Episode #387
Karen Chee is a writer and performer for Late Night with Seth Meyers. She has previously written for the Golden Globes and the Amazon Prime Video special, Yearly Departed, has developed TV pilots for Netflix and Comedy Central, and has published humor pieces in The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. All before the age of 27. No wonder she made Variety’s “Power of Young Hollywood” list as well as Forbes “30 Under 30.” Chee sat down with me to talk about getting an early start on her comedy career, how Twitter did or didn’t help her get her dream gig, and how she has managed supporting her grandparents in Korea during the pandemic while still writing remotely for Late Night, and picking up a new gig writing for Pachinko on Apple TV+. Chee also is back in New York in May 2022 to perform at the Asian Comedy Fest.
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Oh, and since May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, here’s Chee on Late Night filling you in on some helpful DOs and DON’Ts…
Last Things First, how long have you been commuting from Korea?
Yeah, I commuted daily from the other side of the world (laughs). I actually moved to Korea in the summer of 2020, at the height of the first big wave of COVID, and thought I would only be there for a month or two and ended up — I’m still kind of living there. All my stuff is there. I’m just back in the U.S. for a few months and I’m headed back to Korea in June.
And you did that for your grandparents, is that right?
Oh my gosh, that’s so kind of you to know that. Yeah, I went because my grandma got very sick quite suddenly. And I was like, you know what? We’re all working remotely. I was in a small apartment in Brooklyn with two roommates. I was like, OK, I can go. I can help out my grandma. We’re really close. So it sort of made sense for me to be there.
I want to ask you more about Korea, but let me put a pin in that for now. Because you grew up in California, though, right?
Born and raised in the Bay Area.
And you’re a Harvard grad. But did you already know going into Harvard that you were going to pursue a career in comedy?
No, I didn’t. I was really interested in comedy in high school. And I was very passionate about — this sounds so dorky but I was not a very funny kid. I was more of a square. I was just a big nerd who was silly with my friends and stuff. And so I did a lot of like improv and sketch comedy with my friends and going to college, knew I really was interested in trying comedy more seriously, but I was trying to keep an open mind about other career options and things like that, too.
Did you go to The Comedy Studio a lot while you were there?
No, I actually didn’t and I wish I had because it’s like pretty much right on campus. Yeah. When I was at school, I didn’t do any stand-up. That was something I started doing after I graduated, and had moved to New York. So I was doing a lot of improv and sketch and writing.
Did you have a different plan before comedy took over?
No, I don’t know if I had a plan at all.
It’s fair that you didn’t. I only ask because, you know, I am a Princeton grad. And I don’t think my parents — they probably would’ve let me go either way, but if they had known I would have gone into journalism, I don’t know how if they would’ve been quite as excited to see me be a newspaper reporter.
Really! That’s crazy, because I think Princeton to journalism makes a lot of sense. David Remnick is like a Princeton journalism guy, right?
He is. We both wrote for the Nassau Weekly. Although years apart. Well, this will show my age, though. When I was in college, I had no idea you could get an internship at a late-night TV show. And you did that twice.
I did. I’m trying to remember, because I just applied to all of them. And it’s always such a crapshoot. It’s really most of the time it’s like, are you the daughter of a writer? And it’s just such a crapshoot and I went for it, and then I happened to get two the same summer and it worked out great. Because I remember one of them was three days and the other was two days a week. One was paid and one was not.
You interned for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. So which one paid and which one didn’t?
The Late Show paid and Full Frontal didn’t.
Well, Late Show had that CBS money, whereas Full Frontal was only TBS.
Right. And yeah, it was great. That was during the week. And I remember on the weekends, I was working for my friend’s mom, like sorting stuff at her house. And so in my mind, it was like a big summer. It felt like I grew career-wise in terms of learning what I wanted to do and also being like, oh, OK, I guess if I want to do this, I have to be mentally prepared to be working all the time to make ends meet.
I interned the summer before my senior year at my hometown paper in Connecticut. And I think that summer internship at the newspaper, like seeing everything, the newsroom and seeing how everything worked, I think that really solidified my career goal. Was that what happened with you with late-night TV, getting to watch Sam Bee and her staff or Stephen Colbert and his staff?
