Sabrina Wu’s family and friends didn’t really comprehend that they were starring in the raunchy comedy “Joy Ride” alongside Ashley Park, Stephanie Hsu and Sherry Colauntil until the movie hit theaters. Before then, the stand-up comic’s only Hollywood job was as a writer on Disney+’s “Doogie Kameāloha, M.D.” “I remember calling my dad and telling him I got the part,” Wu tells me. “This is verbatim what he said: ‘Sabrina, I can’t wait to show you my new car.’ It went right over his head because it was too bizarre.”
Like their character Deadeye, the 25-year-old Wu uses “they/them” pronouns. They asked that Deadeye not have a big coming-out scene about their gender identity. “I definitely begged them to do it that way because I don’t think this R-rated comedy needed a moment where I’m like, ‘Hey, guys, I’m nonbinary.’ The level of care that kind of scene needs is not one that is for this genre,” Wu recalls.
Before being open about their identity professionally, Wu told close family and friends. “But I also have a very hard time lying. It feels really bad in my body, so I pretty much always try to tell the truth. And also, it just feels bad to hide parts of who you are,” says Wu, who grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but now lives in Brooklyn.
They continue, “I use nonbinary and trans interchangeably. I haven’t quite figured out the perfect language yet. I just oscillate between transmasc and nonbinary gender-nonconforming. They’re all fine.”
One thing that needs to happen sooner rather than later is Wu meeting Margaret Cho. Wu says Cho has been an inspiration since childhood. In high school, Wu emailed Cho after they came under fire for making a joke about tampons during a standup set at a student talent show. “I thought I was being funny and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t say that, but like this other guy can talk about unzipping his jeans and peeing,” Wu recalls. “I just felt so embarrassed and…
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