Episode #411
Born in China, Jioaying Summers first came to America for college in Kentucky speaking no English, then went to Hollywood looking for stardom. Summers has found it so far already on TikTok, where she has gained more than 1.2 million followers, and has created her own stage, The Hollywood Comedy, where she and other aspiring comedians can develop their voices. Since the pandemic, Summers has released a half-hour special as part of Comedy InvAsian 2.0, available on Prime Video, and hosted a stand-up showcase, LMAOF, for OnlyFans. Summers will perform at the 2022 New York Comedy Festival, running her hour, “Tiger MILF,” and she spoke with me in Los Angeles ahead of that.
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Summers met me in a house at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills.
It’s very Hollywood. I did my first general meeting with CBS on Zoom right here, in that corner. Love it.
So you’re taking meetings. Is that what happens when you become TikTok famous?
No. It’s the stand-up that stands out. There’s millions of TikTok influencers. I’m a real stand-up I think that’s what works for me. They want to see me after they saw me perform live. They didn’t want to see me after seeing my black dick video. They respect you because stand-up is a craft. If you can murder a crowd on an amazing reading lineup that you get respect from, I think, from the studios. They don’t really care about influencers unless you have 100 million followers like the Kardashians. One million, two million? Doesn’t matter.
One of your reps was just telling me before you got here that, just last week, you had to go up right after Whitney Cummings and Sarah Silverman at a show. They’re both in the game a lot longer than you, and household names, and you’re still on the come-up, so what’s it like to have to go on?
I loved it. I enjoyed very much. I wasn’t nervous at all. I was just having fun, and I just feel like it was— that would be the moment that could define my career, break it or make it — you know, if you can kill after Sarah Silverman or Whitney, I think — and I killed, so I was waiting for that moment.
You did a half-hour for this series called Comedy InvAsian 2.0, that’s now on Prime Video (CLARIFICATION: It’s on FreeVee, Amazon’s ad-supported free part of Prime Video). You joke about having to survive the one-child policy in China, and almost being a dumpster baby. What’s the real story?
The real story is that I was born a girl, and my mom and my dad had planned to give me away. So that’s a real story. And they changed their mind. They weren’t gonna love me, but they changed their mind. I was reminded about this every day, that my life was granted to me by them.
So what does it mean now — cut to all these years later — where you’re in the States and you’re pursuing a career in entertainment as a stand-up comedian?
I think it gives me a really strong point of view of things. When you are being little snowflakes and little bitches complaining about bullshit, and I just have my point of view that’s really strong. And I think that gives me a very powerful voice. And that people like to see, like if a foreigner with an accent thinks there’s something’s fucked up, maybe it is fucked up.
But in terms of just living up to what standards your parents were setting for you. When they’re reminding you constantly this life that you have, it wasn’t guaranteed for you. You have to work for everything, earn everything. So what was the initial plan? It probably wasn’t entertainment growing up in China.
When I was a little girl, I loved performing but I was not allowed to be onstage because I was too ugly. I started writing, reading. Grandpa was a scholar in classical Chinese literature, and a calligrapher. So I learned intensively of the Chinese classical literature, and I became a poet. I wrote classical Chinese poetry and I wrote my feelings. I write a lot. I read a lot. I got very severely nearsighted because I was reading all day, all night, because I didn’t have any friends. Words were my friend. I had my words. And that’s what I had.
Where in China were you growing up?
North part of China.
Did you come to America before college, or?
I came here for college when I was 18.
So how do you decide on Kentucky?
I didn’t decide on Kentucky.
Like you joke! Nobody decides on Kentucky.
I was able to convince my mom to send me to America, but the thing was, she wouldn’t help me apply for schools or apply for a visa. So I had to figure it out all by myself. I’m probably the first person who would go to America in my city. So I have to just find out what should I do in applying for schools. When you get your first offer from a school, that’s how you get a visa. So the first offer was from Kentucky. I didn’t care that it is Kentucky. I just wanted to go to America, so I took that offer to get my visa. I went to another school later on, but I just wanted to go to America. I didn’t care where it is.
So what was your first impression when you landed and you showed up in Lexington, Kentucky?
I got lost in the airport in O’Hare in Chicago. Nobody wants to help me.
Oh! Even before Kentucky, you missed the connection in O’Hare.
I didn’t speak English well. I mean, I don’t speak any English when I just came. So it was very difficult. I am still ugly. I’m still not confident. And I still have no friends and I’m still an outsider.
Not now.
I worked very hard to stand out.
So is a lot of your comedy to overcome your own self-doubt and also overcome the doubt of other people about you?
