An Interview with Jo Koy

By Sophia and Ava Fineza

We are excited to present to you our first interview, starring the Filipino-American comedian Jo Koy! I[Ava] was pretty nervous going into the ordeal, but he was very laid back and helped to make the whole ordeal a lot easier. Thank you again, Jo Koy!

In His Elements is Jo Koy’s third Netflix comedy special, but it’s really much more than just comedy. Jo Koy takes you on the journey through the Philippines, showing the beauty of our culture and the people who represent it. “We wanted to show that, even in the hardest of hardest times, these people are smiling, and they’re talented, and they’re willing to do anything to get out there,” Jo Koy says while talking about the Tenement.

Jo Koy also talked about the importance of hustling and believing in yourself. He spoke about the challenges in getting Netflix to give him a special, how he financed his first special, Live From Seattle, when Netflix initially turned him down, and how he proved his worth to Netflix and completed a lifelong dream with In His Elements.

We also spent a few minutes talking about genZ. We were excited to hear more about the teenagers rapping on an !llmind beat, and thought it was so cool to see young Filipino artists getting a chance to collaborate with large artists and represent their culture. Opportunities like this are few and far between, so to see and hear the teens rapping in Tagalog was really inspiring.

To wrap up the interview, we did a lightning round of sorts, comparing different Filipino foods, seeing which ones we love, which ones we hate, and which ones, surprisingly, taste better in airplanes than on the ground (Jo Koy’s words, not ours).

So, that’s just a little taste of what our first interview includes - starring Jo Koy! Again, we want to thank Jo Koy for his participation and congeniality, we are very grateful to have this experience. We’ll see you all soon - and hopefully with another logline interview :)

pssst! Here’s the whole interview. Check it out :)

These were just a few of the videos we posted as a part of our first interview with Jo Koy. You can find all of the videos on our YouTube channel here(no we’re not youtubers now)