Joel Kim Booster says he doesn’t mind that his nudes leaked online
Joel Kim Booster in Fire Island. (Hulu)
Joel Kim Booster cracks jokes about his nude photographs being leaked online in his debut Netflix comedy special, Psychosexual.
The Fire Island star has been joking about his nudes leaking as far back as 2018, when he said that “approximately one thousand hay strangers” are currently in possession of them.
Joel Kim Booster mentioned them again in 2019; the actor’s tweet jokingly begged for someone to leak them in order to “save me heaps of time”.
Apparently, he got his wish, as in his new Netflix special Psychosexual he claims: “I found out all my nudes get leaked online”.
I mean I guess the worst thing that could happen if I got hacked is they could release the nudes I've already sent to approximately one thousand gay strangers across North America and abroad.
— Joel Kim Booster (@ihatejoelkim) November 18, 2018
I hope one of you leaks my fucking nudes. Would save me heaps of time.— Joel Kim Booster (@ihatejoelkim) July 26, 2019
“Yeah, I can see some of you reaching for your phone right now” he tells the Psychosexual audience.
“Obviously, I was angry, I felt violated, um … but then I found out they were put on a website for male ‘celebrity’ nudes, and I was like: ‘They can stay….'”
In an interview to mark the special’s release, Joel Kim Booster explained that he wrote the special so that its third act is “the sex act”.
Candidly speaking with the Hollywood Reporter, the comedian reflected on the criticism he has faced over the course of his career for being “hyper-sexualised”.
“I’ve gotten a lot of flack as a comedian for sexualising myself and other people and talking about sex a lot,” Booster said.
“As a queer person, I get dinged because we are as a community over-sexualized and the emphasis is always too much on sex. When I talk about my promiscuity or being promiscuous, I get gay guys in my DMs because it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re harming the community by creating the images of an oversexed gay guy.’
“But then on the flip side, as an Asian man, a lot of people see that as very empowering because Asian men are so desexualized in the media that me talking about sex and the amount of sex that I’m having suddenly becomes this very empowering act.”
Booster said Psychosexual is all about exploring “those weird intersections” where such topics “become either empowering or detrimental to whatever community [he’s] representing, and the frustration of that”.
“Because you can’t cordon off your identities,” he added “When I’m speaking, I can’t just speak as an Asian man only or as a gay man only. I am all those things, all at once, all the time.”
The hype currently surrounding Booster isn’t solely about his sexuality though – he’s experiencing a career high off the back of his LGBTQ+ centric rom-com, Fire Island.
A queer take on Pride and Prejudice, the film stars an all-LGBTQ+ cast and, naturally, doesn’t shy away from sex or nudity.
