or ten.

But and so I wasn't really encouraged to do creative stuff growing up. Well, when you bucked on the, I did this myself, you walked it back because I know in the community of the arts, you have to have had a number of different help. But you're bucking up specifically against your parents and the idea of you didn't think I could do this. Yeah. Like, and that's not, that's not support. Like that's, I don't know what are the most important things. My parents were very practical things. I don't want to paint them in too harsh a 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 so, 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. 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 like, who's going to pay you to do that? Right. Like, it's not practical.

No. less so now than then, but not then either. I read a quote from you where you said you knew you were gay before you knew you were Asian. How does that come? That's like an early stand-up bit. And it's true. I mean, I was adopted when I was a baby from Korea, likely stolen. And 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 in Birmingham, Alabama, where 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 and my sister that I liked looking at naked boys more than

naked girls um and so I had a really hyper awareness of being different in that way much before I had an awareness of being different racially from my family you skipped uh so fast past likely stolen yeah um you know I mean you're probably aware of right now all of this stuff that's coming out about, you know, the hundreds of thousands of babies from the mid-80s to the late 90s that were stolen in Korea. They can't locate my birth certificate in Korea. The State Department can't find it. The Korean government can't find it. No one can find my original birth certificate in Korea. The adoption agency that my parents used was like shuttered years and years and years ago. There's just no record of my birth in Korea, which is like right now is not

the moment in America where I want to have like no birth certificate. I'm sorry. a laugh at that. Yeah, it's a weird time for me right now. I have a provisional birth certificate that Illinois issued when I was adopted, but they got, they no longer accept that as a birth certificate under this administration. So, so that's a, yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, I'm, like, like, you know, they accepted it before, before enough for me to get the passport. But now, you know, I had to go in and get a new real ID recently, and they wouldn't accept it. Um, so it's a, it's a tricky, tricky moment right now. Uh, what are the things that about adoption that you feel are still formative for you in

adulthood, like some of the things that you still wear or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, supposed to look like. Um, I mean, I will say, like, I don't have a lot of angst around being adopted. Um, uh, 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 transracial adoption thing is very complicated. But that had very little to do with my relationship with my parents.

Like in isolation, 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 eight 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 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 a mind fuck now because, you know, I'm deeply connected to being Asian-American and racially. I like have a, you know, have my entire life been treated differently because of my race. I'm less connected to my ethnic identity in a really deep way because growing up in the Midwest and an 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. politics a lot. Like, I think, like, people try to tend to try to approach Asian Americans and Latino Americans like a monolithic ethnic group or a racial group in the same way that African

Americans are treated as, you know, a cultural sort of block of people. And it's just not the same because both Latinos and Asians, most of our culture within even America still is connected to our specific ethnic identities and communities rather than as a racial group. You know, there are people when I say I'm Asian American that say that's not even a thing. That's not that's that there is no such thing as Asian American culture. And like I think like Tony Hinchcliffe saying that Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage is 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 this is the end of his.

him getting the Latino vote. And you have to understand that, like, the person who cares the least about Puerto Rico being called an 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, et cetera. Because when I would come up again and meet, you know, Korea, like second, third generation Koreans, Americans, it was really hard for them to connect

with me and me connect with them. Like I 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 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, Dominicans, Africans, Africans, those are all very different. Those are not the same communities.

No, and you can't approach them like that. Because obviously African Americans are an outlier for a very specific reason because they came to this country in a very specific way and formed a very specific culture together because of the way, you know, for those specific reasons. And, you know, we just didn't come here in the same way. Well, you specifically, 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 a 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 enough. A teenager's already feel like that before, without that even being true. And so it sounds like a real lonely searching place and you don't feel like the parents are supportive of something or something. Or some things that you are. 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 as, like, my friends who experienced racism growing up and then could 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, um, understand it from a 360 sort of point of view. And so I was dealing with that and then I was dealing with the sexuality of it all and the church of it all. And like, I just felt really not like, yeah, I just didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. Well, speaking of belonging, I, uh, you, when you, uh, 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 there. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. So I went to Korea for the first time about a year and a half ago, almost two years ago. My husband was there for work and we were like, let's just stay in Seoul and then we can go to Jiu, which is the island where I was born. And I had known by that point that I was going to propose and I thought I'll do it in Korea. We went to Jchu. I got a what was supposed to be a private, what was advertised as a private yacht right around the island. And then we're getting on this boat where I knew I was about to propose. And Jessica, our tour guide, I see like 10 other people