I think this is such an important thing for any artist to discover, and I think I have it. I just became confident. And I learned to love myself and to be happy about what I have. I love it. I studied business. I also took a theater class. I love acting, so I wanted to go to Hollywood when I was done with school. So I moved to Los Angeles in 2013 to pursue acting.
Wait, so did you graduate from Kentucky or did you transfer?
I didn’t transfer. I just came to here to study acting at Howard Fine Acting Studio and taking acting classes.
But take me back to, you said when you first landed in O’Hare, you got lost. You didn’t know hardly any English. But you end up at Kentucky. How did you make do? That first semester, how did you get through that?
I don’t remember it, really. It was just exciting, because I’m in a different country. I have a clean slate. I can start my own life.
Is that when you first started studying theater, or did you start out studying something else first?
I studied business. I always study business. Theater, I just take some theater classes. My minor. Not my major. I had to learn how make money first.
Were you able to make friends in Lexington?
Yes. I had friends. Erica and Mary. They are two white girls from Kentucky, grew up in Singapore who speaks Chinese. So they taught me English and I speak Chinese with them, and we became very good friends.
Do they also dabble in the performing arts or no?
No. They are, I think Erica is in finance. I think Mary is in education. They are very beautiful Kentucky girls, love the nature, loves animals. Not into the glitter and venery (?) of Hollywood.
Did you get into either basketball or horse racing in Kentucky?
No. I did tutor the basketball people, as a math tutor. But no, I didn’t really care for sports. I wanted to become an actress.
So like you said in 2013, you came to Los Angeles. Did you have a battle plan? What was the plan?
I’ll take classes, become very good, get a good agent and book some role and become a movie star. It didn’t happen.
At what point does comedy start entering the picture?
I auditioned for TV series, Rebel, John Singleton’s TV series. It was a girl. She’s a Chinese girl living Oakland. Her name is Karma.* (*NOTE: the main Asian-American character in the actual series was named Cheena) That was a major role for me. I had a callback. I prepared. It was horrifying. That was my big break. I remember auditioning and I forgot a line. I started improvising and John Singleton was very impressed. He started laughing so hard. He walked to me with his phone playing a little clip of Ali Wong’s “Baby Cobra,” the special, saying ‘You should do stand-up. You’ll be a star.’ I asked him, Do I have the role now? Did I book the job? He said, ‘No, I can’t book you. You don’t sound like you’re from San Francisco.’ But was he was very very serious about me doing stand-up. He actually got my phone number to text me to supervise me, so he could steer me to my first open mic.
(NOTE: Singleton died in 2019)
So you don’t get the role but you do get friendship and sage advice.
So he says, I’m watching Ali Wong, I see you. I think you should be in stand-up comedy. Does he tell you where to go for the first open mic or do how do you figure out where to go?
He just said find an open mic. I didn’t go. I wasn’t happy. I was very upset I didn’t get the role. I didn’t give a fuck about stand-up back then. But I knew everything about movies. I watched silent movies. I watched all the classic movies… I was so upset. I didn’t even care. I wouldn’t even text him.
You’re still single at the time, right? You hadn’t been married yet.
Separated. So I didn’t text him. I was upset. If you think I’ll be a star you should book me for this movie. I prepared so hard for it. If I have a callback I’m not too far, so why can’t you book me? So I was upset with him. He texts me his name. But I didn’t even respond, because I didn’t know what is stand-up. I’m didn’t know this is gonna change my life. He was very tough. He wouldn’t say anything nice, but he said you would be a big star if you did stand-up.
Right, but you don’t want to hear it at the time?
No, I just think of it as a rejection. So I was hosting this event to Shanghai Film Festival. So I went back to China and met my ex husband. We got married. I just kind of very heartbroken with all the acting, auditions and everything. I took a break. I never did the open mic after John Singleton told me to do it. I got married had a baby and then I have really bad postpartum depression and seeing all my friends taking off with their careers and I’m just doing nothing. So I got this text message again like hey, I heard you got married. Did you ever try stand-up? You have try it. If you hate it, you have to tell me, but if you don’t try it, you have no right to tell me you hate it. So I was very depressed, and I decided, I m going to try my first stand-up. First open mic.
Where was that?
A little shithole in Koreatown. Nothing special. Obviously. All of the open mics are shitty.
Right. But you go to this place. You don’t know anybody there, presumably.
No I don’t know anybody.
How did you prepare for that like not knowing much about what you’re getting yourself into?
I don’t know. Just going to say something that was thinking. I didn’t write anything.
Did it click for you immediately after that first open mic?
