Jo Koy Talks ‘Easter Sunday’ And Why Hollywood Still Has Him Scratching His Head In 2022

Comedian Jo Koy has swapped the stage for the big screen as he headlines the new comedy movie Easter Sunday, and it’s a long overdue transition.

Inspired by and based on his life as well as his stand-up, it’s about a Filipino family gathering to celebrate Easter Sunday. Of course, it wouldn’t be a family gathering without overbearing but well-meaning elders, awkward moments, black sheep, rivalries, and poor choices.

I caught up with Koy, whose real name is Joseph Glenn Herbert, Sr., to discuss the movie, indirect racism and his frustration with how Hollywood handles Asians and Asian culture, and where Steven Spielberg and Jodeci fit in with Easter Sunday.

Simon Thompson: I’m genuinely surprised it has taken this long for a feature film vehicle to come along for you. Has this kind of thing never come up before, or has it but it wasn’t the right idea?

Jo Koy: It has never come up. Never, not once, not ever, and it was so annoying. To work in Hollywood is a struggle. There was never a character of Filipino descent, so even going out for characters, it was very slim pickings because they didn’t know where to put me. I was just like, ‘Well, put me in anything. Why does it have to be Asian-specific? I can play a cop. There are such things as cops that are Asian. Why is it that I can’t play that?’ It was this thing where there’s this cheesy excuse of, ‘Well, we don’t know where to use you.’ You can use me in anything. Thank God for Steven Spielberg because he watched my Netflix special called Coming In Hot and was literally like, ‘I want to make a movie with you.’ That’s how this all went down.

Thompson: How did you find out that Steven had seen that?

Koy: They told me directly. The first thing they said was that Steven had watched it and he couldn’t wait to do something with me. Every single person in Amblin was like, ‘Steven’s your biggest fan, and he wants to make a movie with you right now.’ I pitched that idea for Easter Sunday, and they bought it in the room. About six months later, we were getting ready to shoot the movie.

Thompson: Six months in Hollywood is like the blink of an eye. These things can take years, and sometimes even then, they never even get made.

Koy: Exactly, and sometimes they get made but never get released. This guy moves so fast. We also had to deal with the pandemic, so the pandemic delayed the project’s release by about a year. From the minute he said we’re going to do it, it was six months, and we had the script ready, and that was it. It was crazy how fast it moved.

Thompson: You’ve spoken previously about what Steven has done for the representation of Filipinos in the film industry. You give the example of Dante Basco in Hook and wonder whether he realizes what a big deal that was. Have you told him?

Koy: No, I haven’t. What’s funny is that I’m friends with Dante, and he said he literally only did one audition take, and Steven fell in love with it. His being hired had nothing to do with his ethnicity or anything else. He just said that Dante crushed it in the room and hired him. So no, I think Steven has that eye, and that’s why Steven is Steven. He sees people as great actors or actresses or whatever they do, and their ethnicity doesn’t matter. It’s about whether you can deliver. In this opportunity for me, he saw a story that he fell in love with and related to it. It’s the story between my mom and me on stage and my son and me, and he was just like, ‘That’s got to be a movie.’ It’s incredible that it finally took somebody like Steven to see that.

Thompson: We’ve seen this kind of movie done by Hollywood and others with Jewish families, Greek families, Italian families, black families, and so on, but never on this level, as far as I can recall, with a Filipino family. Because it had a Filipino family at the heart of Easter Sunday, why was it considered so different?

Koy: I don’t know what it was. It boggles my mind how it’s 2022, and we still act as if we don’t know who Asian people are. I hope I’m talking correctly, but you go to work, have Asian friends and co-workers, talk about the game, where they went to eat the night before, and everything’s relatable. For some reason, when it comes to the specific story about Asian families, that’s when it becomes too specific, and they don’t get it. We’re the same people you work with all day, so why can’t we go home with them in the movie and see how their life is? They’re just a family at home that just happens to be Asian. People will be like, ‘Okay, I get it. That’s an Asian mom, but guess what? My mom does the same thing that mom does, and oh, wow, they’re funny, too.’ I don’t understand why it’s taken this long to finally get this opportunity to show everybody that we’re all the same and that a family is a family, a mom is a mom, and a son is a son. It just boggles my mind.

Thompson: There have been people like yourself who are predominantly known for stand-up like yourself, who have then gone on from specials to doing movies. Kevin Hart is a great recent example of this. Did you talk to anyone about their experiences of transitioning?

Koy: I actually spoke to Jimmy O. Yang about his experiences. Just having him on the set and talking to him was so much fun. It was the same with Eugene Cordero. Easter Sunday was my first feature film, but these guys were veterans in the business already. Jimmy has got major films under his belt, and Eugene has done a lot of sitcoms, so they know this world very well. Having them right by my side and running lines with these veterans meant I wasn’t nervous anymore. The parts I loved the most were the scenes with six or seven of us together, like in the living room scene. Our director, Jay Chandrasekhar, was there, you know him from Super Troopers, he’s directed so many sitcoms, and he’s Indian. When he said cut in one of the scenes, he walked in front of the camera, looked at all of us, and was like, ‘Guys, this is a Dreamworks movie, a Universal Pictures movie, and an Amblin movie, and we’re all Asian. I can’t believe my eyes right now.’ He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and it felt so special. Here’s a guy that has made so many movies, and this is the first time he’s looking at pretty much an all-Asian cast. And he’s directing it. It finally hit him. It was so special to have all these people, plus Tia Carrere and Lou Diamond Phillips being a part of it and the movie.

