When veteran comic Margaret Cho was approached for the rom-com Fire Island — from writer Joel Kim Booster and director Andrew Ahn, with a cast of queer Asian men — she was proud to lean into what she calls her “Joan Collins phase.”
“Do I get to be their guest?” she self-queried, perhaps picturing a dramatic entrance in a wide-brimmed hat. “Like when Bette Davis was on Hotel?”
Indeed, Cho’s lesbian charater Erin is the doyenne of queers in the film that stars Booster as Noah, a handsome young gay man Elizabeth Bennet persona and sidelines his Fire Island hook-up plans until he helps his friend Howie (Bowen Yang) get laid. Banished from the lesbian enclave of Cherry Grove for reasons that may include arson and a bad breakup (although not necessarily related), Erin owns the home where Noah, Howie, and their friends have gathered each summer for years. A leader for queer Asian visibility in comedy, Cho plays a mother figure of sorts to Noah and his lost boys onscreen. But the dynamic within the film is rooted in the off-screen chosen family they’ve made.
