Episode #391
You may have heard Helen Hong as a regular panelist on the hit NPR quiz show, “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.” Hong also has appeared on the big screen in Inside Llewyn Davis, and in recurring roles on TV in sitcoms and comedy shows including HBO’s Silicon Valley, The Unicorn on CBS, and The Netflix Afterparty. And as a stand-up comedian, Hong has grown up from her start as a “Little Ethnic Girl,” releasing her debut comedy special, Helen Hong: Well Hong, via Comedy Dynamics, which she recorded in the summer of 2021 as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Hong sat down with me over Zoom to talk about her early days and nights as a TV producer behind the camera, how she moved to Hollywood without a steady gig and lived to joke about it, filming a nationwide TV commercial with a Muppet, and her life as the daughter of Korean immigrants.
Helen Hong: Well Hong came out this week via Comedy Dynamics, available for rent or purchase on multiple platforms. Here’s the trailer!
If you’re not already subscribed to my podcast, seek it out and subscribe to Last Things First on the podcast platform of your choice! Among them: Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Stitcher; Amazon Music/Audible; iHeartRadio; Player.FM; and my original hosting platform, Libsyn.
If you’d like to read the condensed transcript of our conversation below, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription!
So Helen Hong, I’ve been asking you to be on the podcast for years.
Yes. And I’m very snobby. So I’m like, la-di-da, I’m just too busy. No, it’s because I’m a mess, is the real secret, Sean. I’m a mess.
Wait, wait… don’t tell me that you’re a mess.
I’m a mess. Like secretly. I’m one of those people that people are surprised to find out is a mess. But I’m like an absolute mess. First of all, I’m a borderline hoarder. Thankfully, I live with my sister and she’s a minimalist. So like we’re in a constant struggle. The common areas because of my sister are in good shape. But my room? I’m in the closet of my room right now, is starting to become one of those like hoarder episodes where it’s like, there’s a path from the door to the bed with like just crap on either side. That’s me.
But then you have this sanctuary of a closet.
I do. I had to do it during the pandemic. This is my literal bedroom closet. See, I could still hang clothes. Do you see that?
Did you do this because you’re such a regular on NPR?
Yeah, I did that. And also, there’s a new baby in my life.
Yes, spoiler alert. If you haven’t yet watched Helen Hong: Well Hong via Comedy Dynamics on a streaming platform near you…
…to a child that did not exit my body. That’s the teaser of it, is I’m raising a child, that I did not incubate nor eject from my physical form.
Which means that you are still a little ethnic girl.
Yes! Oh my god. Good memory, Sean. That is like ancient ancient history.
Well, I actually want to ask you something that predates that even, because I know that people have polarizing opinions on comedy schools and comedy classes. But from what I understand, that’s how you got started.
Yeah, and I completely embrace it. I embrace it because I grew up in an immigrant household. I didn’t know anything about stand-up. My parents never listened to stand-up. They never watched stand-up. Their English is not that great. And so they weren’t stand-up people and so I honestly didn’t know stand-up was like a job you could do. And I never listened to any records or watched any specials. Like, I was clueless about stand-up. And obviously, I knew about Margaret Cho and I was like, really intrigued by her and I knew kind of about the most famous undeniably famous like in your face stand-ups in the world, but I just wasn’t a stand-up fan. But I was at a point in my life where I was like, super depressed and was working a day job that was not good for me and I was super depressed. And a friend of a friend had taken a class at Carolines on Broadway. You know, one of the biggest clubs in New York City. He was like, Oh, I’m taking this stand-up class. There’s a graduation show. I’d love to invite you to my graduation show and I was like, you can take a stand-up class??? What even is that about? Sure. I’ll go. So I went. He was terrible. I’m sorry to say. Wherever he is. I don’t even remember. He was a friend of a friend. I don’t even remember his name. Thankfully, I’ve never heard of him again. So he hasn’t pursued me. Or it.
I love how you put your hand up to your face as if to stop your voice from traveling across the globe.