Thompson: I was going to ask you about Lou. How did he get involved? Did you guys have a relationship beforehand?

Koy: The first thing I asked for when I got this movie deal was to have Lou Diamond Phillips and Tia Carrere in it. I was literally begging that we reach out to these two because they’re the ones that kicked the door open for me, and they’re the ones that had to deal with some serious indirect racism when they were coming up in the industry. The descriptions that they were going out for were horrible. Tia told me, ‘Do you know how often I had to go out for a role described as ‘Asian girl with thick accent’?’ I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ She was, and she’d go in and do an Asian accent. They didn’t even care who it was, and they were like, ‘Okay, yeah, we’ll take it,’ but she felt like she had to do it because those were the kind of roles she was getting back then. It was the same thing with Lou Diamond Phillips. He’d get a part like Ritchie Valens in La Bamba, and he’d nail it and knock it out of the park, but then he had to deal with hate within the communities. The Latino community was so mad that there was a Filipino playing a Latino legend, and then the Filipinos were mad because they were like, ‘Hey, you’re not Latinos. Why are you playing that character?’ It’s providing an opportunity, but it’s indirectly racist and puts people in a position where we’ll take the job because we want to eat, but it’s f**ked up that we have to do this. It sucks that a Filipino man has to go in for a Latino character. It’s not cool, but what else are we supposed to do?

Thompson: This is something that’s touched on in the film. Do people still ask you to do an accent when you audition? You do one in your act when you impersonate your mother, but that’s the only time.

Koy: Yeah, and the whole point of that scene in the movie is it upsets me because I’m going in for an audition as me, but they want me to do the accent that I do as my mom, and that’s not me. I don’t need to do the accent. I’m going to audition for this character, so why don’t I get to audition as me? The accent is my mom, and I got that a lot in Hollywood. For some reason, there’s this stigma. I do this character, it’s my mom’s character, and I’m doing it because I’m doing it well. I literally sound like my mom, and I become her on stage. For some reason, that’s perceived as, ‘Oh, you’re doing that accent.’ It’s like, ‘No, I’m playing my mom. My mom is funny. The accent has nothing to do with my mom being funny. My mom is f**king funny, and that’s what I’m doing on stage.’ I don’t understand the difference between Jeff Foxworthy doing an impression of his mom or me doing an impression of my mom. They both have accents. It drives me crazy that we’re still living in a time where that’s what we’re dealing with. I just don’t get it.

Thompson: You mentioned Tia earlier, and this is probably the first time I’ve seen her do a musical number in a movie since Wayne’s World? The Black Eyed Peas karaoke, everybody got into that. Was that part of the audition process?

Koy: Well, don’t ever put a microphone in front of a bunch of Filipinos because we’re always going sing. That’s one thing that Jay said. He was like, ‘You guys like to sing?’ It didn’t matter what scene we were doing, whenever there was a break, we just started singing, and all of this cast could sing. That karaoke scene represents a big part of our culture, and, of course, we had to use Black Eyed Peas because apl.de.ap, one of the rappers from the group, is Filipino. He’s one of our legends we hold up high, so we had to shout them out in the movie. That was so cool, and I’m so happy you brought that up because Tia told me that one thing she loved about this movie is that she got to play her. She has been in this business for over 30 years, and she told me that this is the first time she has done a movie where the character’s description is actually her. She’s never played her as far as being a Filipino woman, and she started crying. It was so cool that she finally got to play her and that she got to represent her people in a movie.

Thompson: You do big stadium shows, you have Netflix specials, and you’ve now got this feature film. You recently did a series of smaller shows in places like The Improv on Melrose here in LA. Do you want to continue to do those smaller shows? Is that where you tested out material and concepts for this?

Koy: I test my material onstage no matter where I’m. I will test jokes out at the arena shows and practice there, but I love The Improv and open mics. I go to bars where they’re doing open mics, even in coffee houses. I will pop up anywhere. You can ask anybody around town, ‘Has Jo Koy been here?’ and they will say yes. I love stand-up and the grittiness of being in the toughest position to see if I can make you guys laugh. I will do any room at any time. You’ll see me pop up a lot, especially now that my new hour is about to drop. I need to do hours, so I’ve been going up a lot lately.

Thompson: One final thing because a lot of this movie comes out of personal experiences, and there’s one line I’m curious to know if it is among those. Have you ever been a backup dancer for Jodeci?

Koy: (Laughs) That’s so funny. That’s my best friend, Wanya Morris. He’s the lead singer of Boyz II Men. I put him in the movie, and the first thing we wanted to do was a shout-out to Jodeci because back in the 90s, Boyz II Men and Jodeci owned the radio. That was him doing a little tribute to the 90s. I love that you picked up on that.

Easter Sunday hits theaters on Friday, August 5, 2022.