Juliana Sohn:
Today we’re delighted to have as our guest the actor and playwright Daniel K. Isaac. If you watch the Showtime series Billions, you know Daniel for his role as Ben Kim, the incongruously sweet-natured and anxious hedge funder who’s become a fan favorite. But Daniel is also increasingly becoming known for his stage work. In the past year alone, he starred in The Chinese Lady at the Public Theater and he made a triumphant playwriting debut with his epic Once Upon a (korean) Time for the Ma-Yi Theater Company. Currently, Isaac is starring in the Off-Broadway play You Will Get Sick by Noah Diaz, where he plays a young New Yorker who hires an older woman, played by Linda Lavin, to tell his family about his devastating medical diagnosis. It’s poignant and moving, and also very, very funny. The New York Times released a rave review earlier this week. Yay!
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yay.
Juliana Sohn:
Catherine and I became fans of Daniel in 2019 when he hosted the ROAR Story Slam for KoreanAmericanStory. We thought he was so charming, and I, for one, was delighted with his hilariously racy sides. And of course we were both struck by his deep, melodious voice. The more we learned about him, the more we wanted to meet him. Daniel grew up in Southern California, the only child of a single mother who immigrated from South Korea. As a gay teenager growing up in a deeply conservative and religious home, he struggled against his sexual orientation, even voluntarily undergoing conversion therapy. Spoiler alert, it did not work. He studied theater at UC San Diego, and after graduation moved to New York where he lives today. Along the way, Daniel turned his relationship with his disapproving and devout mother into the viral hashtag, #AccordingToMyMother. We are of course dying to hear more about this project and everything else you’ve been up to. Thank you so much, Daniel, for being here.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Thank you for having me.
Catherine Hong:
So Daniel, I thought we would start by talking about Billions, since that’s where most people would know you from.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Sure.
Catherine Hong:
So the show’s heading into its seventh season. Is that right? And I want to ask you about Ben Kim. He is a Stanford and Wharton graduate so he has all the credentials that you’d expect a young guy at a topnotch hedge fund to have. Yet he’s so sweet and almost innocent, and he doesn’t have that Alpha male charisma that his colleagues have. So I’m wondering, is there any of yourself in that character? And if so, what? And also do you know any Korean hedge fund bros in your life, have you met any of those kind of guys?
Daniel K. Isaac:
I don’t think I know any Korean hedge fund bros in my life right now but I do think our writers are very good creative writers and also like to magpie from our lives a bit. I remember in season one, we had a lot of big personalities on set, and I think I’m a true ambivert, but in extroverted settings, I am happy to be the introvert. And one of my costars, Dan Soder, is a standup comedian. So if you’re hanging out with Dan, there’s no point in trying to have a conversation. You can just laugh and enjoy yourself and eat your meal or drink your coffee. And so I think some of that, the listening, the quiet in the room and a positive presence, but not exactly the most vocal, did show up in the character. And as the writers, the creators, especially Brian Koppelman and David Levien have gotten to know me over the years, I sort of wonder if they are surrogate dads who then dispense life advice through what my character goes through. And so part of Ben Kim’s journey is opening up more and tackling his fears a bit more and –
Juliana Sohn:
Taking his shirt off.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah and taking his shirt off and becoming, if not alpha, then at least owning his space more.
Catherine Hong:
You must have met, by now, many fans of the show. I know you have a wide audience, but I imagine there’s a certain number of guys who work in finance who love that show.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yes.
Catherine Hong:
What are those fans like?
Daniel K. Isaac:
Because I’m doing this play right now at Roundabout Theater Company, which is on 46th and 6th Avenue, I’m keeping my mask on when I get off at Times Square and then walking up 6th because it’s just a sea of finance bros. It’s just Patagonia vests and well-tailored gingham and pants that are all very expensive, but all the same shade of blue. And they walk all… I’m making fun of them now, sorry. But they walk in groups and they just look like a Brooks Brothers catalog, but more well-tailored. And they love the show! So I mean, I have no animosity towards them and I have a deep appreciation and respect for them. David Costabile, who plays Wags, always flips people off because that’s what his character does and they love that. But he’s also flipping people off, like, “Leave me alone. I’m with my family or my friends.” Because I play a nice character, I have to turn off my New Yorker “Don’t make eye contact and don’t touch me or talk to me,” thing and I can engage for a little bit. But I don’t work in finance. I have no tips to give.
Catherine Hong:
You don’t wear a fleece vest on your half hours?
Daniel K. Isaac:
No, I do own one, because my ex worked for a firm. And so I have that and I use it for cosplay more than anything I think.