But you know, it kind of opened my eyes. And at the graduation show there were these little flyers. Of course, they’re marketing the hell out of it. And so there were these little flyers on the table: Do you? Are you interested in stand-up? And I was like, No, but I’m super depressed right now. And this sounds fun, like, let’s try this.
Do you remember anyone else from either that show that you watched or from your class that also is still in comedy?
I took a follow-up class, so I took the second level of that class. And unfortunately, one of my first friends in stand-up is a woman named Erica Watson who actually… She died of COVID. She died of COVID last year, and it was super devastating because she was literally my first friend in stand-up. She wasn’t in the original class I took. I took a second class shortly after so you know, six months later, and she was in that class and she was fantastic even then, and so we gravitated towards each other. I hate to say we were the best ones in class but.
But obviously you were because you were both able to make a living in it.
Yeah, yeah.
So what were you doing as that day job?
I was a TV producer.
So you were in show business.
I was in show business. I always wanted to be part of it. But I didn’t know. I didn’t see a path. You know, being an Asian-American immigrant with immigrant parents. I talk about this sometimes when I do speeches at colleges and stuff, that the only person that I saw on TV that was feasibly a person in show business that I could emulate was Connie Chung. Remember Connie Chung? Connie Chung was a newscaster and eventually I learned she was married to Maury Povich. That should have been the red flag, right there.
He is the father!
Yes! So, in an Asian American family, the acceptable way of being in show-business was like, reading the news, because she was on TV every night, but she was very put together and she was a newscaster. So, very respectable. And that was the only person that I could see on TV. So I actually went to school for broadcast journalism. Found out I hated it during school, but like by then, I had already had a degree and had no other skills. I just had this useless degree in broadcast journalism. So I was like, argh! So I moved to LA and became a p.a. And just rose the ranks and eventually became a TV producer and I worked on a lot of women’s reality programming, like What What Not to Wear and Say Yes to the Dress. And stuff like that. So I was doing that and I was miserable. I was miserable. It was the perfect example of golden handcuffs. You know, where I had this prestigious job where if I told people what I did, like, ‘Oh, I’m a TV producer on these shows that you’ve heard of,’ people would be like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so impressive!’ You know? People were so impressed and it was a prestigious job and I made very good money. And, you know, my parents were proud of me. They were like, ‘Oh, my, my daughter works at E!’ or, ‘Oh, my daughter works for NBC.’ Like it was bragging rights for my parents. And I honestly, like at the pinnacle of that job, I would cry myself to sleep every night. Because I just knew I was like, Is this all there is to life? I hate this. This is not, I don’t like anything about this job.
So when I met you, you were in New York City. And you were actually doing a live show called Little Ethnic Girls. I know you subsequently did a podcast, but at the time, I distinctly remember you were part of like a quartet. You did shows at Gotham Comedy Club, and I don’t know if you did them elsewhere, but it was you, Maria Shehata, Liz Miele and Rachel Feinstein.
Maria Shehata and I were really good friends. She was also kind of like one of my first really good friends in stand-up, and then Liz was also a good friend of ours. And so the three of us would hang out and people would always comment like, Oh, it’s the little ethnic girls, because all of us are short, small and of some ethnicity. That’s not white. And so we started thinking of this idea, like, why don’t we do a show about this? So we added a fourth, Rachel. And we had a big show at Gotham. We did it as like a recurring show occasionally, but I don’t know, it just never took off. And then we went on to do other things. But um, yeah, that was probably my producing background, because I came from a producing background. And so when I started stand-up, I was always scheming ways to like, produce myself into more stage time. Here’s a crazy story, Sean. I remember. Maybe my second year of stand-up, second or third year of stand-up, being in the basement bar of Gotham Comedy Club with Amy Schumer and Jackie Monahan.
OK, yeah, I remember they were palling around at that time.
Being like, how do we get more stage time? How do we get more stage time?? Maybe we should do a show where we’re in bikinis to get people to come?
I remember that was a thing. I think it might still be a thing somewhere. But yeah. I mean, that was definitely a thing in the late 2000s.
