Yang and actor/screenwriter Joel Kim Booster star in a comedy that brings a new modern twist to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.”
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.
“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. 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.