Juliana Sohn:
So we wanted to ask you about Once Upon a (korean) Time. So this is a play that interweaves classic Korean folktales like Shim-Cheong(심청전) with the stories of Koreans throughout the last century, taking us through the lives of Korean soldiers in the 1930s, comfort women in the 1940s, all the way through the LA riots and today. What was your relationship with Korean folktales like? Were you raised learning them when you were a kid? Because I wasn’t very familiar with them. I grew up mainly in the US and it was just a part of the process of embracing your heritage because it’s a very Korean-centric play.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah. I remember my mom and two or three other Korean immigrant moms banded together in our LA Koreatown neighborhood and taught Korean school to us on Saturdays I believe. And each mom took turns and mine was the meanest and another mom was the nicest. And they would use children’s books that had Korean and English side by side. And so that’s where I remember encountering Korean folktales and fairy tales. But I sort of buried them deep in my memory and hadn’t addressed them again since. And I also have some vague, vague recollections of maybe a VHS or two that were Korean folktales that were animated.
And so when I was starting this project, I interviewed a bunch of Koreans and Korean Americans asking them what they remembered about folktales and fairy tales because when I went to college, I was obsessed with Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and I read the Percy Jackson books. I know all the Greek and Roman gods and their counterparts, Disney and Marvel and Harry Potter and all these other sources of fiction, but not what we come from. And so I wanted to write the play as a way to explore something that I knew was a complete absence in my personal education other than those early Korean school days and in my own sort of internalized racism way of not being curious enough in where I came from and reeducate myself and then maybe get to share that with others.
Juliana Sohn:
So you did research?
Daniel K. Isaac:
But I also am bad at reading Korean. I’m so slow at reading. So all I could go back to were children’s books again. My mom and I went to Koreatown bookstores and we’re like, “Anything on fairy tales?” And they were like, “The kids’ section.” So then I just kept picking up… I have this huge shelf of just children’s books, but I’d read them and think, “These are so fucked up, they’re so dark and so morbid or violent or twisted that that felt idiosyncratically, perhaps Korean.” And so then I was trying to tap into what were the gruesome, what were the violent, what was the absurd that maybe then is actually the more honest or parallel to very dark times.
Catherine Hong:
Was there a moment when you felt like you wanted to reclaim your Korean heritage or do you feel like you were interested steadily?
Daniel K. Isaac:
No, I definitely went through a period where I was super embarrassed about being Korean. I knew how to code-switch. I imagine that’s something kids of immigrants know how to do. And so I could code-switch enough that my mom likes to joke that if I saw someone Korean or Asian, I would speak to them in Korean. And if I saw someone white, I would speak to them in English – as a toddler before school. And so there’s something there that must be ingrained in my identity that says, “Here’s how you interact with one folk versus another.” In elementary school, I was one of a very small group of Koreans and then my mom had a relationship for a period of time that moved us to Diamond Bar, California, which had a huge Korean population. Other than Korean megachurches that I’d grown up with, I was used to compartmentalizing Koreans being in church but not in my school. And I had a very, I’m sure, jarring identity crisis and being one of many again in a place where I was used to being one of few. And instead of leaning into, “Oh, here are people who can empathize with you or come from your backgrounds,” I actually ran away from them. And probably that’s why I ended up in the arts or in sports because that’s where they weren’t as much. Growing up, I felt very repelled or I think I even bragged about saying, “These Korean kids, these Korean American kids are only hanging out with each other, but isn’t the point of being in America to be in this melting pot?” Which is on one hand, sure, and on the other hand still has twinges of self-hatred there.
Juliana Sohn:
So what age were you when that shift occurred?
Daniel K. Isaac:
I had skipped two grades in elementary school. And so I went to fifth grade very early. What’s the math? I graduated high school at 16. So if you go back from… Again, I’m not that good at math, but 12 minus five is seven. So 16 minus seven is nine. So at nine, it was like pre puberty. That makes sense because I got my first giant monitored computer and giant modem thing around junior high, and that’s when puberty hit and I discovered pornography. So that’s-
Juliana Sohn:
That’s how you discovered your sexuality?
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, yeah. I quickly went to gay porn instead of — there’s a bunch of naked women and I thought, “I’m not interested in this.” So who says it’s not biological? I don’t know.
Catherine Hong:
We want to know more about your family because obviously for Koreans, having a mom who’s divorced — and especially in a very religious, traditional setting, it sounds like.
Juliana Sohn:
And we’ve heard… Maybe we’ve read certain different accounts.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah.
Juliana Sohn:
Did she come over alone? Is she divorced? Was she ever married? Tell us about her journey to here.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, she’s very good at, and I imagine many kids’ parents are good at rewriting the narrative, but what I am sort of sussing out as the truth of the narrative is she immigrated in 1980. She told me she came alone, but one day we were driving around LA somewhere and she said, “Oh, one of my first homes was here.” And she had, while not married, had been set up with a guy who had, I believe two kids and a mother-in-law. And he moved back and forth between South Korea and Los Angeles and maybe she moved to be in a relationship with him and she thought it would be a way for her to springboard her career because she had worked at a bank in Korea and fought for equal wages for women at the workplace, especially in that bank environment. They said, “Fuck you,” and promoted a younger woman as a like, “Sure, we’ll give you equal wages, but not to you.” And she, in a huff, in a very Korean way said, “I’m leaving.” And so her narrative from there says, “Then I moved to California or to the United States and started from scratch and ended up at a bank in downtown LA in a Japanese bank and pulled herself up that way. But what I’m maybe also learning is she came here and I wonder where her citizenship came from and if it was from this man and mother-in-law and two kids. And what she deeply hated was she was conned into thinking she could have her own life, but really he just wanted someone to cook and clean and be a co-parent or a mother figure and take care of what she says is a monstrous mother-in-law.