That’s just like, that’s where we were in our minds because we were just desperate to get stage time and we were always scheming ways to get more stage time. Honestly, like, Sean, you know, when you’re starting out as a comic, it’s just all about, how do we get more stage time? Because open mics are only good for, you know, good for a certain thing and then after that, you’re like, I need to get more stage time in front of a real audience.
So what ended up being the turning point for you? I mean, for Amy, it was Last Comic Standing. What was the turning point for you?
Do I have a turning point? I don’t know! Did I?
You’ve been a regular recurring character on a broadcast network sitcom in The Unicorn.
Yeah, that’s true, that’s true.
Probably moving to L.A. Honestly, it was probably moving to L.A.
Did you move to L.A. with a part already?
No! And that was the thing. I remember. I moved to L.A. in 2012. And at that time, I was at the height of my career in New York. I had just been passed at the Comedy Cellar, which as you know, as part of the New York scene, that is a big freakin deal right, to be passed at the Comedy Cellar. So I’ve just been passed at the Comedy Cellar. I was regularly working at Gotham, Stand-Up New York, Carolines. I was known in the New York scene.
You could do the six gigs a night thing.
Yep. I was doing the six gigs a night, and I was doing the road work that you could get to from New York. A lot of buses and trains. And I was miserable. Honestly, New York was making me crazy. I was at the point where I was fantasizing pushing tourists down subway steps. Because I’d be like, you know, every New Yorker has had this experience where like, the train has pulled in, right? So you only have a certain amount of time to get down. You have to run down the steps to run to catch your train. But you’re trapped behind a tourist who’s like, ‘Oh! Goodness me! This is the subway! Wow!’ And you’re like, MOVE! I’m about to miss my train! And I was fantasizing pushing those people down the steps. And that’s when you know you should leave New York. When you’re fantasizing about random murder. That’s when you know you should leave. I’m an introvert which I know you know, a lot of comics are introverts. So I need like my recharge time is alone time. Like I need to be alone to recharge. I can’t be around people all the time. Just need large chunks of the day where I’m just completely by myself. And so New York living is just hard. If you have to get to an audition or you have to go to a meeting or something and the first thing in your day with your morning cup of coffee is getting on the subway. It was making me crazy. Just the whole New York lifestyle was making me nuts. And so this was 2012 and I was like, You know what? I’m moving to L.A. I don’t have a job in L.A. I don’t have a gig. I’m gonna have to cut ties with my manager because he doesn’t represent in L.A. I’m gonna have to find an agent. I had nothing and a lot of comics at the time were like Helen, yu’re nuts. You’re gonna move to L.A. with no gig? No agent, no manager, no nothing. You’re gonna have to start over. And I was like, I completely understand that and I’m going in with my eyes wide open. But I am turning into a raging bitch in New York. I am turning into a trash human. And I did it. It was a leap of faith. And it was starting over. I moved to LA and I had to prove myself again at all the clubs. Nobody knew me. You know, obviously some comics knew me, you know, from New York. So I had a leg up in that some comics could vouch for me and that’s how I got to audition at Laugh Factory fairly quickly. I got passed at the Laugh Factory fairly quickly. There were comics at the Comedy Store who knew me so there were ways that I could get in, that wasn’t exactly starting over, but it was pretty much starting over. But I took a leap of faith and I feel like I was really rewarded for that. You know, there was one year in LA where I like, couldn’t really pay my rent. I was struggling to pay my rent and I didn’t have any road gigs and things weren’t really happening. But after that year, things started really taking off for me. And I really believe that it was because I took a leap of faith.
What came first? Was it TV? Was it radio? Or was it road gigs?
