Jo Koy didn’t want to leave the stage.
What should have been a 45-minute set had already stretched to two hours but he was having so much fun, he still didn’t want to go.
“I don’t want to leave,” the comedian told the happy crowd at SM Mall of Asia Arena. The place was packed to the rafters.
Not that he didn’t have enough time on stage that week.
It was Jan. 15, 2020, and just four days before, he did two back-to-back shows at Solaire—the live taping of “Jo Koy: In His Elements,” his third Netflix special. He had another show scheduled in Cebu in two days. And yet he didn’t want to go.
“I don’t want to leave,” he said again. “I’mma sleep here.”
The 9,000-strong crowd cheered.
First time
The first time I saw Jo Koy was while watching “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on cable in 2005. He walked on stage, this bald guy rubbing his hands together in excitement. I spotted the Philippine flag sewn onto his jacket.
“Holy sh*t,” I thought. “This dude’s Filipino.”
Jo Koy laughed and clapped and kicked off his set by telling the studio audience, “OK, I am Asian so stop looking at me like a Math problem. You guys are looking at me like, ‘What flavor is that?’”
Then he launched into his orange chicken joke, which had them hollering in laughter. He was killing it.
At the end of his quick set, as the applause went on and on, Leno invited Jo Koy to the couch.
“Whoa,” I thought. Being invited to sit on that show’s couch after doing your stand-up is a very big deal. It’s a tradition that started back when Johnny Carson was still hosting it. Carl Reiner compared it to being blessed by the pope; The New York Times called it “the grail of Carson compliments.”
It may have been Leno and not Carson who invited Jo Koy to the couch that night, but that was still a huge moment. Even during Leno’s “Tonight Show” reign, the invite to the couch was an honor saved only for stand-up comics who did really, really well.
I told myself to remember Jo Koy’s name. I had a feeling I’d be seeing more of him in the future.
Sixteen years later, I got to relive that “Tonight Show” episode from Jo Koy’s perspective. He wrote about it in his book “Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo” (HarperCollins, New York, 2021, 311 pages).
Comedian memoirs
A comedian writing a memoir isn’t new. So many of them have done it—Steve Martin, Artie Lange, Ellen DeGeneres, Jim Gaffigan, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler, Ali Wong, the list goes on and on.
I have read many of them and enjoyed some of them, but there’s something about “Mixed Plate” that hits hard. And it’s not just because of Pinoy pride (although that is, of course, in abundance).
“Mixed Plate” is a story of a boy and, later, a man, who fought really, really hard for a dream he believed in. And the best part is you already know the ending—he’d win.
If you’ve watched Jo Koy’s stand-up—maybe his Netflix specials “Live From Seattle” or “Comin’ In Hot,” his live performances in the Philippines, the States or elsewhere, or even clips you found on YouTube—some parts of the book will already be familiar to you: his Cool Whip lunch box, his Michael Jackson performances as a child, his sisters moving out, and of course, tales about his strict Filipino mom and his son Little Joe.
Sad, frustrated, vulnerable
But there are many, many stories in “Mixed Plate” that you haven’t heard before. In it, you’ll get to see sides of Jo Koy you don’t see when he’s on stage—sad, frustrated, vulnerable. And as you read, you’ll hear Jo Koy’s familiar voice in your head, telling you everything, the careful comedian giving you a peek behind the curtain, and fully allowing you into his world.
“I never really opened up—until this book,” he writes in the introduction.
And open up he does. In “Mixed Plate,” he writes about moving from the Philippines to the United States and growing up poor with a single mom raising him and his siblings after his parents split up and his dad left them. He writes about living with a brother who has schizophrenia. He writes about his marriage and why it was a mistake. He writes about what he calls “real emotion, real conflict, real darkness”—things that you see little hints of in his stand-up.
He writes about his relationship with his dad and stepdad (The stories about Fred are some of the most heartwarming parts of the book and also the parts about Tiffany Haddish, but we’re not spoiling that). And while it is comedy fodder, Jo Koy’s relationship with his mom is also a complicated one and one we get to know in “Mixed Plate” on a deeper level.
And along with these people is another major character, both in Jo Koy’s life and in his book: comedy. It is his first and lifelong love and Jo Koy, in his insistence on holding on to it and refusing to let it go, takes readers on a real journey—from Tacoma to Las Vegas to Los Angeles and through a million-and-one jobs. (Can you imagine Jo Koy stocking shoes? Because I can’t.)
Making people laugh
“I love to make people laugh. I live for it. I have since I was a little kid,” he writes.
Born to an American dad and Filipino mom, comedy was what Jo Koy found when he was trying to figure out his identity.
He writes: “I was 11 years old. I wasn’t Asian, and I wasn’t white. I was living in a new country that was supposed to be mine, but the people here didn’t seem to want me, or at least understand me … So, really, what was I? Then I finally figured out the answer, and it was so simple it actually made me laugh out loud. I was funny.”
