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Almost a decade ago, the actor and comedian Bowen Yang visited Suffolk County, New York's Fire Island with his friend Joel Kim Booster, another fellow comic. It was the first time that the two went together to the famed haven for LGBTQ residents and visitors, although Yang had previously been there.
"We were checking in with each other throughout that trip," Yang, who is best known as a cast member of Saturday Night Live, recalls of that experience with Booster. "Thank God we had each other there because we were like: 'Wait, is this weird to you in terms of the way we are navigating as Asian queer men?' It was very peculiar."
During that trip, Booster brought with him a copy of Jane Austen's classic novel Pride and Prejudice, which would later prove crucial.
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"He was reading the book," Yang says, "and he was turning to me and saying that this would map so well on the way people treat each other here."
The result of that idea is Fire Island, a new gay rom-com starring Booster, who also wrote the screenplay. In addition to Booster, the Andrew Ahn-directed film, which airs this Friday on Hulu, also stars Yang, Conrad Ricamora, Matt Rogers, Tomas Matos, Torian Miller, James Scully and Margaret Cho among its cast.
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The movie focuses on best pals Noah (Booster) and Howie (Yang) who, with their quirky group of friends, spend the summer at the Pines hamlet on Fire Island in search of wild adventure and fun. Both the main characters of Noah and Howie bear a strong resemblance to the personalities of sisters Elizabeth and Jane Bennet respectively from Pride and Prejudice.
"It was so genius," Yang says of Booster's idea of using Austen's novel as the template for Fire Island. "One of my favorite movies is Clueless, and that is a Jane Austen narrative but modernized in the '90s. I lucked out in the biggest way, and Joel was the shepherd in all of that. So I'm really grateful to him."
In Fire Island, the uninhibited if cynical Noah promises to stay abstinent until his friend Howie, a shy yet hopeless romantic, finds his soulmate while on the island. Complications arise along the way, leading both characters, particularly Noah, to reevaluate their preconceived attitudes. Yang acknowledges that he could relate to the character of Howie.
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"I think we're very similar in our insecurity and the way that we resign ourselves to a narrative that maybe other people voiced on to us," he says. "That 'you're not getting the guy. You don't totally feel like you belong. You might as well go for the thing that's available to you.' I feel like that's something I can absolutely believe. I think Joel might have pulled from that a little bit when we were friends early on. And now that there is a distance from that time in our lives, I think he was able to translate that really well onto the movie in a way that was responsible for both of us."
More than just a comedy of manners and the trials and tribulations of romance, Fire Island also touches on modern-day issues within the gay community, including racism and classism.
"That's something that I think not that many people are keyed into if they don't experience it day-to-day," Yang says. "Joel really modernized it in really clever ways. Andrew [Ahn, the director] said how he loved that this was taking the Pride and Prejudice story but centering it on the sisters, centering it on the friendship, on the chosen family of it all—that these people are family because they decided to be one in this house that Erin [actress Margaret Cho's character] has. It's a modern retelling that also shifts the focus onto something that I think everyone can relate to—everyone has that sense of choosing people to spend time with."
While Yang still showcases his comic range, as he had previously done in his roles on Saturday Night Live and Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens, this the movie, he also displays a serious side in his portrayal of Howie, whose heart gets broken by a handsome doctor (played by Scully).
"I think this is the first thing I've done where I really had to sort of chart someone's emotional journey through a story," says the comedian. "When you're doing a four-minute sketch on SNL, you don't really have to think about that. You're just kind of getting the punch lines out and that's it. This [role on Fire Island] was something where you kind of have to sell this guy's experience of being heartbroken, which I never had to do before. So this was something that I couldn't have really done without Andrew's guidance. Andrew was very instrumental in that."
The real-life friendship between Yang and Booster goes back to their comedy show days when Booster was a stand-up comedian based in Chicago and Yang was doing improv in New York. Yang recalls: "I had met this traveling comedian from Chicago who saw me at a show, and he said: 'You have to meet this guy, Joel Kim Booster, because you're both Asian comedians and gay.' And I was like: 'Do I have to meet this guy just because it checks the same census boxes as I do?'
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"Then [Joel] moved to New York, and I had my own comedy show at the time I co-hosted with a friend. I went out on a limb and asked Joel if he wanted to do it. He said yes. And the moment I met him at this comedy theater in New York, it felt like there was a star shower. I was like: 'Oh, I can tell that this is gonna be someone who I like and go on this crazy journey with.' There was something so fateful about meeting him and the rest is in the movie."
Outside of its story about friendship and social mores, Fire Island is groundbreaking to feature two Asian American gay leads among an LGBTQ cast, in a movie directed by an Asian American and produced by a major film studio (Searchlight Pictures). But the film is a continuation of a tradition in Asian cinema, according to Yang, who cited directors Wong Kar-Wai and Ang Li for their previous works that touch on queer love.
"Hopefully, it's sort of an addition and contribution to that tradition of my favorite Asian cinema," he says of Fire Island, "which is deeply emotional, deeply funny, and deeply about friendship, connection, and family. I feel very honored that people might look at this movie and say we haven't seen this before, but also hope people can imagine this in the larger ecosystem of Asian film—that we've had echoes of this before that are all coming together in this movie."
Fire Island premieres this Friday on Hulu.
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