I think so. I mean. I think the thing that I still really like about comedy is that it’s a mix of you personally putting in your hours and enjoying that process. And the other half is, you just hang out with other funny friends and joke around all the time, and that’s such a delight. I can’t believe you get paid to do that. I cant believe I get paid to do that. So I think being at those shows and seeing what those writers rooms were like, because they’re also pretty different styles of rooms from what I remember. And so it was really cool to learn that there’s a whole kind of variety of late-night shows, also. And also I just had no idea that there were so many staffers on a single show. That blew my mind. I had never been, you know, privy to the behind the curtain of TV shows before.
Did you think it was just like Stephen Colbert and two other people coming up with the entire show?
I just didn’t know they were like, you know, like 12 production assistants and like, so many people who are producing every single segment on the show.
Right. I guess especially like, modern times, they don’t show you. You don’t get to see the credits as often at the end of an episode. You used to see a whole scroll and could see, there’s like 1,000 people who work at SNL.
Right, right. I actually when I was in high school, I got really kind of religious about looking at the credits. I think I was only looking at it for writing credits and I was trying to see which writer wrote for which shows, and traced the careers of different writers to see what other shows they were on. But wait, I’m curious about you in journalism. How did you fall into that in college?
I had edited my high school newspaper. So it wasn’t completely out of the blue. But I think I sort of ended up there by default. Because I majored in politics. I thought about going to law school, because I wanted to be a judge. And I didn’t realize you have to be a lawyer first. I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Then the more I studied politics, the less that I wanted to actually work in government. And I felt journalism, much like comedy, journalism, you could be on the outside, observing it and commenting on it without really like, having to sell your soul.
Yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
I mean, I suppose in journalism and in comedy, you could end up doing that if you worked for a boss that you hated but they paid really well and you’re like, Oh, I guess I’m going to work for this company or I’m going to work for this TV host even though they might be evil but they pay the bills and I have this nice house.
Yeah.
But that was never me. And I doubt that Seth Meyers gives up for that kind of vibe where it’s like, oh, I hate this job but it pays too well!
Yeah, no, I get paid a million dollars a week. Haha. No, he’s the best. He’s genuinely a really kind person, so it’s really great to work for him.
So while you were still Harvard, OK, so you intern at both shows the same summer?
Yeah, yeah.
Did you get involved with the Lampoon?
I was not involved with the Lampoon. But I was in an improv group and we were pretty committed, which is such an embarrassing thing to say now. But we were really into improv. And then I directed and wrote for a sketch show that we put up every year. And so I did a lot of that. And then I started writing for like The New Yorker and McSweeney’s and stuff when I was still an undergrad.
So you didn’t do The Lampoon or like Hasty Pudding…
No, I did not.
So you were writing for magazines in New York studying upon the credits of writers. So you were probably aware of the opportunities you had, whether it was like the fabled Harvard SNL pipeline or Harvard to The Simpsons pipeline…
Sure, yeah, I did. But it also did feel inaccessible to me because I think all those people in the pipeline were like, white men from Connecticut or the Tri-State area.
Hey! I’m sorry. I told you I was a white man from Connecticut!
I think because of that it feels like a path that is, you know, I was like, I’m down to work really hard to out-hustle people.
I don’t know if this makes you feel any better. But as a white man from Connecticut, it didn’t feel like those things were open to me, either.
Cool, cool. That does make me feel better.
Of course, when I graduated from college, it was 1993. And the Internet wasn’t the Internet yet so, part of the reason I didn’t know is because I didn’t even know these things are possible. I had to stumble around and find them for myself, but you came out of the game strong. I mean, you just said, writing for The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. So did that make it like a no-brainer that you would move straight to New York instead of going to LA?
No, that was actually a big dilemma for me. So I ended up writing for those places in college, mostly because I just was too naive to know that you had to really be an adult to try and write for them. And so I submitted I just didn’t tell him I was still in college and so when I when stuff started getting published, it was more fun and I was just excited about it. And I didn’t think about it career-wise, really. But by the time I graduated, I sort of had, like an accidental portfolio of comedy writing and that ended up being really helpful even though I didn’t mean to, I didn’t prepare it that way intentionally. And then after I graduated, I really, like emotionally struggled because I loved college so much and it felt like I was being dumped by college. And I wanted to keep being there, to the point where I like applied to grad school. I was really gonna go and then at the last minute realized I, I didn’t want to study at all, I had no interest in academia. I was only thinking about grad school because I liked the cocoon of an academic calendar. I did an acting program in New York because that was the scariest thing I could think of and I wanted to do something that really terrified me. And then afterwards, went back home to the Bay Area for a bit, got bored doing random gigs and was like, OK, I’m just going to try and kickstart this comedy thing.