Juliana Sohn:
So she didn’t marry him?
Daniel K. Isaac:
She didn’t, because she swears she’s only been married once, which is also rewriting because that move to Diamond Bar I thought was because she had married this man from Canada. And later she says that he was trying to use her for her citizenship so that he could become an American citizen. So she never married him, to which I say, “Then you’ve had a lot of premarital sex and you are coming after me for gay sex?” like pot-kettle-black here.
Juliana Sohn:
So then who is your father and was she pregnant when she came here?
Daniel K. Isaac:
So she comes in 1980 with maybe this other family or not. She definitely figures something out on her own and ends up at, they were called Tokai Bank, I remember. And she’s set up by one of her best friends, Sue Choi, who was a ping pong champion of South Korea for a period of time. She and my mom were besties and I love their stories together. She set my mom up with this guy who’s my biological father, Steve Kim. I don’t have a relationship with him. They married quickly, they had me very quickly. I believe I was supposed to have a younger brother who was diagnosed with Down syndrome. And so then she had a late-term abortion. Also a woman who’s anti-abortion and she’s had an abortion, so, confounding human. But then my biological father cheats on my mom with the head pastor’s daughter at the church we grow up in and everyone knows about the affair. My mom finds out and continues to go to the church so that I can still see my dad once a week, which is again, super fucked up and also so amazing of her. But this man really wanted nothing to do with me and now I’ve learned there was all this scandal at the church that I wasn’t aware of.
Catherine Hong:
Was this in LA, a church in LA?
Daniel K. Isaac:
- They were called [unintelligible] La Sung de Pilla… something Philadelphia Church. My mom finally or in some act of dignity I think did leave the church.
Catherine Hong:
So your dad was not part of your life after age two or so?
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, they separated when I was two. I think they officially divorced when I was three. He was good at seeing me at church once a week maybe, which I have very, very vague memories of. And then he, when I was a little older, would take me to Disneyland once a year or Knott’s Berry Farm or Sea World, or I think he took me to Catalina Island once, things like that. And then that petered off and somewhere around puberty, 11, 12, 13, I had my rebellious phase.
And of course my mom had only told me her perspective of the divorce and what had happened, minus the affairs. So she did hide that from me for a very long time. In a huff, I really wanted to see my dad and ask him the tough questions that I’d never asked before in this newly independent spirited teenage mess that I was. And he kept postponing and postponing and finally I got mad at him on the phone and he lost his temper with me. And I in turn lost my temper with him and I said, “You have no right to discipline me, essentially, if you aren’t a father in my life.” And that’s the last time I spoke to him.
Catherine Hong:
Oh wow.
Daniel K. Isaac:
And he had a pager then. So this is how it dates it. My mom and I could only reach him by pager and eventually he got rid of the pager because I think I tried drunk dialing it once when I was in college and it wasn’t connected anymore. And by then everyone was getting cell phones so I have no idea where he is. My mom loves to joke whenever I have a print campaign — I had a big one for Bank of America and one for GrubHub — and they always put it in Asian-centric locations, so Koreatown always gets a billboard with my face on it and she’ll laugh and be like, “Your dad doesn’t know that’s you,” which I think is very funny. But people also think it’s so sad. But I deeply find that hilarious in a twisted way.
Juliana Sohn:
So he may know it’s you though.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, I don’t know maybe.
Daniel K. Isaac:
I mean 13 to now, I guess if I post some side by sides —
Catherine Hong:
Maybe you look like him.
Daniel K. Isaac:
I was trying to find photos for you all. And so yeah, I wonder.
Juliana Sohn:
We need these GrubHub ads as well. So I mean there was a lot of questions there.
Catherine Hong:
We know how judgy the Korean community is.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Oh yeah. Right, we all get it.
Catherine Hong:
Everybody knows each other’s business. They’re big gossips. And in a church especially, right?
Daniel K. Isaac:
Church or the grocery store, I feel like that’s where currency was traded.
Juliana Sohn:
But also, I mean, you’ve highlighted and pointed out some of the contradictions in your mom’s beliefs versus her actions. But also being a single woman, single mom going through divorce, also affairs, abortion, she’s had a lot of stuff that would be frowned upon—
Daniel K. Isaac:
Totally.
Juliana Sohn:
And condemned by fellow Koreans. And so she’s walking a really tight, tight rope there. And then she’s got a son who’s gay. And it’s almost like… I don’t know if she owns up to any of her life issues. So I mean is one of the reasons why you have tensions is that she feels like she can maybe use you as an outlet?
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah. It’s where I have the most compassion for her faith, which is truly confounding at times because right now she’s also an anti-vaxxer and a huge Trump supporter. And there is another critical analysis we need to make about how Fox News and conservative news is translated into Korean and goes unchecked and is maybe brainwashing our parents’ generations. But for now, at my most generous, I am understanding of how her faith and her newer church community at least could be there for her in a way that a husband was not, and no other family members were. All of her grandparents had died. She has war trauma, her little sister died.
