Fire Island: Writer and star Joel Kim Booster on putting a queer, Asian, rom-com twist on Pride & Prejudice

Fire Island is roughly 25sqkm of lightly populated beach and scrub, just off the coast of the state of New York. It may not sound like much to write home about, but this tiny patch of land holds a very special place in LGBTIQ+ folklore. It was one of the first safe havens for gay and lesbian people in America, dating back to the 1920s, when writers and creatives from New York’s theatrical industry would spend the summer at the island’s Cherry Grove settlement, free to express themselves without fear of society’s restrictive moral standards. Over the years, its reputation grew and it now enjoys a near-mythical status the world over, as thousands flock to the so-called queer Disneyland every summer. It’s fitting, then, that a new rom-com that takes its title and setting from Fire Island is similarly revolutionary. That might seem like a strange claim given the movie is an adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, which is pretty well-worn territory, but the film’s writer and star, Korean American comedian Joel Kim Booster, has crafted something entirely unique. And that’s because Hollywood does not have a long history of making queer movies full stop, but even a smaller number are breezy rom-coms, and there are none until now that feature a predominantly Asian American cast. “We’re waiting for Hollywood to catch up to us in terms of the imagination they have about the experiences of Asian people, and gay men and queer people,” Kim Booster says on a video call with Today. “So, it was sort of just a moment where I was like, ‘You know what, f… it, I’ll do it myself’.” Kim Booster originally conceived the story as a series for now-defunct streaming platform Quibi, and says it was less about trailblazing as it was about creating a worthy project for him and fellow comedian and BFF, Bowen Yang. “We happen to, you know, check a lot of the same demographic boxes,” he says. “People want to pit us against each other, or compare us in some way, and many news outlets have used pictures of me when they’re talking about him, and vice versa, like there’s a desire to sort of flatten us down and remove our individuality from the conversation. “So, I wanted to make a story and make a movie that showed the breadth of our experience, and how different we are, and yet, also, just on a practical level, I have no f…ing idea if we’ll ever get to work together like this again, because we are going in for the same parts all the time.” The film loosely follows the plot of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, with Kim Booster’s Noah serving as the Elizabeth Bennet, only considerably more sarcastic and in far less clothes, while Yang plays an approximation of Jane Bennet, and Conrad Ricamora is suitably snooty in the Mr Darcy-esque role. It’s also quite hilarious, with Kim Booster’s character at one point committing gay blasphemy by saying Oscar-winning queer film Call Me by Your Name was “boring”. “Considering what’s going on with Armie Hammer now (with cannibalism allegations), I don’t know if it is boring, I might have to revisit it now,” Kim Booster laughs. “I think my publicist is having an aneurysm right now.” Joining Kim Booster and Yang in the cast, is one of the OGs of Asian American comedians, Margaret Cho, and she reckons Austen would approve. “I think she would have loved it,” Cho tells Today. “What she was doing was creating these frothy worlds of fictionalised romance to teach deeper lessons about class, culture and sexism in her era, so this film really is, in essence, the same thing. “We’re using the sort of frothy, romantic tropes to underscore this lesson about class and race and modern gayness, which I think is really amazing.” Fire Island is is out on June 17 on under the Star banner on Disney Plus.