So what were you doing the moment that you heard Sandra Oh was hosting the Golden Globes?
What a question. I don’t know.
Where were you in your career and in your life?
I had been in New York for a year throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck. When I got to New York, I was like submitting freelancing for all these Internet places. I was trying to do a ton a stand up. I was trying to do improv and improv in New York is weirdly extremely expensive, whereas stand-up is free. And so I sort of stopped doing improv.
It is weird, isn’t it, that you have to pay a lot of money to get involved in improv?
I know and also to do this thing that most people don’t want to see. This is not smart. So I was in a sketch group with my friends. I sort of just really tried every single angle at comedy to see what I really enjoyed and what was working. Yeah. And then I remember hearing that and being so thrilled, I don’t where I was, but it just felt so cool. It was maybe at the tail end of the year that like Crazy Rich Asians came out and All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and suddenly you could be Asian and do stuff in Hollywood like it felt so thrilling to be alive. So hearing this Sanda Oh thing was especially great.
So you paved the way for Simu Liu to to get his Shang-Chi job because you just manifested it on Twitter, right, which is what he did.
(Actually his Tweet was two days before hers!)
I didn’t. I think he genuinely manifested it.
So set the record straight on how you made this happen. Or how you fell into it.
I fell into it. I tweeted about this because I’m so excited about Sandra Oh hosting I don’t think she ever saw it. I don’t think she knows what that is something I did. In hindsight, I find it mortified that I did that. Everything I’ve ever done, it’s embarrassing to me now. So I did that. And then this woman, she used to work as an agent and her name is Priyanka Mattoo. She worked as an agent and she had read a bunch of stuff I’d written. Is just genuinely a very kind and generous person, I think and so she saw me trying and failing to get my foot in the door in comedy. And she knew Andy Samberg and that was how I got the job.
Didn’t both of you write for Splitsider back then?
I don’t know if she was writing for Splitsider at the time.
OK, I thought this was some some primo Splitsider networking mojo.
No, no. I literally just met her for the first time ever last year, like three years after that occurred. I was writing for Splitsider. The person before me Jenny Nelson had this column. And I obviously was looking for ways to make money and she asked if I wanted to take over the column for a little bit which is just interviewing other comedians.
There’s no future in interviewing other comedians!
Hahaha, no, you do a very good job of asking questions. I was just like, I’m not cut out for this.
So you get the gig at the Golden Globes and that bit of serendipity put you in the same room with three writers for Late Night with Seth Meyers, right?
Yeah, you really did your research. I’m so impressed. That’s what happened. I got to meet with everybody from Late Night which was so kind of them. I had just written packets for other shows. And so I remember they were like, well, send over those packets. We’re curious to see and I did. I can remember going in to meet with, it was like Mike Shoemaker and Alex Baze and Seth Meyers, and they were so kind and seemed really genuine. Very enthusiastic, and I also didn’t know it was like a job interview at all. Like I went in wearing like, this old gray sweater I have. I didn’t know Seth was gonna be there. I didn’t know Alex Baze was gonna be there. So I was just like, I’m just gonna meet Mike Shoemaker. I think he’s cool. I’ve you know, heard about him from 30 Rock.
And longtime SNL producer.
Longtime SNL producer and true legend. I think one of the best things about writing for Late Night is that whenever I tell other people in Hollywood that that’s my job. Everyone’s immediate response is just straight up. Like I love Mike Shoemaker. And it’s true, he’s the best.
So more props to Mike Shoemaker and Seth Meyers. They now have a pretty established track record of taking chances on young people who other than having some internet sensibility, don’t have a prior late-night TV history. They hired and then they hired Jeff Wright straight off of TikTok.
We we have some people who didn’t do us a traditional comedy pipeline, right? Like Dina Gusovsky was like an award-winning journalist. And like Ian Workman, who used to do cue cards for our show and I think they’re just sort of like if you’re funny, and you can do the job, let’s do it. There’s a guy named Bryan Donaldson who worked in IT in Peoria, Illinois, and he just had some really good tweets and they hired him and he’s like, such a great writer.
How long did it take you to acclimate to 30 Rock?