There’s a complete reason why she has clung to her faith and rooted herself in that world so fiercely. And I credit that to her survival, her resilience, and her joy. And so when I can be at my most patient, I am very thankful that she has that because I am of some means now to take care of her, but not enough. And we cannot live in the same building, let alone state, still perhaps. And so these other people have become her family. At its purest, isn’t that what religion was supposed to be? And isn’t that what an immigrant community should be? And yet, gossip and backstabbing and-
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, there’s a lot of toxicity there too.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, exactly.
Catherine Hong:
Did you grow up in LA or did you move somewhere where there were not that many Koreans?
Daniel K. Isaac:
We did Koreatown proper for a long time and then Diamond Bar for a little bit and then Fullerton and my mom is still in Fullerton.
Juliana Sohn:
What was it like growing up the only child of a single mom? I mean you said that she was the strict, kind of mean, teacher. But it sounds like you probably had a really close relationship while you were young and she must have been so proud of you to skip two grades at that young age.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, she was good at diverting her pride and if I got a good test score, she’d say, “How does that make you feel?” And I’d say, “Good.” And then she’d take it a step further and not say her, she’d say, “And how do you think that makes God feel?”
Catherine Hong:
Oh wow.
Daniel K. Isaac:
And so it was about – sure, your own joy but pleasing God. And so that sets an impossibly high standard and she’s removed herself from the equation in that and said, “It’s not about pleasing your parents, I’m not going to be a tiger mom or this domineering thing,” but it’s still a manipulation that gets the results that you want.
Catherine Hong:
And what was your feeling about God when you were young?
Daniel K. Isaac:
I wholeheartedly was all in on it for a while. And I think the betrayals I learned from the interpersonal relationships and the toxicity, as you mentioned, are maybe tainted in why I can’t. But also those same communities could not accept me for who I was. And if faith is supposed to be a place of complete acceptance, then these spaces failed at that. And I get to decide on my own time when I want to reengage or where I want to reengage and how I want to. And so I leave that as of an ongoing question, much to the chagrin of my mother who desperately wishes I would become a full-fledged Christian again and use my platform to spread the gospel rather than “gay grooming,” is now the language she owns, possesses, which is again, is super fucked up, trickle down stuff going into Korean translation and Facebook. I hate Facebook for her.
Catherine Hong:
So the conversion therapy that you went-
Daniel K. Isaac:
Voluntarily went to, so I take responsibility.
Catherine Hong:
At what age and what did that entail exactly?
Daniel K. Isaac:
I want to say 13, 14 to 16. So I left it after high school and I’d gone to —
Catherine Hong:
Sorry. And was it a Korean program?
Daniel K. Isaac:
No, I went to the pastors in the youth group. So Korean churches, for folks who might not be familiar, there’s the Korean speaking congregation and then the English speaking congregation. So the kids were usually on the English side. And so it’s a whole other church with grade school, middle, high school, college, et cetera. In the high school program, they would use college members of the church as teachers or mentors assigned by gender in that binary way. And so I went to my assigned college guy, Paul, and told him, and he went to the then head pastor of the high school-middle school congregation, Robert. I haven’t thought of these names in so long.
Catherine Hong:
Paul and Robert.
Daniel K. Isaac:
I know, such Korean names, right? I won’t say their last names, we will be nice. And I’ve already said the church, so it doesn’t matter. And they then contacted or were in touch with another pastor who was a white guy who came, I think was a guest for a weekend or some rally or something, something big. And all the teachers and head pastors went to a meal with him and his, I think he called them spiritual sons, I believe. So he had an assistant or associate pastors with him. And somehow I was asked to come along with them. And in this car ride with, I want to say Robert and Paul, Rich was my main conversion therapist’s name and this other guy, I think I came out in that setting too. And that white pastor said he specialized in this. And so then helped me meet some other people who were like ex-gays. I sort of had “therapy” with him on a regular level. And all of these people were available either on speed dial or on weekly check-in for prayer sessions for… The Korean church believed in casting out demons so there was all of that, charismatic stuff.
Juliana Sohn:
Exorcism.
Daniel K. Isaac:
And praying in tongues and fainting and shaking. And I went full in there and still, still turned out gay! So here I am, still love men and anal sex, so it didn’t work.
Catherine Hong:
And your mom probably wanted you to keep it a secret this whole… Did she not want her friends to know?
Daniel K. Isaac:
So I was already in therapy by the time I came out to my mom.
Juliana Sohn:
Oh, you came out to the church before —
Daniel K. Isaac:
Before I came out to my mom.
Catherine Hong:
Do you think they secretly told your mother?
Daniel K. Isaac:
I’m not sure. I actually want to say they didn’t. I think they respected that measure of privacy, which I give them credit for.
Catherine Hong:
I’m surprised. I wouldn’t give them credit for that!
