Writer, actor, improvisor Quincy Cho jams with author and Emmy-honored casting director Bonnie Gillespie about being your own friend, balance as a constant state of motion, and more diversity in casting.
Here’s the chat from our live session!
What are your key takeaways from Quincy’s interview from the SMFA Summit? Share below in the comments! 🙂
Much to her mother’s dismay, Quincy Cho was born a 20-lb. baby with creative flair. She doesn’t know which upsets her mother more. As the resident black sheep of her Korean immigrant family, Quincy went to Boston College as a pre-med triple major but took a hard left turn and instead graduated cum laude with a degree in theatre and an almost-degree in English. Her dreams of doing weird, experimental theatre in the basements of restaurants in NY fell through when she couldn’t get on-campus housing to teach English in Korea. So she boomeranged back to her native SoCal to bail her parents out of business trouble (and from each other) and to date her fair share of toxic people. She has studied and performed comedy with house teams on the mainstages of UCB, Second City, and iO West. In 2019, she was awarded the NBC/Second City Hollywood Bob Curry Fellowship and showcased her work as a writer/performer in the 3rd Annual LA Diversity Comedy Festival. Quincy recently finished the 2020 WAN Writers Workshop and made it to the semifinals of the Spring 2021 WeScreenplay Diverse Voices Lab. Favorite credits include Shameless and Queenpins. Other fun stuff she does includes pole dancing in her living room with her cat (much to her dog’s dismay), rollerskating with her best friend, and occasionally performing burlesque in drag as her bio queen Hex. Quincy probably doesn’t nap enough, but she for sure eats way too fast way too often.
I was so sorry to miss Quincy live – loved the interview – I remember seeing her for the first time in one of Bonnie’s showcases what a dynamo and she shows who she is you don’t have to guess. I loved her saying – humble pie is okay – that’s so true. Fail forward. – make friends with the body bag – that makes me smile.
Quincyyyyyy! love to see you shine. And love to see you immediately call out the way BIPOC characters and women are “fridged” (tossed to the side, used as cannon fodder, their pain/deaths mined to move a plot along) in service of a white male narrative!
Practicing “owning” things while they are low-stakes is so important. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us!
“I think people know when I’m friends with me.” Boom.
So happy to be listening to this in the DOJO. Thank you!
WE LOVE QUINCY!
xx00