The new rom-com, Fire Island, boasts a cast that’s a gay embarrassment of riches…
The legendary Margaret Cho, SNL‘s Bowen Yang, and Joel Kim Booster, the film’s hilarious writer and star.
And Tomás Matos, a non-binary actor who grew up in New York, attending LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts (yes, the FAME school) Matos can more than hold their own with this crew. (I just realized his first and last names contain the same letters!!)
Matos told Queerty,
… initially, I think the thing that I loved the most was the fact that I was able to read the lines like myself, you know? I was able to just be like,
Oh, bitch, I would say it like this, girl!
So that felt really good. I was like, ‘Okay, I know who this person is because I am this person.’ Which is always a really good feeling.
And then, going into costume fittings, and really starting to set up for the first day of shooting, seeing the mood board of Keegan and then seeing all of my photos from my Instagram! The costume designer David Tabbert was like,
You are literally the inspiration for this character!’
…Margaret Cho gifting me so many pieces of clothing… Because they were all femme pieces, and for Margaret to give me those, I was like,
Ahh!
It felt like the most affirming Christmas ever that that I wish I got when I was a child, you know? So that just made my queer, non-binary heart burst.
…Bowen is so magical because he gets my humor, and my humor is just me being dumb.
But he gets it and he plays back at it, so it was just him egging me on the entire fucking time that we were shooting. Every time I went like, [puts hand over mouth,] because I like to coy laugh, he’d just do it back and I’d be like,
Bitch you can’t do that!’
The magic of filming this movie with an entire queer cast was that every moment on set—whether we were working, or just at the Crafty, or in our trailer—it felt safe. And it felt like I was at home…
…the weekend of June 3, [through] the 5th—right after the premiere—I will most likely be on the island doing, you know,
‘Fire Island tingz,
…other than that? Just really being the Staten Island Fairy that I am, frolicking all of New York City.
That’s going to be the title of my book!”
Fire Island is streaming now on Hulu.
(via Queerty)