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah. Right. ‘Cause the Korean Americans are, I think one of them was Korean Canadian, didn’t really know what to do with a gay kid or the “sin of homosexuality” in large quotes. So they outsourced for help. And what I later learned, because Paul went to jail for a while and Robert got stuck out of the country because he wasn’t on top of his immigration paperwork, these people were in charge of spiritual lives. They later told me, “Oh, Rich got kicked out of his church for being gay.”
Catherine Hong:
I knew it.
Daniel K. Isaac:
I was like, “Oh my God-“
Catherine Hong:
There was no way.
Daniel K. Isaac:
“It’s such a cliche,” and I just didn’t see it. But I was this hormonal teenager, talking about how many times I jerked off in a week and how bad I felt and marking up a calendar with black X’s, guilting myself or getting rid of TV and throwing away VHSs and not having internet at home and doing all these steps that were prescribed to me by these folks to undo or rid myself of temptation or fight the sin of homosexuality. And all the while, of course the guy is gay, and how did I not…? This continually happens to me in my life where I think the most cliche answer ends up being the truth.
Juliana Sohn:
But Daniel, how are you not like this resentful, angry person?
Daniel K. Isaac:
Therapy. Lots of therapy, the arts community a lot of time, but yeah.
Catherine Hong:
Well, I had read that when you went to college and you came out to your mother, she disowned you and cut you off. Now I have to say when I was a kid, that idea that you could be disowned was made very clear to me many times.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Really that was a threat that loomed over.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, I remember.
Daniel K. Isaac:
So it’s a Korean thing.
Catherine Hong:
And I would lie sometimes, I can’t remember what I did that was so bad, but I would lie in my room and look around in my possessions and try to think, “If I really got kicked out ….”
Daniel K. Isaac:
What would you take?
Catherine Hong:
Yeah and how could I get it out? And where would I go? And I would have a little plan in mind. And then of course later I realized my white friends, there had no concept of “disowning,” they didn’t know that as a word. N mom would tell me stories about So-and-so’s friends did disown their child, telling me stories about how the mother would take pity on the child and sneak them food without letting the father know —
Juliana Sohn:
Oh my God.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Kim’s Convenience.
Catherine Hong:
Stories that sounded very real to me but I never really met anyone who had been disowned. And you might be my first one.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Really? Oh, how fun.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah.
Catherine Hong:
So did she just say that? How does she put it?
Juliana Sohn:
How did you manage? You’re a teenager.
Catherine Hong:
“I’m cutting you out.” What did she say?
Daniel K. Isaac:
The first time I came out to her, I was in therapy and I had watched gay porn at her real estate agent office and someone had gotten fired for looking at lewd materials. And so I thought I had gotten someone fired. So then that’s why I came out to her, to take responsibility at least in that fashion. And it turns out it wasn’t that. I think she was watching straight porn at her secretary desk, so whatever. But at that time, I could say, “I am fighting it. I believe it’s a sin. Here are the steps I’ve already taken.” And she took it sort of in stride and said, “I always worried about this because I could never provide a father for you. I could never keep a husband. So this was a fear I had because the stereotype or a misconception that was touted was single mothers raised gay boys.” It hurt but also it was nice that she understood.
Juliana Sohn:
And you had support from her?
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, that we could sort of speak the same language in the church environment and whatnot. And then I gave a blowjob to a guy at Six Flags and got in a lot of trouble for it.
Juliana Sohn:
You got caught?
Daniel K. Isaac:
No. This other family… So my semi adoption parallel is a white family that took me in from junior high and high school for large swaths of time and I called them mom and dad and I had a brother there. But because I’d skipped two grades, we were the same age, but I was two years ahead of him. And we would go to amusement parks a lot. His mom worked at a place close to Six Flags so we’d go to Six Flags. We were very good at making friends with other people and one time we made friends with a guy and a girl and the other guy turned out to be gay and he and I flirted all day.
And then I gave him a blowjob in the bathroom and it caused us to be late for pickup from mom. And he was, is, still a very good human and never lied to his parents. I don’t think he’s ever done drugs. He can barely drink right now. I think I gave him his first shandy and cigarette — I’m a horrible influence. But he told his mom, “I need you to never ask why we were late, otherwise I will be forced to lie and I’m not someone who lies to you.” And so then that incident, along with my mom’s worries about me going to college and stuff, caused this sort of family counsel to regularly meet or talk. And that family didn’t want me to go to UCSD because they thought that was too far.
And mind you, in conversion therapy, I rescinded all of my applications outside of California because my therapist said, “Don’t go too far from your church network, it’ll hurt your faith,” and San Diego was only two hours away so I could get away with that, I guess. And yet this white family thought I couldn’t even do that. And again, to my mom’s credit, she said, “No, he’s going to go and he’ll be fine even at 16.” And so when I was in college, and again having a little bit more sexual experiences to then figure out, “Well, if this is the biology of it all, how do I fight this or resist this or is this sin?” And as I questioned that, I had to re-come out to my mom. And one of those fights was, “Have you ever had a sexual experience to validate this is how you feel?” And so I told her about the blowjob at Six Flags.
