Bobby Lee: ‘You have to see a naked Asian man’

by Emma Kat Richardson

Comedian Bobby Lee made a huge name for himself playing hilariously stereotypical Asian characters — and, the occasional woman — on Fox’s recently defunct MadTV. Before and during he was a stand-up; and he’s pledged to make this year all about the stage. He kicks off in style at world famous Carolines in New York.

Bobby Lee is a busy man. In fact, the only human to perhaps surpass Lee in terms of schedule overcrowding is the more recognizable of the two souls currently sharing occupancy of the West Wing.

When he telephones me for this interview – promptly, a solid three minutes ahead of schedule – the affable comic and perhaps MadTV’s most high-profile star is attempting to juggle several other commitments, in addition to our scheduled chat. He sounds weary and out of breath, and it’s no wonder, considering that he’s spent the past few years guesting on a series of sitcoms, appearing in big screen smashes like Pineapple Express, pounding away at his stand-up career, and pulling MadTV’s political weight by portraying John McCain.

Getting set to close out the first decade of the millennium with a string of New Years stand-up performances from Dec. 31 to Jan. 3 at New York’s Carolines on Broadway, Lee checks in with Punchline Magazine to discuss New Years resolutions, the evolution of comedy, and why portraying McCain was so inappropriate.

If you weren’t doing comedy, how would you be paying the bills?
Oh, man. Um… probably, I’d be a koi fish farmer. Or, I would work at some weird Korean spa. I love Korean spas, and I’ve always wanted to work at one. When I’m at a Korean spa and I see naked Korean men, it doesn’t make me feel bad about myself. I feel like I’m more toned and better-looking. So that’s what I’d do – I’d either work in a Korean, male spa, or I’d be a koi fish farmer.

Do you think those occupations would be as fruitful as your comedy career is?
Well, yeah. I mean, I dunno, man. It’s how life is, you know? Sometimes, I feel like I’m on top of the world, and sometimes I feel like I’m a piece of shit, you know? That’s life, right. If I was a koi fish farmer, I might feel great about it one day, but then be like, “Fuck the koi fish” the next day.

Not literally, I hope.
Nah, I don’t have sex with koi fish. Or any animal. Oh, maybe a dolphin.

You started doing stand-up long before you joined the cast of MadTV. Was there something in particular that made you want to give sketch comedy a try?
Oh, no. I never even thought that I’d do sketch comedy. I started doing stand-up in, like, ’96, and I just thought that that’s what I’d be doing. But it’s like anything; things just come up, and I had the opportunity to audition [for MadTV], so I said, “Well, I might as well try.” And I got it. So, it wasn’t something that I hadn’t planned.

The first couple of years on the show I wasn’t really that great – I’d never taken any acting classes or anything – so I just had to kind of learn how to do it. If you watch the show from the first couple of years, you see that I wasn’t really on it, because I was still trying to figure it all out. I think I got really lucky, is all. It’s not really luck, though, because when you take a risk in life, other doors open, you know? I did stand-up, and then MadTV, and MadTV led to little parts in film, and then who knows what’ll also happen? Maybe I’ll never work again and become something else, you know?

Do you think you prefer sketch or stand-up, now that you’ve done both?
Um… I don’t really prefer any of them, really. If my dad was a billionaire, I’d probably just be that guy, you know what I mean? But out of all the jobs out there, stand-up is the only job I’d want to do. But sometimes, I don’t like doing it – I just have to make a living.

How do you think that you as a comedian have evolved and developed since you first took up stand-up?
I don’t know. I mean, I feel far more comfortable onstage, and I have so much farther to go. I watch my peers, and I watch them and go, “Wow, I’m not that funny.” Like, I watch Bill Burr and I feel how real he is, and that’s the direction I want to take but it’s so hard to do that. Because I started doing comedy under the tutelage of Pauly Shore, and it fucked me up, you know? You watch him do it, and… it’s not that it’s bad, but you’re just like, wow, this is a whole different thing. I kind of now want to go in a different direction. It’s just so hard to unlearn that, you know what I mean?

When I was on Mad, I didn’t really do stand-up at all. I was like, “Oh, I’m going to be a movie star.” That’s what I thought, and when Mad was done, kind of like nothing was happening, so I just decided that, you know what? I never really gave stand-up a chance. For the past year, I’ve been on the road, and just kind of focusing on that.

