UB Spotlight: ‘Fire Island’ Coming to Hulu

“Fire Island” is launching on Hulu June 3rd, 2022.

A group of queer best friends gather in Fire Island Pines for their annual week of love and laughter, but a sudden change of events might make this their last summer in gay paradise.

As they discover the romance and pleasures of the iconic island, their bonds as a chosen family are pushed to the limits.

Noah (Booster) is happily, defiantly single. Cash might be hard to come by, and sure, his New York apartment might be cramped and disorganized, but Noah delights in his freewheeling independent lifestyle. Every summer, he and his boys, including BFF Howie (Yang), and their friends Luke (Matt Rogers), Keegan (Tomás Matos) and Max (Torian Miller), head to Fire Island for a week of non-stop partying and hooking up with hot guys. After arriving at the house on Tuna Walk owned by their friend Erin (Margaret Cho) where the group has always stayed, they’re greeted with unsettling news: Erin has run into financial trouble and will soon be forced to sell the vacation house they considered a second home.

Determined to make what might be their last summer together in Fire Island especially memorable, Noah resolves to help lovelorn Howie find the man, or men, of his dreams. To prove just how serious he takes his mission, Noah promises Howie that he will remain abstinent until he succeeds (yeah, right). The week gets off to a promising start after Howie meets charming doctor Charlie (James Scully), and the two quickly hit it off. But the members of Charlie’s wealthy, accomplished social circle vacationing at their house on Ocean Walk seem to look down on Noah, Howie and their crew. The devastatingly handsome Will (Conrad Ricamora) seems especially disapproving and condescending; yet for some infuriating reason, Noah can’t seem to stop thinking about him.

Amid a classic Fire Island week fueled by underwear parties, dance challenges, karaoke performances, and general debauchery, the gang bickers and banters over potential romantic entanglements. Howie longs for a monogamous partnership like something out of a fairy tale, or at least a 1980s John Cusack movie and Noah can’t imagine ever devoting his life to only one person. As the days roll by, they both find themselves in surprising circumstances and unexpected emotions that just might shape the course of the rest of their lives

“It’s about identity and being comfortable in your skin. I think the family part is definitely just having people around you who support who you truly are. Good and bad,” states producer Brooke Posch. Producer John Hodges adds, “The structure of the story and the narrative that Joel created is very finite. There is just such beautiful arcs between everything, including the exploration of family, and chosen family.”

Cast includes Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Margaret Cho, Conrad Ricamora, James Scully, Matt Rogers, Tomas Matos, Torian Miller, Nick Adams, and Zane Phillips.

Directed by Andrew Ahn and screenplay by Joel Kim Booster.

The Cast of “Fire Island”

NOAH (Joel Kim Booster)
The first thing Noah does on screen is wake up and scream a list of profanities. His eyes have just snapped open and as he sees the slew of missed calls and text messages, he realizes he’s
already missed the first of two trains that he was supposed to be on to head out to the island with his friends. But before he can fly out the door, he must quickly pack (i.e. furiously stuff clothes into a duffle) and evict the man (Johnny maybe?) sleeping in his bed. Although the opening scene might be considered something of a portrait of a young man as a hot mess, Noah is good with his life, even if he is, as Booster says, “a little bit of a lost boy.” During their week-long adventure, Noah’s sense of self is called into question as he finds himself developing Feelings (with a capital “F”) for Will, a handsome lawyer from L.A. “Noah’s put up these walls that have protected him and served him really well, but he’s almost outgrown these walls by the time we find him in the story,” says director Ahn. “He has to learn how to be vulnerable. That’s a stage in so many lives, where we’ve outgrown a version of ourselves and have to get to this new version of ourselves so we can live happier, authentic lives, even if it’s a little scary.”

HOWIE (Bowen Yang)
If Noah is the story’s Lizzie Bennet—Austen’s fiery heroine who the writer herself once described as “light bright and sparkling”—Howie is a stand-in for the eldest Bennet sister, Jane. “You just take for a fact that Lizzie and Jane are sisters and they love each other, but there are moments of potential conflict between those characters, and that’s very well explored in this,” Yang says. “Howie is the heart of this movie,” says Ahn. “He’s the romantic. He’s the one that wants the rom com, and that gets to who I am as a person, as a romantic. To be able to not be cynical about it and enjoy the heart-on-your sleeve romance, it’s so freeing.”