I got an agent fairly quickly because of Erik Griffin. He and I knew each other. We had the same college agent at one point. So I met him on the road at like a NACA. And we were friendly and we had vaguely kept in touch not really, you know, kind of just as acquaintances. And then when I moved to L.A., he was doing Workaholics. He was a regular on Workaholics. And so he was doing really well. His career was taking off, and so I reached out to him. I was like, hey, congrats on everything. I just moved to town. I wonder if you’d be so kind as to introduce me to your agents. And he kinda yeah-yeah-yeah’d me for a few months. But then I got booked on a fundraiser at the Laugh Factory for — Dick Van Dyke works with a homeless shelter called the Midnight Mission, which is a really great homeless shelter, which I have actually done some work with since then. So it was a big fundraiser for the Midnight Mission. Dick Van Dyke was going to be hosting the show, which is one of those random L.A. things right? Like, like a random, Dick Van Dyke is hosting at the Laugh Factory, like what? That doesn’t even make sense. But yeah, he was hosting the show. And I was on the show. And Erik Griffin was also on the show. And so he texted me: Hey, we’re on the same fundraiser and my my agents coming and I told him about you. So I crushed it. Thankfully, thankfully, as you know, that is never a guarantee. But I did really, really well. I had a really great set and his agent was there. And he saw me and he was like, I think you’re great. I’d love to work with you. And I was like, great. So I got that agent and then I started getting auditions and parts of stuff.
And then the next thing you know, you’re meeting the Coen Brothers. And Oscar Isaac.
Yeah. Yeah. Me-ow.
You really got Inside Llewyn Davis.
I wish Llewyn Davis had gotten in me, you know?
Hey-o! No spoilers for Well Hong, but there’s lots of horny talk.
People should go into watching my special with the knowledge that I am a trash mouth and a trash mind. Trash mouth trash brain.
Ever since Inside Llewyn Davis, you’ve had steady work.
I’ve been super lucky. I’ve been super lucky.
Yeah, Silicon Valley.
Amazing. I got to be directed by Mike Judge. I’ve now been directed by the Coen Brothers and Mike Judge. That’s not bad. You know what I mean? All three of those people are legit geniuses. But Mike Judge is legit a genius. Like you can just tell interacting with him. You’re like, Oh, you’re on another level. And such a nice person. And the trippy thing about working with Mike Judge is, he’s the voice of Hank Hill, King of the Hill. So it’s kind of like talking to Hank.
That’s better than talking to Beavis and Butthead.
But it’s like weird when you’re trying to have a conversation and Hank Hill is like ‘You’re, you’re a really good actor.’ And I’m like, I can’t take you seriously, I’m sorry, this is crazy. But I’ve been super lucky and really blessed and again, I really credit it to taking a leap of faith to move to L.A., like, I really moved to LA with nothing, but it was the best thing that happened to me, because I’m a happier person. And also my career is taking off, and there’s just more opportunity for TV and movies in L.A. And I have my health insurance through SAG now. You know, that’s how much I’ve been working as an actor.
One day you could get a call for a GEICO ad with one of the Muppets.
Did you see that one? That’s the most starstruck I’ve ever been. Honestly, I’ve worked with some really famous people. But getting to work with a Muppet. I was like, Oh my God, because Animal, the Muppet that I worked with, has three handlers. There’s like you know, a guy with his hand literally up his butt. And then there’s a guy on the stick that’s working his limbs.
Because he’s a drummer.
So he’s got somebody working his limbs and then somebody’s also working his eyes. He has very expressive eyes that open and close, big long lashes, and somebody’s working his mouth. And then he’s got a stylist! The third handler is the person who makes sure he’s wearing his outfit correctly. And he’s a drummer. So he’s got like, studded, leather bracelets that, there’s some rock and roll pieces that he’s wearing.
That’s not that different from working with David Spade, though, is it?
David Spade does not have a hand up his butt, as far as I could tell. As far as I could see, there was no other human that had his hand up David Spade’s ass as far as I could see.
But I imagine he has stylists and pays a lot of attention to his hair and wardrobe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. David Spade, but he was cool to work with, because he just spits out ridiculous. He’s got no filter. Literally no filter, and it just comes out and it’s like, sometimes it’s stupid. And sometimes it’s genius.
Was that before or after you did Never Have I Ever? That also was Netflix.