Well, culturally, I think I acclimated quite quickly because everyone is really kind and welcoming. And so I didn’t feel emotionally or socially out of place. Also because that room, nobody has quit that show in years. So it’s a really long-running room of writers who all know each other very well and like each other, and because of that, it was pretty easy to just slip in. And then I think workload wise, it took me like five or six months. I made the mistake of continuing to do stand-up every single night for the first couple of months. And that’s when I was like, Oh, I have to stop doing this because I can’t. I don’t have enough energy to do both of these things. And I think once I slowed down on stand-up a little while to get acclimated, and it got a lot easier.
It’s got to be tough to like, think about comedy from 9 to 5 or 10 to 6, and then leave work and then think about comedy some more.
Yeah, and also just physically exhausting to go from work, randomly grabbing dinner somewhere to doing a set and then coming home and it’s like 10, 11, then doing it again.
So Seth is good about like giving the writers their own segments, and yours is based on your age. What do you know about these old people things? But do you actually consider yourself a millennial or Gen Z, because you’re right on the line, right?
I think I’m like a year or two away from being Gen Z. I feel like a millennial, I think because that’s what I was told the whole time out there like you’re a millennial. This is why you’re terrible. And I’ve heard that my whole life in my mind. Millennials, I think are destroying industries and Gen Z is trying to save the world. And I think I’m more helping destroy industries than I am saving the world.
We both know the problem, it’s really the boomers.
Yes.
Speaking from Gen X, we can all agree on that.
I taught my grandpa OK Boomer because my grandpa’s not a boomer, he’s like older. If your kids are acting up, this is what you can say.
Of course, right. Because the Baby Boom refers to when American soldiers came back from World War II, but for Korea that equivalent would’ve happened a decade later.
Yeah, that is my parents generation. My grandpa was 1929 and my grandma was born in 1931. And then my mom and her siblings are between late ‘50s to mid ‘60s. OK Boomer works perfectly.
OK, so this brings us back to Korea. So was there any hesitation on your part when you decided to put your family first and go?
No, there was no hesitation. What was really clarifying for me in terms of what my real priorities are. Because I think before, I mean I’m sure every millennial Gen Z young person and maybe people all ages are like this, but I think this is such a specifically like young millennial grind, of feeling like you have to be working all the time, and sort of equating your self-worth to what you are producing. And I think I was really falling into that trap and getting some fulfillment out of it, but not getting as much fulfillment as I was hoping for, which maybe is impossible to actually try and acquire from work. And so when this happened, it was pretty clear. I was like, I care more about my grandparents than any job. I like spending time with my family more than doing work. So I went and I also again, I went thinking I’d only be there for a month or two. I emailed Mike Shoemaker being like, Hello, my grandma’s sick I have to go to Korea. Is that OK? And he was like absolutely. Family is first. You gotta go, we can figure it out. And yeah, to his credit and to Seth and Baze and everybody they were really kind of letting me work from abroad for literally two years.
So what is the time difference?
The time difference from the East Coast is 13 or 14 hours depending on daylight savings, so it’s a full night-and-day swap.
How does that fit with your personality? Were you a morning or a night person before?
I’m a morning person. So it kind of really messed things up for me. But I mean a really nice silver lining — I will say I am a very optimistic person and I think I am I generally have a pretty good morale. That was like one of my main jobs taking care of my grandma. I was just like, morale captain. Let’s keep everybody in a good mood and feeling good and feeling positive. And so one of the really nice silver linings of working from Korea for Late Night is that I was up writing jokes at like two in the morning and sending them in by three in the morning. And my grandma was very, very ill, and for a long time and during a stretch of that time, we needed somebody to sort of be up awake with her, while she was sleeping just to make sure she’s sleeping OK. And that’s when I was like you know what? This works out great because I have to be working at this time, so my mom and my aunt or whoever else can be sleeping and I’ll be up on night duty with grandma, and yeah, so that kind of worked out really perfectly. Although it was definitely a mind fuck. You know, but it was good.
And then now you’re back in New York for the Asian Comedy Festival. Are you gonna go back to Korea afterward?
Yeah, well, I’m going to the Asian Comedy Festival. I’m really excited about it. Huge fan of Ed Pokropski. Yeah, I’m doing that and I’m sort of hopping around the East Coast a lot for various work gigs and shows, job stuff. And I’m writing for season 2 of Pachinko right now. And so that’s all remote so I can work on that.
Spending so much of the last two years back in Korea. Because you grew up in California. You didn’t even grow up in Korea. Yeah. So how has how has that experience changed you as a comedy writer?