get on the boat. And I was like, I thought this was private. And she was like, it is private. It's just like 10 other people. And I was like, okay, culturally, I think we have a very different understanding of that word. And then, like, we're on this ship. There's all these, like, old Koreans fishing around us. I get down on one knee. The ring is boxes upside down. I almost dropped the ring into the ocean. My heart will go on is randomly playing in the background, which is like a weird thing to be hearing on a ship. And Jessica is taking video of this, which is very sweet of her. He says yes. And then at the end of our engagement video, you can just hear Jessica go. Now everyone, please clap please clap it was a full jet bush moment and um no one does um and it was i couldn't have

asked for a better video of our engagement because it was so funny it was really really good but you you were you imagined you imagined deeply romantic oh yeah sun set like yeah on the island of my birth yeah the whole nine and it just uh and it was more fitting that it happened the way it happened for sure. So how do you come upon comedy specifically? If you're thinking to yourself, I want to be a thespian, or I want to be a playwright, or I want to take the arts seriously, how do you find the ability to make fun of yourself or find the funny? And now I'm not going to do it. I'm going to care about it deeply, but this is something that inherently is light. Yeah, no. I mean, so I moved to Chicago after college because I wanted to be a playwright and a storefront theater actor.

and I wanted to be, I loved the theater scene. I still love the theater scene in Chicago. I think it's one of the best theater scenes in the country, if not the best. 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 into the Chicago Fringe Fest after college. I moved to Chicago to do that, joined a theater company very quickly there, and was working on a play called Five Lesbians Eating a Kish as like 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 they only did new work. They only developed and did new work. And that was really exciting for me.

So I was a 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, the Potterbaugh sisters in Lakeview called Entertaining 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 where every major comedian wanted to do a set on Sunday nights in Chicago. And I remember going to see that show. And it was the first time that I saw standup where it was like, quote unquote, what then was considered alternative standup comedy because it was in the space and it was grungy. And it was also the first time that I'd seen standup 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, and 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, you know, writing that set very hastily on the train the day before and then, you know, cold having never done student before, I performed in front of this audience and I crushed. And I think like crushing that first time was really, again, sort of changed the course of my entire life.

Because if I had done poorly, I don't think I would have tried it again. 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 seasons comic in Chicago requires a lot of face time. Like you don't just go to the open mic. You stay after you're set and you hang out and you make friends and you have to be in really like in that community to get booked to go to come up, to rise, whatever.

and I just found it really difficult because I was so by that point in the theater community. And that's where all my friends were. That was what I was interested in. And so I was doing stand-up at really unorthodox places. I at one point was opening at the Steppenwolf Theater. I would like open if they did a comedy play, I would do stand-up for like 15 minutes before the play started to warm up the audience. And so I was doing really unorthodox, untraditional, non-traditional avenues in stand-up. that way. And it just became this point where it slowly became the more interesting thing I was doing.

It started as like fully just like, this will be an artistic outlet for me to like have total freedom because, you know, the parts that I was getting called in for were not always super interesting as an Asian American man. This was well before we were having the kind of diversity discussions we're having in casting now. And it just felt really freeing because I was like, oh, I can get up on stage, write a version of myself. that feels authentic and, you know, have full creative control over what I was doing at the time. And then that control just became more and more alluring to me. And to the point where about two and a half years into living in Chicago, I said, I need to move to New York because I need to do

this full time. And the only way to do that is to completely start over in a new city and 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 had. 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, you know, you haven't done X, Y, Z show. You haven't hit these Chicago milestones yet. You're not ready to go to New York. You'll get swallowed up. And the thing that happened is I moved with a bunch of quote unquote, like upperclassmen in the Chicago comedy scene. Like, these were like the kings and queens of Chicago comedy scene. I happened 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'd been doing stand-up for almost a decade at this point, we all started at zero. We all were going last at the open mics. You know, they at this point, we're used to like rolling into the open mic, going up immediately and then like chilling and hanging out and being like.

These are the people you're living with, right? These are the people that I moved. Like, we're saying, you're not saying? We moved at the same time. So your roommates are strangers? Your seven rooms? Yeah, strangers, yeah. You were living with six strangers?

Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. And so it was just like 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 development as a comedian because, Already I was nothing in Chicago.

So then being nothing in New York was a lot easier for me to swallow than for some of these people that I moved. Well, and in some ways had felt like nothing all your life if you're always an outsider. Yeah, yeah. Sure. So you're arriving in New York. Can you take me back to the killing and it altering the trajectory of your life? What did those comedians or any comedians say about how rare it is to do it the way you did it with this shortcut? There were no comedians on that show.

there was nobody on that show who was like in the comedy community. And so I didn't really know that I was supposed to go to open mics until like later on. I didn't know the system and the hurdles that I was supposed to be jumping through and and the milestones I was supposed to be reaching to get success in Chicago. I was just sort of doing stand-up at in the theater community and like alone, kind of siloed off from the rest of the comedians in Chicago. And so I would do this. 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 years of doing stand-up after that i mean how seminal is that you had the shortcuts of you already are comfortable in front of an audience and you're a writer so you know you know how to write well do you know how to write yeah i mean it's a different it was a completely different thing that i had to learn though i don't think that the skills 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 in or early in moving to New York that 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 and doing okay, but I wasn't seeing a lot of stand-up. I wasn't consuming a lot of stand-up in Chicago, not in the way that I was in New York.