And the other was, “How do you not know it’s a sin? How do you not know that this is your burden to bear and this is what Christ has given you and this is how you have to move through life?” And it was a lot of screaming on the phone. I was doing a play at the time, my freshman year of college. She was supposed to come and she said she wasn’t going to come. And then she still did come with flowers and snacks and played the mom thing. Then in my dorm room, which was a shared room in a shared unit, we had a huge full-on screaming match in the way that only Korean kids and parents do. In Korean and in English. She’d brought a Bible with Post-It Notes, marking all the places I had sinned in our conversation. So it was a lot of, “Honor your parents,” stuff. But then it was all where people point to to say homosexuality is a sin and usually that’s translation. And that’s a whole other theological argument. But I remember distinctly a Bible covered in Post-It Notes. So then the end of that was, “You are not my son anymore.”
Juliana Sohn:
Not my son.
Daniel K. Isaac:
And then I said, “All right.” And she left and I cried a lot and I lived with a bunch of bros. They were frat bros and stuff. And they all heard it and they were all very good about it. I think there was an RA in the building and he said, “You got to go talk to financial aid.” And I talked to financial aid and they said, “Oh, we have paperwork for that and you have to do therapy.” It was a direct correlation of, “You have been disowned, you have to go to therapy.”
Catherine Hong:
But not conversion therapy!
Daniel K. Isaac:
Not conversion therapy, like real therapy! I shouldn’t even be calling the conversion therapist my therapist. So then I go to real, science based therapy and that A, saved my life, but B, also put a new perspective on how I could relate with my mother. And the thing she never did, which she should have or could have done, which was maybe my clue in at all, is she never cut off my cell phone. So while she didn’t pay for my tuition, and I worked in the cafeteria at first and then in the theater department in the costume shop, she never turned my cell phone off. So there was some sort of… whether that was selfishly motivated or not, she didn’t cut me off of there. People heard and the costume department hired me and either created a job or there was an opening and hired me because they knew what my situation was.
Juliana Sohn:
You were so young.
Daniel K. Isaac:
- Oh, I would’ve been 17 by that time. Lucky me. 17, yeah. I think by the end of that summer, we were reunited, but she still never really touched my tuition and I figured that out for the most part, with loans and grants.
Juliana Sohn:
So you were an emancipated minor? Is that what happened?
Daniel K. Isaac:
She wouldn’t sign the paperwork. So I was between 17 and 18, she would’ve needed to sign something and she wouldn’t do that. I was just sort of a free floating minor and I couch hopped. I remember I used my mattress pad and my cousin had given me her car, like a two-door Honda Civic, and I would have all my possessions in the car and I would take this mattress pad and some sheets and sleep on people’s couches and floors until the dorms were open again. And oh, one of my roommates let me crash in his summer dorm. So he gave up his single and made it a double. So a lot of people took care of me and I don’t even remember their names anymore, but I thank them a lot.
Juliana Sohn:
You must have experienced so much culture shock when you went to college. You must have had a lot of questions. So how was that? Seeing other people and realizing, “The environment that I grew up in, not everyone holds these beliefs,” and now it’s up to you to shape who you can be. I don’t know if you felt that.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, I mean, kids must do that when they go to boarding school if you’re fortunate enough or want to go down that path. And so for me, it was like a high school transfer boarding school experience and I didn’t have money, so I had to share my room. So I learned what it was like to have a roommate. And I might have been, if not a bad roommate, I think I drove my roommate crazy because I had really weird hours. And UC San Diego used to have a quarterly dance party that was for LGBT folks. I doubt the T was ever acknowledged then so like lesbian, gay, and bi folks. Kids from the school, but also not from the school would come. And so I would go and that’s how I met guys at first. That’s where maybe the sexual playground could start, but barely because I still had so much shame about it too, that if I engaged in something, I tended to cut it off or run away from, or not let it last too long.
I did not also figure out my own self-worth in relation to my sexuality for a while. So the options were available. I was definitely a minor. I hope no one can retroactively get in trouble for that! And then there was the theater department that actually had a remarkably few people who were gay. And if they were, then I knew them. And instead La Jolla Playhouse had shows coming with lots of cast members from New York. So it was these pockets, it was the theater community where I learned by example how you live as an out and proud gay man. You are married with children. You can have this whole life and have figured out how to navigate… I went to church one day with Titus Burgess, so to know he was a gay, out man who also went to church and sang his face off, how mind-blowing that was for me to know that one could reconcile their sexuality with their faith even if I hadn’t yet.
And then when Prop 8 happened, which was my first election I could vote in, was Prop 8 and Obama first time around and I was super devastated by Prop 8 passing, which for those who don’t know, it limited or it restricted gay marriage from happening. I was doing The Laramie Project, this play about Matthew Shephard, and this docudrama around what happened to this young man who was beaten and killed for being gay. And one of my cast members and roommates at the time said, “Let’s go to the protest.” And I had never, A, being from the immigrant background, but B, just in my sheltered life had never attended a protest before.