No. It was shitty. It was bad. But there was something there. I think I belonged there. I didn’t do well, obviously, I don’t remember what I said. I was just like, I feel like I got hit by a car. And I knew that’s what I should be doing for the rest of my life. But I bombed, obviously.
That’s kind of the peculiar nature of being a stand-up comedian, right, is it can go great and your head can swell up and you can get really full of yourself and think things are gonna go great. But eventually, early on, you’re going to have that point where you bomb so bad that, like you just said, you feel like you get hit by a car. And yet, something tells you this is still the thing that you should be doing.
Yeah, I remember I was walking down the stage with some people in the audience said somebody should not be doing comedy. That was bad. I took three vodka shots and went out to my car crying. Just crying. And you know, I was breastfeeding so my breast milk is like coming out and it was awful. Maybe I should catch the milk for the baby, and then I realized, he can’t drink this. This is vodka. I should dump this. And then I’m like, no, I can’t dump this. This is a White Russian. I can drink it. So I’m like: That’s funny. I should say this that next time. So I knew. I knew I belonged there. It was a thrill I never had before. And I think I’m an addict, and the stage is my drug of choice. That’s where I belong. It’s very funny because we were talking about last week. One of my producer friends asked: ‘Are you nervous? Sarah Silverman is on, and Whitney Cummings just killed.’ I’m like, No, I’m not. ‘How can you not be nervous?’ I’m not nervous. I’m ready to go there and do my thing. I don’t care who was on. It can be George Carlin or Joan Rivers, it’s just a thrill to be there. So I’m not nervous at all.
Who would you say were your first friends in comedy that you made?
I made some friends, but I just kind of got really busy and moved. Just stop doing the same thing. So I really, I think Aidan Park. He’s a gay comedian, gay Asian comedian. Very nice. He’s like a good friend through comedy.
It’s a very solitary occupation but you need I’ve found over the years covering comedy and talking to comedians, that despite it being a very solitary thing, you need to have some sort of support network, right? You need to have either friends who are putting you on their shows and you put them on your shows. Or just friends who you can talk to each other for advice and to get yourself through those rough patches in the beginning.
Yeah, I think so. I think having good friends is very important in comedy. Comedians are really good people. They’re crazy, too. It is very competitive. And it’s very hard for women, especially women of color, or immigrant or foreigner. It’s incredible. It’s crazy. It’s very difficult.
So where were you at in your comedy career when the pandemic started?
I started my comedy club. I was two months in, open mic’ing when I bought my own club. I found out that’s what I need is stage time, so I bought my own club, so I could move as fast as I can, I think.
Wait, so you started going to open mics in what, November of 2019?
Right, exactly three years from now is when I started doing comedy.
So you started going to open mics in the fall, winter 2019. Pandemic, everything shuts down in March of 2020. When did you decide that 1) I need my own venue and 2) how do you figure out how to do it?
Once I started doing open mics, I realized I don’t think there’s enough time for me onstage and so I just drove to find a space and lease it. Renovate it. Open a club. I’m always I want something, I just do it. I don’t care. I’m gonna do it because I need it. I just — that’s why I can’t argue with people who talk in a circle. I always want to solve the problem. I want to be amazing at stand-up, and I need to be to do it 10 hours a day. I can’t do it anywhere. I’m not a star. But if I buy my own (stage), I can do it. So it’s about me getting better. I’m like, they don’t want to book you at The Comedy Store because you’re not ready. Get ready. That’s what I did. I always want to solve problems.
But that’s an unusual way to do it. I say that because most comedians, their solution is go find a bar, go find a restaurant
Yeah but they can only go for one hour. You can’t be at the bar for 10 hours.
But that’s what most comedians have done over the last 20 years
I don’t have 20 years to waste
They find a place that sells fish tacos and they go oh, we can do comedy out back every Tuesday right?
But I want to make it in two years. Or one year. One month. But it’s not possible to have the 10,000 hours rule, so I want to give myself the 10,000 hours. That’s what I did. One hour a day is not gonna work. I can’t get better, fast enough.
So how long did it take you to find the space on Melrose that’s The Hollywood Comedy?
One week. One week to find it and one week to renovate it. We opened in two weeks. It was a clothing store. It was like one big white clothing store. It was ugly, to be honest.
That’s where the business classes come in.
I renovated into this black box theater.
Was it pretty easy then, to convince comedians to come along for the ride?
Well, I did open mics. I designed a business model that every hour there’s an open mic for 10 people. If you wanted stage time, it’s like a gym. And location is great and parking is good.
So you opened it right before the pandemic.