When you talk about playing these strange places, what is the weirdest or the funniest of the situations that you found yourself in where you're siloed away and you're doing, I mean, Steppenwolf might have been in. Steppenwolf was definitely it, yeah. But do you remember some of the details of like, this is weird that I'm doing this here? Yeah, I mean, I was doing a lot of like, you. 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, Thunbrasers. I did a lot of burlesque shows and like poetry slams and stuff like that. That was like 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 bipolar. I don't know whether you felt like some of the things happening in your life before then are product of environment, brain chemistry, whatever it is. That's a little column A, a little column B 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, 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 being, 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, I, 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 too, especially, like, I didn't have any, I wasn't 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, um, really like, you know, I was a pretty, uh, well-liked, like, gregarious, like, socially adept person and then I would have moments of really flying off the handle and 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 under the pressure.

And it never made any sense because it wasn't, there was never any through line in terms of like the situation or the environment or any of like that. It just felt completely at random to most of the people in my life and to myself until I realized 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 is one thing for you not to understand. It makes the diagnosis.

something weep of relief because, oh, it's not, it's, it's not that I'm, I'm weird, I'm bad. I'm, 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 anything beyond the outbursts where you, where you now could look back in your life and, and have more understanding and compassion? with yourself? Yeah. I mean, like, the upwards were a huge part of it, but I mean, like, the moments before, like, being, and I'll be specific, hypomanic, I'm bipolar two, so I don't necessarily experience manic episodes in the same way someone who's bipolar one does. Those are

a little bit more extreme, but hypomania is like a step below that. And, you know, I was the best version of myself in some ways when I was hypomanic because I was so charismatic. I was so outgoing. I was so funny. I was so full of energy. And then like something would destabilize me and I would go from being that person to like a dark, dark, angry, you know, person who didn't, 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 the diagnosis and I had a framework to really understand that behavior. And to those who don't understand the high end of mania, that's you feel monster confident there, right? Like it's it's very positive, but it makes the despair of the down.

Yeah, I always describe it to people who maybe don't understand. It is like rolling on Molly in some ways. And chemically is very similar too. So, you know, it feels really like euphoric even at times until it doesn't. Beyond the relief of having a name for it, how has now knowing it and having tools been something over the last five years where you feel like you 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. A 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 imagined 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 a short three years since we'd met, we'd both changed a lot and were 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 that 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 ride him out until the next iteration after that. And when I realized, I think I realized that It was like love and that kind of commitment was so much more about growing with the person and not about stasis, but about change. And when that shifted in my brain, I think that's when I really understood why I wanted to be married in the first place.

Has it made you better at taking care of yourself in terms of self-love? Like I know that that's something. Yeah, no, absolutely. It has. I think like it's very important for me and the strength of our relationship to maintain stability. but it also I've had to learn like that maybe that's why I started to you know focus on stability but the stability just feels so much better outside of even the relationship 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 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 And, you know, doing open. Doing open mics until 2 a.m., you know, stuck at a job 50 hours a week, not necessarily doing a whole shit ton of work there. But, you know, there was one job, I think, that was really stressful. And I was working like a full 50 hours a week, my first job in New York. But that was a different story than most of my other jobs.

But I was just like I was so focused on making it that I didn't have room for a career. a relationship really. I tried maybe a couple times, but it just never panned out. And 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 has your dreams come true, it doesn't look the way that you imagined it. 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's certainly hasn't like satiated any need in myself to continue pushing. I, 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 I, how successful I'd have to be to be happy, because I'm not. So, satisfied combined with happy, right? Right. And so you're, yeah, so you're saying it never, it, it, it always feels like a whole that you are. Yeah.

I mean, even, like, I'm mostly, like, I don't consider myself like, Uber successful in this moment in my career. I find I'm more often than not frustrated and feeling like a failure right now than even I did when I was coming up as a comic. So from Sunnyside to Scrubs doesn't, like you can't step back from it? No, because 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 loot right now.

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 middle of it? Yeah, but 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 summer I turned, I had a stand-up 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's, 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 and 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've got to end on a lighter.

Yeah. It can't end with. I feel like a failure. I feel it's all been downhill. No. And that's the nice thing about being married 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 really amazing, powerful, lovely thing in my life that is far more important to me now than my career ever was. You fixed it. You fixed it. Thank you. Appreciate the time of work, the vulnerability, the honesty. Appreciate all of it. Thank you.