No, no, Never Have I Ever, it didn’t seem that Netflix branded to me. It’s Mindy Kaling’s production company and I think they kind of gave her free rein so, it didn’t feel that Netflix-y to me. There weren’t Netflix executives everywhere all the time. But the David Spade show definitely felt like a Netflix show. There was branding everywhere.
How long you been doing stuff with NPR?
I’ve been on Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me for I want to say seven years now. And that was another thing that came from me moving to L.A. I started working the clubs and I met Maz Jobrani, who is a regular, who’s been on that show for years and years and years. And then I saw that that show was doing a live taping in L.A., and I’ve been a fan of that show. I bucket listed that into existence, Sean. When I was like a two-year or three-year green comic, I wrote that into my bucket list. I want to be a panelist on Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me, because I’m a stand-up now. Two years in…
And it’s this radio show that’s usually in the Midwest.
Exactly! But I was such a fan. And then I saw that they were coming and doing a live taping in L.A., and I saw that Maz Jobrani was going to be on the panel. And I was like I know Maz. So I wrote to him and I was like, hey, honestly, I was just asking for free tickets. I was like, Hey, I see you’re doing the taping like, do you think you could swing some free tickets for me? And Maz being the amazing, generous person that he has was like, ‘Yeah, and there’s an after-party. Do you want to come?’ And I’m like, hell yeah. And he’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll introduce you to the team.’ And I was like, amazing. So I go to the taping, it was fantastic. I go to the after-party and Maz being Maz is like, ‘Hey, this is Helen. She’s hilarious. You should have her on.’ I didn’t even ask him. I just was like, I’m a fan. Maz took it upon himself to be like, Yo, Helen’s great. She’s hilarious. You should try her out. And they did. They couldn’t. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I think also I hit it at the exact right moment, where that show particularly and NPR as a whole was really trying to become more diverse. Because for decades, it was just so white. NPR is so white as an organization and Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me like it was all white men.
I remember visiting my parents when I was younger, and it was usually on a weekend that I would be with them. So I was always hearing Click and Clack, Car Talk: Two old white guys from Massachusetts. Or Garrison Keillor, white guy from Minnesota.
Totally. Yeah. All the panelists on Wait Wait were white men, usually older white men. This was seven or eight years ago. They were actively trying to bring more diversity into the show. And I think I just hit it at the exact right moment where they were like, Oh, you’re an Asian woman. Two check marks already. Like yeah, let’s try you out. So I tried out and thankfully I didn’t eat it. And it’s been seven or eight years and I love it. I love it. It’s my favorite gig.
Because when I think of the NPR quiz shows now, I think about how their roster of comedians is so different from the comedians that I regularly see on TV shows. It’s like they don’t even mix.
They really walk to the beat of their own drummer. I think because the show is such a long-time hit, they have carte blanche to do anything they want. And so they bring in panelists that no one’s ever heard of. They bring in panelists that are like legacy panelists that have been there for decades and decades, like very old-school journalists, and like they’re like, We don’t care. It works for us. You know, so they don’t don’t sway to whatever’s going on in the zeitgeist, like whoever’s hot. It doesn’t bother them because they’re like, we’re always going to be a hit.
Watching your special, it sounds like you got kind of called out of the blue to do this. You joke about getting the call three weeks before the taping?
100% true. I think I say this in the special, your dream is to get a big comedy special as a stand-up comic. It’s like the ultimate goal, to get a big, hourlong special and so I was like, that was always my goal and then the world ended. Pandemic happened. And I hadn’t done stand up in literally a year. I mean, I had done Zoom shows, but I hadn’t physically stood up in front of an audience for a year. And then, you know, my special was taped in conjunction with Tribeca Festival, and it was the event that was going to reopen New York City after lockdown. It was a first public event that was like allowing people to congregate together after lockdown. And yeah, I got offered this like very, very, with not a lot of lead time. I would say a month, maybe a month and a half. Maybe I exaggerated a little bit. It might have been a month and a half. But still like a month and a half to be like hey, you haven’t been on stage in a year. Fly to New York City, in front of an audience of masked humans and tell jokes for an hour. And I’m like OK. You saw this special. The first 30 minutes is brand-new jokes about the pandemic, because I couldn’t talk about anything else. I couldn’t talk about stuff that I had talked about a year before before the pandemic, it just didn’t seem like real anymore. What is the point of talking about this stuff? The pandemic is the only thing we’ve been talking about for a year. That’s all I want to talk about. So all those jokes, the first half of my special, were brand-new jokes that had only been tried in front of Zoom audiences, really. So I kind of wanted to give a little bit of a like, hey! Heads up, this might go well or it might not!