When I get on the road, people will come out to see me for some reason. Crowds would come out and they’d be like, “Yeah, we enjoy what you do,” and I was just like, “How do I reach the people?” I wanted to connect with people that liked me. It’s from the love of doing [stand-up].

So it was that audience connection that really brought it all back for you?
Yeah! And you know, it’s also that I just realized that whatever is in front of me, I’m going to do it one hundred percent. That’s what I’ve learned this year, you know? I’m giving it one hundred percent.

What do you do personally to overcome some of the racial stereotyping in Hollywood?
I’m actually the opposite of that. I honestly believe that [stereotyping] is better for us. I’ll give you an example: in March, I did a pilot, and it was like a Friends-type of show. It was written for six white people, and what happened was they were casting it, and at the end of the casting they basically said, “We can’t have six white people.” So NBC basically said to the producers that one of the characters would have to be a minority, and they called me. I read for the producers, got it, then went to Chicago and shot it.

It didn’t get picked up, but those kinds of things are helping ethnic people. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong; I just think that 15 years earlier, they never would have done that. It would have been like, “Well, this is the way we wrote it,” and now, it’s sort of like mandatory [to include minority characters].

Jokes.com
Bobby Lee – Being Asian
comedians.comedycentral.com

Where do you think the change has come from?
I think it goes down to advertising. When you see advertisements now, there are a lot of ethnic people in them, you know what I mean? And I think it’s because television shows exist based on advertisements, and advertisers realize that ethnic people consume their product. They have to represent those people, and so now it’s a part of the machine.

How did you end up landing the John McCain role on MadTV?
That was like a nightmare. When all that [election] stuff went down, Fox was like, “You’ve got to play John McCain,” but I thought it was wrong, for me to play him, because he was captured by people that look like me. You know what I mean? It’s weird, and I fought it all along, but they made me do it, contractually. It wasn’t something I wanted to do – I don’t even think I did a good job, but I just did it anyway, because it’s my job to do it. So that’s how that came down. I think the reason they just had me do it was because they thought it would be funny; but I saw it more as being wrong.

Did you do anything in specific to prepare for that role?
No, no. I didn’t do anything! I literally just did it, you know what I mean? It was all part of a rebellious thing.

Since the first decade of the new millennium is drawing to a close, do you think the past 10 years have been good for comedy?
I think 10 years ago that it was dead. I think it’s coming back. When I started in the ‘90s, people called [stand-up] the “death period.” In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, that’s when television was saturated by stand-up comedy. Clubs started shutting down because people weren’t coming out to the clubs. When the clubs shut down and they stopped airing stand-up on television, it was just a bad time for stand-up. You had a limited amount of places to perform, and you had as many comedians. You have all these guys like Dane Cook, Nick Swardson, and Zach Galifianakis who started then, and they had to fight harder to survive. Right now, I think we’re a product of that time period.

What do you think that you in specific have brought to this changing landscape?
I don’t know that I’ve necessarily brought things. I think that the one thing I have done is, being an Asian American guy, I’ve felt like I can do sketch on television and be the first Asian American to do it. People on the road, and my family and my friends, legitimately think I’m funny. I don’t think I got on MadTV because I’m Asian; I think it was because I was funny, and it was the perfect time.

Margaret Cho kind of opened it up for the rest of us, in terms of stand-up, but I think I opened it up in terms of sketch, maybe. I think with networks now, [a minority presence] is a given. It was different, 10 years ago when I got that – I auditioned 12 times [for MadTV], over a period of three months. I feel so proud that I did that, but now the doors are open and all kinds of people are coming through. It’s exciting.

How do you expect the comedy scene to change and evolve over the next coming decade?
I think you’re going to see different kinds of people doing it. I think that’s a good thing; like, in the ‘80s, you had a lot of Jewish guys doing a lot of observational comedy, and they were all kinda bland, you know? You had those cookie-cutter comics, but now I think it’s a whole different generation of people. I think it’s reflecting a different time in America.

Jokes.com
Bobby Lee – Wrestling
comedians.comedycentral.com

What are some of your New Years resolutions for 2010?
Well, I’ve been doing so much lately, so I kind of want to be a better son, and a better friend.

Are there any resolutions you made last year that you wish you had kept?
I’ve never made resolutions before this.

What makes New Years Eve with Bobby Lee more exciting than any other event going on in the city?
Because you’ve never seen a naked Asian guy before. It’s just something you need to do.

Get your tickets to Bobby Lee’s performances at Carolines in NYC here. And check out more info on Bobby, here.