The Hulu romantic comedy “Fire Island” takes Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and puts a modern gay spin on it, both fizzy and incisive about classism and racism. Margaret Cho co-stars in a role that is part den mother, part provider of vacation housing.
The character was originally envisioned as a guy until she expressed interest in being part of the project. “I really wanted to be in the film as soon as I found out it was happening,” she said. She’s a longtime friend of screenwriter and star Joel Kim Booster, as well as co-star Bowen Yang. “And I’ve been going to Fire Island since 2008, so I loved the idea of the movie even before I knew what it was,” she said. “I just knew that if Joel and Bowen were in a movie that Joel had written and it was directed by Andrew Ahn and it was a queer, Asian film set on Fire Island, I just needed to be in it.”
It’s just the latest in a long career for Cho, who is both a stand-up comedian (you can see her in Netflix’s “Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration” comedy special) and an actor whose credits include everything from her own sitcom “All-American Girl” in the mid-90s, as well TV and film credits in everything from “Sex and the City” and “30 Rock” to “Hacks” and “The Flight Attendant.”