Oh, what a wonderful question. I mean, I will say growing up I went to Korea like three or four times a year because my dad worked for an airline company. My brother and I went and tallied up how long we had lived there. It was something like four years of our lives had been spend in Korea, just never consecutively. And this was back when I was like 22, maybe, so it’s like a significant chunk of my time. And so I feel very comfortable in Korea. I’m fluent in the language. When I’m there people just assume I’m from Korea, and so I can move through society feeling very normal. And that was honestly incredible. Being in America, I think as any probably any Asian American person will tell you, whenever you get too comfortable, somebody will sort of question whether or not you’re from America. Or whether you belong here in either a small or big way. When I was in Korea, everyone just assumed I was Korean and that I belonged there and didn’t confuse me for another Asian person and didn’t recognize me when I came back to the coffee shop the next day. That kind of thing is something that has just does not happen to me in the U.S. And I felt so thrilled by all these small mundane moments that I think a lot of white people in America maybe take for granted. And yeah, that was incredible and I think really solidified my sense of self and really made me not care about the way other people think about my identity, because I felt so self assured. And I hope that’s a permanent change. I hope it’s not a temporary phase.
It also allows you to have a different or an added perspective on just what a great influence to Korean entertainment has had? Each of the last three years…first Parasite and all of Bong Joon-ho’s movies, but Parasite winning Best Picture. Then Minari comes out the following year. Last year, everyone talked about Squid Game. This year it’s Pachinko.
Yeah, I mean, it’s really it’s really incredible. It’s super thrilling because I feel like when I was growing up, I’m from the Bay Area where there are lots of Asian people. And even still, nobody knew that I was Korean. And I remember getting asked like, when I said I was Korean they’d be like, is that more like China or Japan. It was a question I got quite a lot. And I’m 27. I just turned 27. And so that’s like, not that long ago. People just didn’t really know what this country was and what kind of stuff it made. And so that’s been really cool. When I was in Korea, I did a bunch of meetings and stuff, trying to figure out if I could work on stuff there. And I think because entertainment, largely, thanks to streaming platforms is becoming more globalized. I definitely want to work on Korean projects moving forward.
And now you’re writing on Pachinko! What do you think it is about Korean shows or movies that they’ve been able to appeal to global audiences in a way other Asian or even European cultures haven’t been able to crack?
Oh, man, I have no idea. Honestly. Because there are also other Korean things where I’m like, I can’t believe this isn’t the biggest hit in the world, you know, so it’s like it’s kind of random. I’m sure other countries feel the same way where they’re like we have something that we think should be huge. It should be a phenomenon.
But nobody cares.
Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I love BTS. I’m so excited that they’ve gotten so big. I think they’re phenomenal.
Forgive me for not mentioning BTS already. Don’t come for me, BTS ARMY!
I mean they’re genuinely such talented sweet boys. They’re so beautiful.
Not as hot as your hot grandfather? (NOTE: she called her grandfather hot in this Late Night segment celebrating the Parasite Oscars)
Yeah, I mean weird for me to say.
You do it for the sake of comedy.
He’s very handsome so we always tease him. Our family always teases him for being very handsome. He gets really embarrassed.
So I didn’t know you just turned 27. But coming from where I sit, it feels like you still have your your entire life and career ahead of you. You’re already on Late Night, writing now also for Pachinko. Do you allow yourself to like think ahead about like, what further goals you have for yourself?
I do. I also kind of really enjoy how murky the future feels. Because I think my real goal is just to make sure that I’m always working on stuff that I find really fun and rewarding. Rather than falling any set path. I also, I think especially after spending so much time with my family in Korea I was like oh, the most important thing to me is getting to spend time with with them and with my friends and hanging out. And so I always want to make sure that that is taking precedent over, you know, getting a job or working all the time or things like that.
Who are you most interested to catch up with the Asian Comedy Fest?
What a great question. Well, I’m really excited to meet Kathy Kim. I’ve never met her before and she’s the person I’m interviewing for the show, which is on May 7, I think at Caveat. So I grew up watching a lot of PBS Kids. So I’m really, really excited to talk with her about that. And yeah, I guess like Ed, who organizes everything is such a legend and never makes a fuss about how much he’s working and he really does such a good job spotlighting so many Asian comics. Dylan Adler is someone I think is so funny and he’s also performing. Yeah, it’s gonna be a great weekend.
Well it was a lot of fun catching up with you, Karen Chee.
Oh my gosh, thank you. It was truly so nice to meet you.
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