Chiwetel Ejiofor in 'Z for Zachariah'; Asian comedy festival; 'Drunk History'

I loved the idea of doing a three-hander. That was immediately a hook for me, just the idea that the story is only about the relationships between three people and how that can be dramatically as exciting as anything else, numerous car chases or whatever. [laughs] It's just about these interpersonal relationships and how the dramatic tension ratchets up to this impossible point.



Half of the movie is actually a two-hander with myself and Margot Robbie, and I always thought that was going to be really intriguing — how do you figure out a relationship with somebody if you feel that you are the last two people on the planet? The last thing anybody wants to do is be in a bad relationship with the last girl on the planet. [laughs]

Exactly. [laughs] How do you negotiate those things? How do you seriously try to investigate a relationship dynamic that has that much pressure? How do you seriously try to investigate the Adam and Eve quality of that?



Of course, all of that gets thrown out the window once another guy arrives, especially in the form of Chris Pine. Now a completely different instinct kicks in, and that's what the film explores and I just thought it was a fascinating idea.

I think that's an interesting part of the movie as well — at what point or to what degree do we forget any of those things, or do we? They certainly investigate not worrying about that, but when Chris arrives, there's clearly an insecurity for my character, Loomis, about the dynamic between Margot and Chris, as they're both white people.



So, from a circumstance where race doesn't involve itself at all, it's Loomis in a way who creates the paranoia of those things. Whoever's the minority feels the pressure of being the minority, regardless of their race.

Ultimately, I've never been that worried about that. I don't have that much aspiration, in a sense, to not play black people. [laughs] I engage with all aspects of myself, so if you look at "12 Years a Slave" or "Endgame," where I played Thabo Mbeki — it's a long list of people that could only be played by a black person.



I've been equally engaged with those parts and I've loved them just as much, so it's not like it's been more exciting for me somehow to play parts that don't have a racial specificity. It's equal, it's about character and what you bring to character, and ultimately I'm not that interested in the cross-racial paradigm.

One hundred percent. It's one of the things I've never understood, ultimately, is how someone can be like, I don't do TV or I don't do this. If I loved the show, I'd do it in this hotel room. [laughs] I'd do it anywhere, for anyone that wants to see it. I believe in telling stories, I believe in characters and what they mean and what they can mean to other people, and I believe in narratives. The platform or the medium in which you do that is completely irrelevant. All of it's an opportunity to tell a tale.

Yang: It's really an outgrowth of the Disoriented Comedy Tour, which I started with a few of my friends three years ago. Forty shows later, touring across the country, colleges and universities, we featured mostly female Asian-American standup comics, but then there are only so many of us.



There are actually more of us who are doing improv comedy, scripted comedy, sketch comedy, or who are comedy writers who are Asian-American, so we just thought, we've had tremendous success with Disoriented Comedy, why not expand that platform to also showcase these other genres and crafts?

Yang: Speaking about standup specifically, what we really love to present are folks who can show you a diversity of perspectives. So, hopefully when you come to a Disoriented Comedy show or the Comedy Comedy Festival, you're not going to see the typical hack or well-trodden territory around race, ethnicity or Asian families.



Sometimes that happens. I talk about how I grew up a "good Asian girl" and to this day I still don't know the Mandarin Chinese word for sex. That's going to happen, we're going to talk about that, but also there are people who aren't going to talk at all about the fact that they might be Japanese-American or Filipino-American.

Agena: I actually like the question as far as improv is concerned, because I find that it doesn't come up very often in improv and I think that's actually part of the reason why people of different ethnic backgrounds might like improv. It's the one place where you can play any age, you can play any ethnicity, and you don't have to fulfill those stereotypes or casting choices that someone else is making. You're the writer, director and actor, every time you perform.

Yang: Yeah, in improv you don't have Cameron Crowe casting Emma Stone as a native Hawaiian Asian.

Yang: I wouldn't say it's a little thing. As someone who aspires to perform and write in entertainment, it matters, because ultimately, a role like Emma Stone's is the brass ring. She's a movie star for big vehicles, and I think a lot of times [producers] say, Oh, there's not enough bankable Asian stars.



We don't get there unless you develop us. So, going back to the comedy festival, this is a part of that. That's why we're not just booking all of these veteran comics. There are an incredible number of veteran standup comedians — Kevin Shea, Alec Mapa, Ken Jeong — but there are so many of us who are just growing and still talented, and we just need that kind of support and development.

Yang: In the standup comedy world, there's not enough Asian-American audiences to make us only do shows for Asian-Americans. So, inevitably, if you're going to do standup comedy, you're going to have to play to a "general audience," and that's typically a white audience.



Sure, there are certain audiences that might be more people of color, like I've done Latino audiences or black rooms. But it's really tough to sustain a level of development and be self-employed like I am to be able to only do these non-white rooms. So yeah, we've got to be able to make everyone laugh.

I would say about 80 percent of the narrators are my friends so I know what they're gonna be like going into it. But for the new people I had meetings just to find out what type of story they like and hear them talk just as humans. You get a good grasp of what somebody is excited about. No matter what alcohol does to a certain person, as long as they're not an alcoholic, it enhances their love for the said subject that they're excited about. 

I'm very enthusiastic about letting people know that nothing is scripted. The only thing that's scripted are dates and how to pronounce someone's name. That I make sure they say right but the rest is all real. 

Yeah, I think that show and also Shelley Duvall's 'Faerie Tale Theater' is my all time favorite. I wasn't the best learner in school and secretly this is a way that I'm learning history. I love history but whenever you tell a story, you humanize the people you're learning about. It's a lot easier to learn and that's still my goal to humanize everybody. 

[Laughs] My doctors asked the same thing. That's funny. No, most of the time I'll do it with someone who hasn't done this show before and reminding them that they're not being exploited and that it's a comradery. We're doing this together. It helps me know when I drink with them where they are. If I feel completely fine and they're [drunk rambling] I'm like, 'No, that's not real. You're not really talking like that.' 

After this season airs there will be one hundred stories, but out of all of those narrators, everyone emails me the next day to apologize to say they didn't think they did a good job. And I say, 'Remember, this is what alcohol does because I promise you, you did a good job or we'd still be filming you.' 

Very, very bizarre. I'm not gonna ask too many questions. I'm just gonna go, 'Okay, all right.' It's nice that the most pretic... precede... What's that word? 

Thank you. 

Yes. I just didn't go to college. Give me a break, man. That the Academy is saying, 'Yes this is a real show and people should watch it.' That's what I take from it. That it's getting recognized.