Right before the pandemic, one month before.
So that’s kind of be quite a gut punch, then. You open this place. You’re like OK, I’ve got my gym. I’ve got my place where I can be onstage every night, multiple times a night. I can get those 10,000 hours.
I hosted an open mic 10 hours a day by myself, every day.
So then how did you cope when the end of March 2020 happened?
Just keep paying the rent. I didn’t want to. I didn’t believe I’m gonna close it. I just keep paying the rent. I’m keeping it until this reopens because I’ll be a comedian. That’s what I need.
So in Los Angeles, when did they start lifting the restrictions so you could start doing something again?
A year later. During this year, that’s when I started getting big on TikTok. I started telling my jokes to my phone. Testing out the material. So I always, I wasn’t like, Oh my god! Oh my god! It’s the end of the world, where’s all my money? I don’t care because everybody’s facing this. I’m paying paying. I’m paying because I want to be comedian. I’m losing the money. Yeah, yeah. OK, so, move on. So I don’t have artist’s mindset where I like to freak out about things. I’m a businesswoman. So you want to be a comedian. I still wanted to, even though pandemic happened. So I have a club. We can’t open, then fine. I open when we can. But what do I do now? So let me tell my jokes and test my jokes on social media. That’s what I did with TikTok. I wrote four jokes a day, I post four videos. Sometimes one video hit. I’ll be developing that material. If it gets a million views, it means it connects with the audience, so I write. I wrote a lot during the pandemic, and I didn’t feel like it slowed me down because I can’t go on onstage. I started on social media.
For you, was the growth immediate on TikTok or did it take a while?
Yeah immediate. It took a week, and one video had a million views.
What was the first video that really struck gold for you?
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It was like how can you tell different Asians, that kind of stuff, like very cultural stuff. That’s the thing people want to hear from me. Like talking just about my mom, even talk about my personal life. So I started writing very personal materials because of my TikTok showing me what connects, and I’m very grateful for TikTok connecting me with my audience. It helped me find my voice. Normally it might have taken me 10 years to find it. But if a video gets 10 million views, then you know you connected.
Yeah. Then the trick, of course, is translating that into real-life success, whether it’s on the stage or going to meet with people at CBS, or whoever you’re taking meetings with now, and going look, I can demonstrate that people want to see me on their phones. Put me on your screens or on your stages.
I think they really are snotty. They want to see you in the room, and you’re the best one. After Jo Koy performed, it doesn’t really matter. And then they will be like, OK, let’s see what we can put you in. But I don’t think they care about your social media. At all. To be honest.
Right. Yeah, you mentioned Jo Koy, and he’s put out multiple Netflix specials, but in his most recent one that came out in 2022, he talked openly about how Netflix didn’t want him the beginning and how he had to finance it himself.
I know this story. Yeah, that’s true. They want you when you are huge. That’s the thing. And I think because of me performing as a stand-up, impressed them. Because they know me, they know I’m also an influencer, but my follower count, they don’t care about that. Because anybody with no talent can be an influencer. But a stand-up is a stand-up, and actually being an influencer in stand-up makes it harder for me because people just think I’m not funny. I’m only here because I’m popular. And it’s actually, people don’t take you seriously. People don’t give a fuck about me unless they saw me live. There was this big manager who was really interested in me, but his senior people saw my TikTok and thought, oh, she’s just an influencer. But he didn’t come to see a show. Once people see a show, they understand what I’m about. If you don’t see the live, you really don’t get it. You just think OK, yeah, she got lucky. You know, she had so much followers who just buy tickets. But that’s not what I have. I have more stage time than everybody who has around the same time as me. I work harder than anybody I know who are my peers. I just do. They may be more talented than me. But I work harder. And that’s what I can control. I can’t control my talent. I can only control how many hours I can put in. And that’s made all the difference.
So when the clubs did reopen here in LA, in 2021, how quickly were you able to convince? I know you had your own venue, but how quickly were you able to convince other venues like say the Improv, where you now have a monthly show? How quickly were you able to convince clubs like the Improv to say, give me a slot and I’ll show you what I can do?
They don’t give you fuck. They don’t care. You stand in line. Stand for two hours for a lottery and go onstage. And if you’re lucky, you name get pulled, but you can not get pulled for six months. No. They don’t give you a chance.
So how do you get that first show, then?
I got an open mic like all these miserable bitches, just stand in line, draw my name in the bucket, and hope my name get pulled. And six months later, my name got pulled and I go there and I fucking sucked. And I keep going back and two months later, my name got pulled again and I fucking killed. The booker at the Improv said you can come back next week for a spot. So I just kept coming back, kept coming back. Finally they think I was ready. So you can’t just go there be like give me a spot. No, you can’t have a spot. Stand in line, wait for six months, and pull the lottery, and that’s what I did.