Would you have felt better had they called you the year before, when Comedy Dynamics and Tribeca did specials outside of the Rose Bowl in the parking lot?
No, no, because, I mean, I love the concept and it was so novel, but the concept of like honking, cars honking instead of being able to hear laughter. Actually, maybe I would have liked that better because it would have been so far removed from any normalcy that it would have been like, hey, whatever happens happens, you know? And I think that was the attitude a lot of comics went in, like hey, this is unprecedented, like I’ve never told jokes to a bunch of cars before. And the way that I know that it’s funny is if you honk? but I think you know, we just got to all roll with it. You know everything. We just got to roll with it and I just rolled with it, and I was honored to be asked. I felt honored to be asked. I felt lucky to to be asked to do this special, and I’m proud of the jokes that I did. A lot of the jokes that were brand new jokes, I felt like I’m really proud of them and I stand by them, and then the second half of the special is older jokes. And then paired with the baby. My brand-new baby that did not exit my body.
Were your parents at the taping?
No.
Have they seen this special yet?
No. Are they going to? No. I’ve been doing stand-up now for like 16 years. And my parents have seen me live one time and it was for a Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me taping so it wasn’t even my stand-up. It was just me on a panel telling jokes very sanitized. They have never seen me live and they never will because I would have a meltdown if they were there. Like I would be like super flustered.
Even if they were in a car in the parking lot outside a football stadium?
Yes. Because I would hear nothing but the lack of their honking.
You’d be like no that Kia, I know that Kia.
That Kia is not honking. Damn it.
So, you know, I had Karen Chee on the podcast
I love her
And she spent a lot of the pandemic in Korea. But it got me thinking about how specifically with Korean culture, it’s been enjoying a moment the last few years.
Oh my god, with you know, Squid Game.
You mentioned Parasite.
I taped this special before Squid Game came out. I would have said Squid Game because it was so much bigger than Parasite. At the time that I taped the special Parasite was like the biggest thing, along with Kpop and Kdramas, but since then, I taped the special holy crap! The lead actress from squid game is now in like all these Hollywood movies. She’s being cast in all these Hollywood movies and she deserves it because man she her performance was killer. But also Kpop is taking over, like BTS just performed at Coachella, like come on. Yeah, that’s crazy.
So how does it feel as a daughter of Korean immigrants to see that?
It’s super cool. But at the same time, like knowing Korean culture, I know the dark side behind it. I think there’s a documentary out about the dark side of what it takes to be a Kpop star and the dark side. The entire premise of Squid Game is like, income inequality has become so bad.
Parasite is, too.
If you read some of the interviews with the writer of Squid Game, he had written that script 10 years before and he was shopping it around for 10 years and nobody would pick it up. Because no studio was like, this is too unrealistic. Like no one would sign up for this. And he said he had to wait for the world to become so desperate that this actually makes sense, that the storyline would make sense that people would leave their lives to come almost get killed, you know, risk being killed to make millions of millions of dollars. And there’s a lot of societal problems in Korea about income inequality. I’m so proud that the culture artistically is having a moment, but I also being Korean know the dark side behind that artistic moment.
Well, I can see our time is almost up so thank you for being desperate enough to finally do my podcast. I’m glad I waited this long.
Sean, I told you I’m a hot mess. I couldn’t find my laptop. I was literally like, mountains of crap was falling on me in my room.
Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
From The Comic's Comic 
Leave a comment