And at that Prop 8 protest, which I remember crying a lot seeing this many people marching and seeing San Diego’s main boulevard, which was quite hilly, so you could see the crowds up and down and they’d only closed one side of the street so people were driving on the other side and honking and crying. And there was a church that held up a bunch of banners and had a billboard. And I’ll paraphrase it, but it was something along the lines of, “We are deeply sorry for those who have used the name of God to restrict love or in the name of hate rather than love.”
Juliana Sohn:
…Just to know that they did that.
Daniel K. Isaac:
And they were called Mission Gathering Church. And I thought, “There, let me try going there. “ And that was one of my first places of community where the pastor was gay, there were gay and lesbian congregants with kids. I saw a whole other life being possible for me that, again, my mom would never have known existed and feared that I wouldn’t have, I’m sure, on some base level of motherhood. I even took her to that church and she cried the whole time. And I thought, “Oh, is it because… Look at these happy gays and lesbians! Look, I found a community and I’m back at church!” And instead she thought it was the devil’s work and that this community had gone so far astray she couldn’t even imagine how Christianity could be bastardized in this extreme capacity. So we continued to find friction there. But those were the spaces where I could learn about my sexuality and sex and meet people. But it still took much more therapy and experience and life experience to figure it all out.
Juliana Sohn:
It’s remarkable to me how strong your mom’s belief is. And clearly you have your own beliefs and they’re very different. But you two both continue to engage, to try to keep the conversation going. I mean, on your Instagram, you’re going on vacations together with your boyfriend. And I read somewhere that even in college that you two traveled together.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, I was studying abroad in London. This is her final, I insert a war metaphor here, she had me… I was studying abroad in London. She came towards the end, I did a show, she saw it, and then because I’d already done the touristy Western European destinations, I took her to Berlin, Prague, Budapest, flew to Geneva, Amsterdam, London. It was when Ryanair and flights could be 99 cents and stuff. And some students had already done that. And so I followed their Berlin, Prague, Budapest trip via train and then hopped around where flights were cheap. And in Berlin, which was our first stop, we got drunk on beer and ojingeo(오징어) [dried squid] and peanuts.
Juliana Sohn:
There’s ojingeo in Berlin?
Daniel K. Isaac:
She packed it because she’s a resilient Korean war survivor, so, dried squid everywhere you go! And she had me convinced that first night in Berlin… She stayed in hostels with me, God bless her. And she managed to maneuver my psychology in a way that said, “I know you want to be an actor. You cannot be a successful actor if you’re gay. So you have to be a Christian. You have to come back and you have to renounce your sexuality and then God will grant you success in this dream you have and use it for his mission.” And the way she crafted that, I fully was ready to move back! So that was my third year of college. For my fourth year of college, renounce homosexuality, focus on being as successful as possible and as Christian as possible and then start my adult life after that. And instead, our last stop was in Amsterdam and a friend named Bryce met us there and stayed in the hostel with us and did touristy things with us. And we definitely sucked each other off while my mom was showering.
So Berlin started with me saying, “Not going to be gay,” and Amsterdam ended with oral sex while mom was showering. So God is good or gays are going to gay. And that answered that question. I came back and did the Laramie Project and Prop 8 happened and have been gay ever since. Custer’s Last Stand, that would’ve been a good metaphor. She truly had a last stand. It was her Alamo.
Catherine Hong:
Can you tell us about Margaret Cho? We read that you were in a web series that she did called …
Daniel K. Isaac:
Mercy Mistress.
Catherine Hong:
Mercy Mistress, where she played a dominatrix? I love that you worked with her because it seemed like she would be such a great fairy gay godmother to young entertainers or actors
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yes, yes.
Catherine Hong:
Or comedians who are gay, who have disapproving parents and then managed to use their parents as material for their work.
Daniel K. Isaac:
She saved my life, her early stand. I had DVDs that I got from Blockbuster to watch Margaret’s stand-up and the way she made fun of her mother really helped me feel seen and think I’m not alone. And her joke about not having role models growing up and that she only had Hello Kitty and it’s a expletive cat with no mouth is something that still resonates with me of, “Oh yeah, you didn’t have role models and I barely did. And now look at how many we have.” Thank goodness. So Margaret’s amazing. I thought she was so funny in Fire Island and that to me sort of epitomizes her fairy godmother-ness as this like Fire Island mama hen.
Catherine Hong:
And when you worked with her on the web series, did you get to tell her your story? Did you get to know her?
Daniel K. Isaac:
I think she’d read about it. When we were first doing the Kickstarter and short film, pilot presentation version that Cathy Yan and I did, Margaret helped promote that. So she was always a champion from afar and a champion up close, and I’m very thankful for her existence and also her championing.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, she grew up in the church as well. So she has some crazy stories.
Juliana Sohn:
John Cho did as well.
Catherine Hong:
His father was a pastor.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah. I bought his book. I need to read it. It’s set during the LA riots, like, oh wow. Our crossover is… Yeah.
Juliana Sohn:
I wondered, when we were watching Once Upon a (Korean) Time, there’s a scene towards the end where there are all these couples who are having brunch together with their children, and there’s one segment where they’re talking about a mom and some of the things that she said, and I wondered, are they direct quotes from your mom?
