'Cryfest': Why Jo Koy cried on 'Easter Sunday' 'balikbayan' box scene, Filipino-American casting

MANILA, Philippines — On screen, the balikbayan box scene was one of the comedic ones highlighted even on the trailer of "Easter Sunday." Lead star Jo Koy, however, said that scene and knowing he had casted mostly Filipino-American actors made him cry. 

The stand-up comedian stars in his first Hollywood movie with the support of Filipino-American legends, Tia Carrere and Lou Diamond Phillips, in a movie produced by Steven Spielberg no less. 

That scene brought back memories to Jo Koy as he revealed that "Easter Sunday" is based on his experience as a young Filipino-American who had wondered why his mother prepares a balikbayan box to be shipped home to the Philippines. 

"When I was a kid, I didn't understand it. Here's my mom filling up this box and I'm like, eight years old and my sister is like 9, and my other sister is like 13 and we're all looking at all these delicious things in the box that we wished we were eating and we didn't understand. 

"What are you doing mom? Why are you sending that? And my mom said they don't have anything. But when you're a kid, you don't understand what she's talking about. What do you mean? We don't have that here but well you get to be here. They don't," Jo Koy recalled. 

In the movie, Tia Carrere and Lydia Gaston, who play his Tita Theresa and mother in the film, respectively, were trying to outdo each other by means of who between them gives more and puts in more "quality" pasalubongs to be given to relatives back home. 

Their constant bickering, which started even way earlier in the film, led one of their nephews to snidely comment that they should both be shipped as well back to the Philippines. 

This scene earned a couple of snickers and guffaws from watchers but to Jo Koy, it was a bittersweet memory that many Filipinos with relatives abroad can relate to, moreso, when they grow up and experience putting up a balikbayan box and slowly filling it up with nice things bought from hard-earned money. 

"That's a beautiful thing. Kids don't understand it but when you get older, you get 'Holy Sh*t! That's deep,'" Jo Koy remarked. "Your responsibility here is for everybody. You're taking care of people back there. You're taking care of these people here and that's the appreciation that I want people to learn in America... This isn't just making it. I have a whole bunch of people I'm taking care of that you don't even know about. That's what the scene is for me."

He is also thankful for Steven Spielberg for giving him the free rein in every aspect of his movie. When he pitched the movie, he already knew he had to cast Carrere and Philips. 

"We all cried. It was a cryfest. Everyone was crying," he replied when asked how he felt about the mostly Filipino casting.  

He argued that the two stars went through the trenches for future Filipino-American actors and went through "hard Hollywood." 

Jo Koy revealed a conversation he had with Carrere where the actress recalled her past experiences. 

"When we were shooting 'Easter Sunday,' she said I used to go out for roles and the description would be -- Asian with thick accent. That was a real description handed to her by a real agent. That's the kind of characters she had to go in for. And my movie was the first movie she got to play Filipino in 42 years in Hollywood. That was the first time she ever played Filipino," Jo Koy said. 

Carrere started out as a model who eventually ventured into acting. Her major breakthrough role was Jade Soong Chung in the popular daytime soap "General Hospital" from 1985 to 1987. Her other film credits include two "Wayne's World" (1992 and 1993) movies, "True Lies" (1994) and "Rising Sun" (1993). 

Jo Koy does not blame anybody because Hollywood is still business. 

"It's no one's fault. It's hard. It's a machine, you know," he remarked. He proceeded on calculating the probable number of Filipino-Americans and Filipinos living in the United States. 

Based on the 2019 data by the American think tank Pew Research, Filipinos in the United States are around 4.2 million from 2000 to 2019. The United States' 2020 population registered at 330 million. 

"I'm just saying, just imagine those numbers. Just imagine how hard it is to try and sell that. That idea. It's business but things are changing, you know... Things are changing and there are people in there that have keys to these gates that are opening right now and I wanna really hold it open as much as I can," Jo Koy said. 

READ: Jo Koy shares how Steven Spielberg made his film Easter Sunday happen