Then to be able to go from that to telling them give me a monthly show where it’s Jioayang Summers and Friends
Yeah, Reeta offered me that. She saw me grow. She saw me at my first open mic to become a paid regular at The Laugh Factory. So, I didn’t go to the Laugh Factory with my follower count and say give me a spot. No, no. You stand outside on line with the crazy and homeless, hope that your name get pulled. And then they give you a call back or they don’t. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. That’s what I did. I go there every Tuesday. Some people, go, I can’t do that. You’re not too good for this. I’m not too good for this. I can go there with my Berkeley Bag and still stand there, so I don’t care. I’ll take whatever it takes. And I don’t even feel like being an influencer, that I’m better than them. I just do whatever anybody else is doing to get ahead. I put in the hard ugly work. I don’t be like, I’m an influencer, put me on the show let me show you what I can do. No, they don’t care.
So I know you’re filming a special that’s called Tiger MILF. Which I guess probably marketing-wise sells a lot better than Annoying Ho. But tell me about Uber Karen. Because that’s a new web series that you started to put out with other comedians who were passengers in your car.
I think I remember I was in Trader Joe’s once, and I was pregnant, and I wasn’t wearing my ring because my doctor told me that your finger got swollen, if you wear a ring it could be dangerous. So this lady came up to me, she said, Hi, can I help you? I noticed that you are not married and you are pregnant. Did you just come to this country to have a baby? I’m like, Lady, what’s your name? Can I call you Karen? Karen, listen, I didn’t come to this country to have one baby. I came here to have a lot of babies. Also your husband, he’s staring at my big titties. I think he’s thirsty and wants to milk. Like I should do a character that’s a Karen, but she’s not white, she’s Asian. So I want people to see what racism sounds like. So that’s why I’ve been racist towards everybody, racist and sexist. Just being a bully. I want people to hear the words they say, how ugly they are. So, that’s actually the concept I had for Karen. To treat racism through anti-racism.
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But are all the passengers other women in comedy, or just the first few episodes that I’ve seen?
There’s women and men, most of them are actors or comedians, my friends.
Is that also why you’re doing the roasting of names?
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Name roasting has nothing to do with Uber Karen, but also have everything to do with people think Chinese names are stupid. African names are stupid. Anything foreign is stupid, because we Americans just believe that we are the center of the world, American culture is center of all cultures. The American English language is the language of all language, and if your name sounds weird in our language English, that you suck. So I want people to know, no, you are not the only culture. English is not the center. Some things in English sound very stupid in Chinese. I’ll show you how stupid they sound like.
I just mean in terms of the similarity between that and Uber Karen being you’re, you’re promoting anti racism by fighting back against.
Yeah, it’s funny.
No, it instantly reminded me, took me back. I’m old enough to remember when the movie Sixteen Candles came out and that movie infamously had one Asian character. His name was Long Duk Dong. The whole thing was he was this exchange student, and he was the butt of the joke and his name was supposed to be the butt of the joke, and at the time, in the 1980s, nobody made a stink about it. But then, all these years later, we’re all suddenly realizing, Oh, this was horrible! How did we stand for this as a society? So I guess what I’m trying to say is, it seems as though one of the main roles of comedy is timing, and you have some really good timing in terms of coming up in the scene.
I hope so, because I don’t have good timing, then I’m late.
So where in the 10,000 hours do you feel you’re at now?
I don’t know. I think it’s a lot. I do 14 shows a week.
That’s tough to do in LA, unless you own your own venue.
Yeah, I own mine. I owned two clubs. I had to get rid of one because my touring got too busy. So I don’t know where I am. I think I’m good. I found my voice and I’m headlining Carolines, and the biggest clubs in America. The sales have been very good, so I think I’m good. I just need to focus on getting more time on stage more and more just get better and better.
So what is the plan? You’re gonna keep working on this hour until 2023. And then film it.
Yeah I think I’ll film it in six months. I think I’m ready. I’ve been running it for a long time. I’ve been running this hour for six months already.
So I get to talk to you again in another couple of years: What do you hope to be telling me about?
My second company special. Already have two or three movies and TV shows. Probably I found love, I’m happy. I’m happy now. That’ll be great. In two years.
I guess I’d be happy that you’d take my call out a couple years.
Well, Pam likes you.
Thank you, Jiaoying. I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Sean, for the very amazing questions.
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