By Samantha Pak
Northwest Asian Weekly
From left: Writer and co-host Rachel Tatsumi Perry, guest Kiki Wolfkill, and host Jonathan Sposato on the first episode of JSLN. (Still frames from JSLN)
A new face has entered the late night talk show realm and it looks a little different from what’s occupied the space for decades.
The first episode of “JoySauce Late Night” (JSLN) launched on Dec. 13 on the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) media site, JoySauce.com. The show, like the site, is focused on featuring and highlighting AAPI talent, and is hosted by JoySauce founder Jonathan Sposato.
While the late night format has long been a part of mainstream America, Sposato said it’s been largely dominated by the white patriarchy.
“For us to reimagine it with all Asian American faces was an important point to make,” he said.
Creating a show that anyone could enjoy—regardless of their background—that showed that AAPIs can do anything was also a powerful statement for Sposato. He noted that many AAPIs struggle with the model minority myth, which is damaging in many ways, and one way to break that stereotype is to normalize AAPIs doing things that are “completely unexpected.”
“That’s why I, known for being an internet entrepreneur, break out in song and dance,” Sposato, who also founded GeekWire and PicMonkey, said. “Why the heck not? If this dummy can do that, then what else is possible? Hopefully this will help younger AAPI folks (and by extension everyone) to feel more free to bring their whole selves to what they do.”
Sposato grew up in Edmonds, which was predominantly white at the time, and rarely saw anyone who looked like him on TV (who wasn’t the servant, bad guy, or butt of the joke). He was constantly taunted as the only Asian American kid around, and the sadness on his mother’s face from seeing his clothes torn and grass stained from being in fights has stayed with him.
“I wanted to help change that someday, and I believe that strong and powerful AAPI imagery has the potential to reframe the status quo,” he said about the genesis for both JoySauce and JSLN. “With the recent surge in anti-Asian hate crimes in our nation, normalizing AAPIs in mainstream media became an even more important goal.”
A magical feeling
AAPI representation at JSLN is in front of and behind the camera. In addition to Sposato, who is half Chinese and half Korean American, the show features AAPI guests, as well as AAPI writers and a majority AAPI cast and crew. The guest for the first episode of JSLN was video game developer and executive producer of the Paramount+ TV show, “Halo,” Kiki Wolfkill.
Jonathan Sposato, the host of JSLN (Still frames from JSLN)
In its first season, the show—which was filmed in Seattle—will have at least 10 episodes. Future guests include playwright David Henry Hwang, creator, showrunner, and executive producer of Fox’s “The Cleaning Lady,” Miranda Kwok, former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, and media executive Janice Min. There will also be comedy sketches, as well as musical performances by Hollis Wong-Wear and Tigerlily.
Sposato said there will also be roundtable discussions featuring guests—ranging from CEOs to activists—as well as JSLN writing staff, in which they get candid about modern issues affecting the community.
“It feels magical,” Sposato said about his experiences on the show. “I wish that for everyone. I wish that for every group.”
Assistant director and assistant editor Vik Chopra repeatedly described working in a majority AAPI environment as “special.” He said the energy on set wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt on a job. It felt like a family. In addition, many of his colleagues also represented other BIPOC groups, and sexual orientations and identities. And for Chopra, a queer South Asian American man, it was nice to be fully represented and around people who shared these different identities with him—to not be the only one, whether that was as an Asian American, or a queer person.
A standout moment from JSLN for Chopra is a roundtable discussion from a future episode in which the guests—including Chopra’s cousin, who flew in from New York to be on the show—discuss the prevalence of racism in the LGBTQ+ community. He said this is something he’s discussed with his friends, but it was new to see this type of discussion happening on a talk show.
No longer the “only one”
Chopra credits producer Julia Whitley, who did most of the hiring, for creating such a diverse and representative set.
“I brought the Asians to the set,” Whitley laughed when asked about this.
Whitley hired between 80 and 90 percent of the cast and crew for JSLN. Having been in previous work environments where as a half Filipina, half white woman, was the only Asian American, person of color, or woman—or sometimes all three—she knew this show needed to be different. She admitted that even during her interview process, before she was hired, she was already referring director JR Mitchell and Brian Hurley of Adavanza Media, the company that produced the show, to AAPI folks they could hire for various roles.
“She began doing the job even before day one and our talented crew really came from her and the respect people have for her,” Mitchell said, calling Whitley an “absolute superhero.”
“She is really the guiding light to all of this, along with Jonathan, and she deserves all of the credit.”
As the show’s director, Mitchell also praised the show’s writers. In his previous projects, he also wrote, but as a white man, it was important for him to divorce himself from that part of the process because JSLN was not his story to tell.
“Our team of writers dug so deep and taught me so much,” he said. “I am just happy to be a help in any way I can. This show has my heart in a way that nothing else ever has and I want to learn from and be of service to it.”
A trip to hear
While just the idea of filming an AAPI late night talk show is groundbreaking, it sometimes took a moment for the real impact of how special JSLN is to sink in for Whitley.
One of those moments was when they had their first musical act perform, which brought her to tears.
“We did something,” she said about her realization at that moment.
And now that the first episode has been released and other people have seen it, the show has become even more real. Whitley has shared the episode with both her mother and future mother-in-law. She said her mother cried while watching the show, and her future mother-in-law—who is Chinese—sat down with Whitley to talk about it when they were together over the holidays. For Whitley, seeing an older generation of Asian Americans watch the show and “get it” has been particularly meaningful for her.
“It’s a trip to hear,” she said about people’s reactions.
“JoySauce Late Night” is available to stream at joysauce.com/show/joysauce-late-night.
Editor’s note: Writer Samantha Pak is a member of the JoySauce.com team, which hosts “JoySauce Late Night,” but was not involved in the creation or production of the show.