More Details on ‘Fire Island’ Queer Rom-Com Emerge

Anyone looking for a Pride and Prejudice-inspired gay rom-com will be pleased to know that very film is coming soon. Vanity Fair revealed additional details about the new film, Fire Island, starring Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang.

The film features two gay men (played by Booster and Yang) looking for love at the titular Fire Island. It’s not only a rare rom-com with two gay Asian leads, but the film looks to provide commentary on modern cis gay culture. Booster tells Vanity Fair that the adaption was a no-brainer.

“Jane Austen’s observations about the way people are awful to each other without being awful to each other—I was like, Oh, my God. This is shade. This is what gay men do all the time,” Booster says.

“A Jane Austen narrative meeting an Asian American narrative meeting a queer narrative: Those three helices come together in a way that’s greater than the sum of their parts,” Yang adds. “And to say that something is greater than a Jane Austen narrative is insane—unhinged of me—to do. But I said it.”

While Fire Island will surely discuss the inner workings of gay men within the LGBTQ community, the film also introduces conflict in the form of racist, classist white gay men, who flirt with the protagonists by fetishizing their race and flaunting their wealth. Booster says they wanted to push back against the idea that “white muscle gays” run the island, pointing to the larger conversation of gay party culture as a whole.

“Don’t let them win,” Booster tells Vanity Fair. “Just because there are shitty people who want to take ownership of (the island) doesn’t mean that they actually own it.”

Yang and Booster have been close friends for nearly a decade, though Booster says, 10 years ago, he’s not sure that he and Yang could have existed in the same space professionally.

“I think there’s an idea of like, we check a lot of the same demographic boxes, so we must be exactly the same. To costar in a movie with him puts a spotlight on how different we are as performers. That was really powerful, I think, for both of us,” Booster says.

Fire Island is set to debut on Hulu June 3.

Photo courtesy of Jeong Park on Instagram