Risks pay off for comedian with Filipino roots

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This article was published 13/12/2017 (3172 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There aren’t many teenage boys who would appreciate their father talking about them onstage.

But Filipino-American comedian Jo Koy’s son, Joe, doesn’t mind it one bit — in fact, he relishes the spotlight.

“He loves it, especially now that he really understands it,” Koy says over the phone from Los Angeles. “He’s getting love non-stop via the media — he’s got a little fanbase of his own. We went somewhere to eat, to get a burger, in the Philippines and a guy walked up to him and said, ‘You’re Jo Koy’s son,’ so now even he’s getting recognized.

“He’s just like me when I was his age. He’s really into the Filipino side of his culture. His mommy and daddy are divorced; my mom and dad were divorced, but the difference between my parents and the way his mom and I are raising him is his mom and I are still friends.

“He gets to have a great life seeing that his mom and dad are happy and get along and gets to enjoy both sides of the family. Whereas all I knew was the Filipino side of my family; I didn’t know my dad’s side at all after the divorce. That’s why I have so many stories about my mom and sisters.”

In Winnipeg, there’s little doubt the city’s Pinoy community will be out to support the bald, boyish-looking 46-year-old — in part because of those stories. Some of his most beloved bits — the ones that set him apart from other exuberant, sporadically profane regular-dude comics — revolve around his affectionate imitations of his Filipina mother, Josie, from her accent and mannerisms to her sly proficiency at Wii video games.

There are some very particular cultural references, but Koy’s good-natured ribbing rings true to anyone with an overprotective single mom. That’s partly because the comedian, born Joseph Herbert in Tacoma, Wash., appreciates his Filipino fanbase but he’s always been at pains to expand his audience.

“One thing I always went after was the other demographic — I made sure to do the other ‘ethnic shows,’ if I can say that,” says Koy, who headlined a tour in the Philippines this month. “Some of my earlier work was the Apollo and Laffapalooza with Jamie Foxx, BET’s Comic View, Latino Laugh Festival — I made sure to try and broaden my fanbase, because I always knew I had the Asian following no matter what.

“And then with Adam Carolla and Chelsea Handler, I broadened it even more. Now you can look at my audience and see where they came from and how they discovered me. But with that Netflix special, my Filipino fanbase just exploded.”

The special he speaks of is Jo Koy: Live From Seattle, and it was a game-changer for him when it came out in March, but it was a big gamble for the comic, who dropped out of university in Las Vegas to pursue standup.

Koy, who lived in the Philippines with his mother and siblings as a child and who speaks Tagalog, makes fun of his mother’s expectations for him — he claims she wanted him to be a nurse or a mailman, not a comedian — but his work ethic is something any mother would be proud of.

After a couple of Comedy Central specials and regular appearances on Handler’s talk show Chelsea Lately, Koy hoped one of the networks would come calling with an offer. When they didn’t, he went ahead and recorded a special on his own dime.

“My manager and I just said, ‘Let’s do this; we have to invest in ourselves,’” he says.

He was involved in every aspect of the one-hour show, down to the music and the lights.

“I see why there’s producers, I see why there’s directors, I see why there are individuals in each category,” he says of the gruelling experience. “To wear every single hat, it’s exhausting. I can’t even begin to tell you how much stress I had on my back. To be able to go up onstage and perform was another thing to deal with; I was so drained because I had to work on that routine all the way up to when I performed it onstage. And then I had to worry about the production of the whole night.”

“I had a doctor come to my room the night before, I was so under the weather. I was so out of it, physically and emotionally.”

The herculean effort paid off, though — Netflix purchased the special, and his career got an almost immediate boost.

“The payoff was more than worth it. I can’t even explain it to you,” Koy says. “Literally overnight, the minute it aired that Tuesday, I had a show maybe a week later, and the energy of the room, the people that were there, they were all new faces.

“And then I noticed the calendar was completely sold out.”

He is not exaggerating. He sold out 11 consecutive shows in Honolulu, Hawaii (more than 23,000 tickets) — the city even named Nov. 24 Jo Koy Day — and he’s on track to sell out all four of his shows at the Club Regent Event Centre (only single tickets remain for this evening’s 8 p.m. performance).

Having a successful special is a big deal to the self-described comedy nerd, who obsessed over standup even when it wasn’t what the cool kids were into.

“Growing up, I can name the top four that I was addicted to: Eddie Murphy, of course, Delirious and then I saw Raw live when I was 15. And then of course Bill Cosby, his HBO special was phenomenonal. Whoopi Goldberg, Around the World in 24 Motherf—-g Days, and, oh, Robin Williams Live at the Met.

“Those were always on HBO and I remember recording all four on a VHS tape and I had to put it on extended play so I could record them all on one tape. I must have watched them a million times, just rewinding them over and over.”

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @dedaumier