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Joel Kim Boosterisnt worried about being seen as intellectual.
His stand-up persona is defined by an understanding of his own attractiveness and a willingness to admit to stupidity.
How did you come to the role onSunnyside?
It seems very suited to your stand-up character.I was asked to audition in the height of pilot season.
It was one of many one-off auditions that came in during that time.
I dont have the range.
Or at least I didnt that day.
If they dont like it, its just another audition, and if they do like it, great.
I got lucky because they liked it.
They definitely wanted to see more of that.
I saw my sister in a school play when I was very young, 5 or 6.
From then on, that was all I wanted.
I loved attention and I wanted to be an actor.
You sort of grow up and you realize how unrealistic that job is, and you scale down.
I thought, That seems more realistic, and then you realize how unrealistic television writing is.
Then stand-up came along.
It felt like a more accessible way into the industry, which sounds crazy to think about now.
Id sort of given up on acting when I started doing stand-up.
I didnt think that that was ever going to happen for me.
Its kind of funny that through stand-up I ended up back at my plan A.
What inspired your shift to such a confident stage persona?Its kind of two things.
I was influenced by the way that stand-up sort of shifted.
I think there was a moment when that sort of self-deprecating vulnerability felt really interesting to me creatively.
Its an easy way to get an audience on your side.
You step out onstage and you say, Oh, Im a sad sack.
I feel bad about myself because of x, y, and z.
Its a way to engender sympathy from the audience and then to surprise them with laughter.
Comedy, for me, is really about that turn, the surprise factor of it.
The other part of it is that I stopped feeling that way about myself.
Its hard for me to gauge.
Writing jokes for a character or situations is so contextual in a way that my stand-up isnt.
The context for my stand-up is me.
I studied dramatic writing and structure, and I really love to write full scripts.
I can no longer use them in my set because I pitched slightly different versions in those two rooms.
Its sort of a double-edged sword.
Do you still work on writing outside of writers rooms and stand-up?Yeah!
Do I find time to do it personally?
Am I writing a lot on spec?
I will do that when Im not working.
But Im sort of forced into doing that.
I would go crazy if I didnt have too much work to do.
Im very much confident in the intrinsic, universal humor in my experience and what Im talking about onstage.
Its still there, but its a bit more stealthy.
Im less interested in going onstage and baldly talking about my experiences with racism or homophobia.
You see it, but now all of that stuff is ingrained in popular culture.
I dont like to get into it on an intellectual level with audiences.
