Out actor Joel Kim Booster is among the
rising stars included in TIME's TIME100 Next list.
TIME's
list looks at the world's up-and-coming artists, phenoms,
innovators, leaders, and advocates.
The 34-year-old Booster wrote,
produced, and starred in Hulu's Fire Island, a gay adaptation
of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The film features a
principal cast of Asian American actors.
“I think there's a lot of laziness
that comes in when people reverse engineer representation,” Booster
told TIME. “And say, 'OK, we're gonna cast a multi cultural, like,
rainbow of characters in this movie.' If you stop there though, which
a lot of creators do, it's so flat. It's not helpful. It's not good,
you know. Like, I think we should be demanding more than just
representation at this point.”
All members on the list are paired with
a guest contributor who writes about them. Booster was paired with
Margaret Cho, who also appears in Fire Island.
“When we wrapped Fire Island,
which Joel Kim Booster wrote, produced, and starred in, we were given
a gift of shorts that said IT'S GIVING MOVIE,” Cho wrote. “That's
exactly what I think when I look at Joel. He's giving star. He's
giving excellence. He's giving the queer Asian Americans something
truly amazing to aspire to. And he's giving laughter and lots of
important observations on race, class, culture, sex, and being gay in
all of those realms. He's giving voice to the previously unheard and
unknown. He's giving giving a gorgeous face to the invisible.”
“As a fellow Asian American queer
comedian, he's giving community. And together, we are giving family,”
she concluded.