WILL (Conrad Ricamora)
Is there any more desirable character in fiction than frustratingly unforgettable Mr. Darcy? For the all-important role of the man who simultaneously attracts and repels Noah, the production hired Ricamora, known on television for his roles as Jake Wong on The Resident and Oliver on How to Get Away with Murder. “I personally love the stories about two people who are trying to connect with each other but keep butting heads,” says the actor, who is also an accomplished Broadway performer with a Grammy® nomination to his credit. “It’s always been my experience that that’s what love can be like. I like that the film doesn’t sugarcoat the complexities of navigating that— these two people who are so different can absolutely have a strong connection.”

CHARLIE (James Scully)
Like lawyer Will, pediatrician Charlie is staying at the palatial Ocean Walk House, which seems to be something of a haven for blindingly hot guys in Speedos. Noah, Howie and the gang definitely stand out in the crowd. Still, Charlie, named for Pride and Prejudice’s Charles Bingley, seems genuinely interested in Howie—there’s no question that the two of them have serious chemistry and an easy, natural rapport. On set, Scully (You) felt similarly about working opposite Yang. “It’s a very easy job to fall in love with Bowen on camera,” Scully says. “He’s one of the most brilliant, funny, sensitive, thoughtful people I know, but he’s very humble and modest about it.

ERIN (Margaret Cho)
Noah and his friends’ Fire Island experience wouldn’t be the same without Erin, who “is the mother hen of the group,” says comedy legend Cho. Career brunch server, age unknown, lesbian scam queen, Erin made a fortune after she ate a piece of glass at a major Italian chain restaurant and won a huge settlement, which she promptly used to purchase a quirky and charming property lovingly dubbed the Tuna Walk House.

“She’s really the elder, the caretaker, but also a little bit of an inappropriate elder too, because she gets involved in the stories of her ‘kids’ in a way that shows off her own dysfunction,” Cho says. “She tries to rectify mistakes that she has made and live that through with her younger friends. That’s a really fun role to play. I don’t have to be as involved in all the drama because I’m past it age-wise.”

Both Booster and Yang say they were honored to have the opportunity to work with Cho. “She’s someone who has basically shaped my aspirations in terms of what a queer Asian person can do in entertainment,” Yang says. “Growing up and listening to her stand-up, that was so, so, so, so intentionally queer, intentionally funny, about being Asian and queer in ways that were never about punching down or never about ridiculing the community she’s from, I’ve always admired that so much.”

LUKE (Matt Rogers)
“Luke is the messy sister,” says FIRE ISLAND actor Matt Rogers, who is a longtime friend of both Booster and of Yang, with whom he hosts the Las Culturistas podcast. “He is definitely very interested in what’s going on in other houses, meeting other guys, hooking up with guys on the island. He’s a thirsty character. He is looking for external validation in a real way. He wants to be the apple of someone’s eye.” Unfortunately, Luke becomes entangled with the sex-positive, ethically-negative Dex (Zane Phillips, Legacies), whose attentions come at a price. “If you know anything about Lydia Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, she gets into some trouble— and Luke gets himself into some trouble as well,” says Rogers.

KEEGAN (Tomás Matos)
Keegan is Luke’s other half—the friends met in theatre school, and though they were both eventually asked to leave their program, they know the truth is they are stars. “Keegan is
unapologetically themselves,” says actor Matos of the role, which aligns with Lizzie Bennet’s younger sister Catherine, aka “Kitty.” “Keegan is a gender fluid queen. Keegan doesn’t allow standards or social norms to put boundaries on who they are. I think Keegan is beautiful inside and out because of how loud and proud they are about who they are.”

MAX (Torian Miller)
Super smart, maybe just a wee bit uptight, Max is the outspoken, rational, and political member of the group. “He’s the Mary Bennet of the movie,” says actor Miller, a veteran of Chicago’s
Second City whose credits include such television series as Chicago Med. “He’s a bit of the black sheep, and on one end, it can be endearing, on the other, it can be quite annoying—I think that stems from the insecurities that Max might feel within his own community. He’s thick. He’s chocolate. He doesn’t look like the run-of-the-mill Fire Island gay. But at the end of the day, he’s a genuinely sweet person.” He’s also the friend who can catch you up on anything you might have missed on Maddow last night.

COOPER (Nick Adams)
If there’s one person determined to put the brakes on the budding romance between Howie and Charlie, it’s Cooper—who goes to surprising lengths to separate the would-be couple. “He is deliciously manipulative, charming, devilish and a really fun antagonist in this film,” says Adams, the actor well known for starring as Adam/Felicia in the original Broadway production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and as Whizzer Brown in the first national tour of the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Falsettos. “He’s obsessed with appearances and status, and I think it all comes from his lack of self-esteem. His self-worth is contingent on the gaze of other people and their perception of him being superior and having status over them.” Shades of Caroline Bingley anyone?