Had you had any experience with the “crazy rich” lifestyle these characters live?

When I first got the role, I was thinking oh my god, how am I going to relate to these people? But I have a background in retail and I used to help crazy rich Asians all the time. When I worked in retail in San Francisco, these people would come in and spend $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 on a single handbag. And it’s just like, oh my god, what kind of people have the money to just march into a Bottega Veneta, or a Dior, and spend money like it’s Target? And well...it’s crazy rich Asians! I feel like I finally got a glimpse into how these people truly live.

Oliver was my favorite character in the book and in the movie. Did you enjoy playing him?

What I love about Oliver is that he knows he’s an outsider in his own family just by being queer, but he still has this sense of fun and lightness about him. That made playing him so much fun. Filming the movie, in general, was an incredible experience. For one, we were in Malaysia for six weeks. And the fact that I got to film it with people I immediately bonded with — it was just like being on a paid vacation. I felt like I was just hanging out with all my cool cousins and friends. Working with Jon M. Chu, the director, was great too. He placed his complete trust in us to be able to inhabit these characters and we were able to improvise a lot, which was a great privilege because you don’t get to do that on set often. You know, people have a lot of creative control most of the time, and it’s great that he put his trust in us to let us do our own thing.

Being queer is not a monolith. Being Asian is not a monolith. We’re so much more than what people expect us to be.

You mentioned that Oliver’s queerness made him an outsider to his family. As someone who was born and raised in the Philippines, did you feel a similar outsiderness while growing up due to your own queerness?

I’ve been in America for about 22 years now, but when I was growing up, being gay meant that you were a drag queen or that you were trans. That was the interpretation of what it was like to be gay. It wasn’t until I moved to the United States that I was really introduced to the wide spectrum of the LGBTQ+ community. To be honest, I don’t know if I would have had the emotional intelligence to be able to play someone like Oliver had I stayed in the Philippines, because of how they see queer people. I’m just glad that I was able to move to the United States and get a little more experience under my belt. Now, as an adult, I’ve come to learn that there is no right or wrong way to be gay. As a kid, I was taught that being gay meant that you were supposed to put on a dress, which is simply not true. Being queer is not a monolith. Being Asian is not a monolith. We’re so much more than what people expect us to be.

Seeing different types of Asian people is exactly what makes Crazy Rich Asians such a monumental feat for representation in the industry, and I’m so glad that a queer Asian man gets to be part of that narrative too. What do you think is the future of queer Asian representation on screen?

It’s hard when you belong to any sort of marginalized group. As people of color, as queer people, we’re just now getting our chance to be seen. Like, I feel like a film like Love, Simon was amazing, but I wish that had come out 10, 15, 20 years ago. We should just be so much farther along in our representation by now. It was a great movie, but it’s a very specific representation of what it means to be queer. Simon was a masculine, straight-presenting, rich, well-to-do person — and we all know that that’s just not always the case. The movie’s themes — wanting to find love, wanting to be loved, wanting to be accepted — are universal, but I think the bigger message that we need to send out there is that we need to be accepting of each other despite our differences. There’s so much more to the queer community than just that.