Since his childhood, he’s studied comedy like a science and he kept working on it as an adult, no matter the obstacles that stood in his way.
“Being funny became my everything. My identity. My way to fit in. My way to cope with problems and deal with my reality.”
Seeing Jo Koy on stage now (or actually, even the earlier days of his stand-up), you’d see someone comfortable, at ease, like he had always belonged there.
And somehow, Joseph knew this, long before he became Jo Koy. He fought like hell and hustled hard (while saying no when his gut told him to) to get on that stage, to be under that spotlight, to claim what felt like his destiny.
You’ll find yourself rooting for him all the way. From the time little Joseph Glenn Herbert discovers the joys of making his classmates laugh about the strange lunches his mother packs, to when he produces his first show. (“Oh my god, Josep. You made $800! You’re practically rich!” his mom said.) You’ll find yourself cheering at every success.
And there has been plenty of success over the years.
Jo Koy sells out arenas and theaters everywhere (during those sold-out shows in the Philippines in 2020, tickets were so coveted that scalpers were selling them at insane prices). Honolulu declared Nov. 24 as Jo Koy Day after he broke a record for most number of tickets sold by a single artist (23,000 tickets; 11 sold-out shows at The Neal Blaisdell Concert Hall).
He has set and broken other records, too: the only comedian to sell over 17,000 tickets in one year at Brea Improv, the most consecutive sold-out shows (five) for a comedian at San Diego Civic Theatre; his four sold-out shows broke the attendance record at Club Regent Event Centre in Winnipeg; he’s the only comedian to sell out six shows at The Warfield in San Francisco. His stand-up comedy album “Live From Seattle” hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. He was awarded “Stand-Up Comedian of the Year” at the 2018 Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal.
Jo Koy has become so iconic that he now has his own Funko POP! figure.
Embracing his roots
What is most fascinating about the book is seeing Jo Koy become more successful the more he embraced his roots and allowed it to become part of his act.
This was something I wondered about that night I first saw him in 2005. He was hilarious and he cracked me up, but why was this guy, who was clearly proud to be Filipino (the flag on his chest alone said that) telling more generic Asian jokes? Was he worried about universal appeal and Pinoy-centric jokes not landing?
In “Mixed Plate,” he wrote, “Maybe by trying to appeal to everyone with the broadest jokes possible, I was holding too much back about myself.”
It took him 16 years to finally tell a joke on stage about his Pinoy mom. And when he did, Jamie Masada, owner of the legendary Laugh Factory in Hollywood, told him, “From now on, I’m only putting you up if you tell stories about your mom.”
Jo Koy writes, “By talking about my Filipino family and all their quirks, I wasn’t shutting my audience out, I was bringing them in, building bridges between our cultures and showing how much we all have in common. I wasn’t being a token ‘Asian comic’ in a theme show, and I wasn’t doing cheap ethnic jokes. I was telling stories … I finally learned that the best way to entertain tons of people, to transcend categories and even race itself, was by simply being my mixed-up half-breed self.”
We already know that this man is great at telling stories. And he proves that again with “Mixed Plate.”
More in store
“Mixed Plate” is Jo Koy’s first book but it probably won’t be his last.
After all, the next chapters of his life are still being written. He’s back on tour and has shows until 2022. He’s hosting a new reality show on Netflix, “Metal Shop Masters,” which starts streaming next month. His movie, “Easter Sunday,” produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin, is in postproduction. (Yes, Steven Spielberg asked for a meeting with Jo Koy after watching “Comin’ In Hot” because he wanted to do a film inspired by his life.)
“Josep,” his ABC sitcom, is also in development. Randall Park and Michael Golamco are also attached to write and produce. Park and Golamco’s Imminent Collision cofounder Hieu Ho tweeted, “In over 100 years of Hollywood history, there’s never been a single television series centered on a Filipino American family … even though Filipinos have been here since 1763. We’re gonna fix that with comedy legend @Jokoy #JOSEP.”
Jo Koy has so much more in store for us.
But for now, dig into “Mixed Plate.” If you’re a Jo Koy fan, then you absolutely have to read this book. It’s a chance to get to know him away from the limelight, away from that mic and that stage he so loves.
But you don’t have to be a fan of Jo Koy or even of comedy to appreciate “Mixed Plate.” Anyone who loves a good success story (or a good memoir) would enjoy this read.
There are recipes, too—for lumpia, adobo, pancit, shrimp sinigang, halo-halo. It’s Jo Koy continuing to do what he’s been doing for a while now: sharing Filipino culture with the rest of the world.
But the truth is, the book doesn’t really need them. They’re just (delicious) icing on an already full “Mixed Plate.” INQ
“Mixed Plate” is available at Fully Booked branches, fullbookedonline.com, Lazada and Shopee.