Daniel K. Isaac:
I’m trying to remember what I wrote there. Yeah, you know what? I think that one was a rewrite I made because I had a commitment ceremony earlier this year and those were things that my mom would say about gay marriage or commitment or long term relationships between gay or lesbian partners. And so my mom didn’t attend my commitment ceremony and now can, I don’t know, rest on her high horse that we’re separating, but she doesn’t believe gay unions are real, can last, that they have a strong enough foundation. It’s just shy of bestiality is where she would put the carnal X of it. But I’ve talked about oral sex a bunch here, so I’ve proven her point!
Juliana Sohn:
Well, what I found shocking and hilarious is your hashtag #AccordingToMyMother, where you’ve basically screenshotted your text.
Catherine Hong:
She gets very, very graphic.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah. She deeply must have researched what anal sex was. I think about it whenever I see an unhoused person with stained jeans, she swears — she would call them homeless — that they are gay, have been kicked out, or addicted to drugs or have gone on the wayside because of their sexuality and they have stained jeans because of all the anal sex they engaged in and now they are forever damaged by that. It’s true rhetoric that if I walk with her and we pass someone who is seemingly or is lying on the ground or something, it’s like I psychically know that’s exactly what she’s thinking and have to just steer us away from that.
Juliana Sohn:
When I first found your Twitter account-
Daniel K. Isaac:
The, #AccordingToMyMother’s stuff, yeah.
Juliana Sohn:
I was reading through it and it was so fascinating. And I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, how can he have a relationship with her still with the things that she says directly to him?” And then I thought, “What if I read this in a Korean mom’s voice?” And then I thought, “Oh wow, my mom says similar things to me all the time.” And there’s almost like this very blunt kind of honesty, almost like trying to help you, but it’s so cutting that is very… At least for my family, that my mom is like that. And I thought, “Oh, that’s just kind of regular Korean families then.”
Daniel K. Isaac:
Yeah, totally.
Juliana Sohn:
But I do think that there’s a extra pressure that your mom must feel being a single parent.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Of course.
Juliana Sohn:
And maybe some blame that she must—
Daniel K. Isaac:
She still blames herself.
Juliana Sohn:
And which is why I think she’s probably a lot harsher.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Of course. If she’s hard on me, then she’s that hard on herself. What is sad is because of our distance, we’ve had to carve out new lives apart from one another. And what is unfortunate for her is that if you Google me, she comes up and she really hates this. There was a point where she asked to erase the internet or erase her presence off the internet too.
Juliana Sohn:
But she partakes in that series, right?
Daniel K. Isaac:
Kind of. Or she signed away her life rights. And if some studio will let me make this TV show, then she’ll cash in on it. One time, I drove her to church one day and she asked me to drop her off a block away so that the church congregate wouldn’t see me. And I thought, “Oh, this is the reversal of the embarrassed teenager being like, “Our car is shitty. I’m not letting you drop me off in front of the cool kids.”” And so that’s where she lives. And I often think about parents of, say, LGBT+ kids have to come out themselves as parents of LGBT+ kids. And my mom is fully in the closet, even though the internet would say otherwise. And she doesn’t watch anything I do because she doesn’t believe cable TV is real or successful or famous. And so when her church friends tell her about, say, Billions or something I’ve done, then it confounds her and then it means that her closeted door could get burst open. And I imagine, #AccordingToMyMother is out there, so people can connect the dots if they want to, but I think they pity her and then there’s the elderly respect thing inherent to our culture. So I don’t know how she operates in the world still closeted but that is how she chooses to move through it.
Juliana Sohn:
I think we have had guests where they’ve come out to their Korean parents, and even if they’re religious, their parents have really come around and their love prevailed. And I love hearing that. And it’s not like it wasn’t difficult, but you’re still in the process. And your mom has… It’s not just religion, she has a lot of other things that she needs to —
Daniel K. Isaac:
She survived a war.
Juliana Sohn:
Absolutely.
Daniel K. Isaac:
I always think about that. You survived a war, you get some tokens of forgiveness, yeah.
Juliana Sohn:
Well, thank you for coming, Daniel.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Of course.
Catherine Hong:
Thank you so much for sharing your story.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Oh yeah.
Catherine Hong:
A lot of stories.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Thank you for having me.
Juliana Sohn:
You’ve been through a lot and I’m-
Daniel K. Isaac:
Well, you all have though.
Juliana Sohn:
You’re so resilient.
Daniel K. Isaac:
Thanks for highlighting the stories so that people in the community can feel seen. And this maybe helps someone else feel less alone.
Catherine Hong:
Thank you to Daniel K. Isaac for joining us on K-Pod, a production of koreanamericanstory.org. You can see Daniel on stage in You Will Get Sick at the Roundabout Theater through December 11th. Our audio engineer is AJ Valente. Our executive producer is HJ Lee. You can follow us on Instagram at KoreanAmericanStory. You can follow Juliana @Juliana_Sohn and you can follow me @CatherineHong100.
