Eugene Lee Yang Breaks Down His BuzzFeed Career, Finding His Place with Try Guys & Coming Out

There's a joy for queer people.

It's not just coming out.

It's not just finding or checking

all of the serious points in your life.

It's how much gayer you get day by day.

You just get gayer and gayer and more queer.

Like, you feel your power grow.

It is wild.

Hi, I'm Eugene Lee Yang,

and I'm looking back at some moments

that have shaped my identity and career.

This is Becoming Eugene Lee Yang.

Hope I am dressed.

I probably am most recognizable to people

from my time at BuzzFeed.

Buzzfeed was a really fascinating

lateral career step for me.

Again, I was hyper-focused on writing and directing

and was applying to Sundance labs.

I was doing the typical slow, sad upward track

that we all do as young filmmakers,

where you're just staring into the mirror every day saying,

like, When will life begin?

But I was desperate for a full-time job,

and BuzzFeed Video was just this fledgling new department

in 2013 when I joined.

I was already, I think a lot of people can relate to,

small-town girl, big city,

you know, far away from the family,

so I could establish this really vibrant,

wonderful, close community,

spread my wings as a young gay man.

Even though I had told my parents that I was gay

when I was 18, I'm just one of those classic cases

of a family that didn't talk about it,

probably for 15 years after that.

So even if you come out, it doesn't mean

that you actually have come out into the open

because other people are just ready

to close the door back on you.

And I love my family.

And you'll see, with some of the future work

and the exposure I had online,

it forced quite a bit of that conversation to happen

more quickly than it might have naturally.

The last thing I ever expected

was to have to confront my identity,

which I was already doing internally

and with my family behind four walls,

to millions of people online.

And that's where you start seeing my journey

really sort of skyrocket.

Luckily, I think I was more well-prepared

as an older person.

By the time I was in my 30s, I had enough safety,

personal security, that I could take bigger swings

with exposing myself.

Not that way.

Don't Google me.

You'll see some really embarrassing things.

The first thing everyone has to know

is if they are in a safe, secure space.

And once they have that,

some people just might not be on the same ride with you,

and that's okay.

But some people, they're just a little slower.

They're just a little slower on that journey.

And that was my situation with my family.

Let's see what we have next.

The drag video is really interesting because that was,

I think, the fourth official Try Guys video.

There were no cast at BuzzFeed prior to us.

We were the first to say,

Oh, we should just repeat ourselves as a cast.

This is an interesting dynamic.

The worst was shaving the legs and that took two hours.

Poor Mayhem was, like, on her knees shaving and got,

like, my actual leg hair and her mouth.

It was disgusting.

Hi, Mayhem.

Hi mom.

She's still my mom.

You know what I love about this video too

is that that was the first time I tucked.

That was the first time I completely shaved my legs.

That was the first time I ever had

that much makeup on my face.

And look at me now.

And the drag video was the first one

that I actually personally produced and edited.

And the previous videos were like, men try women things.

One, no other guy in the office would do it besides us four,

and two, allegedly I have, you know,

a very distinct perspective

and I did understand that eventually there's value

with the way that I spoke and the way that I brought

a marginalized point of view to things.

Having that perspective be just you laid bare on camera,

our lives became the story and the content.

I'm gonna go tuck in the bathroom.

Oh [beeps], oh my God, I think I did it.

[Interviewer] Once the group had formed,

was there either pressure,

like a conversation of like, who you would be?

Because to me, from an outsider's perspective,

if you were a Spice Girl, you would be Posh Spice.

Oh my God, thank you.

That's so nice of you.

[Eugene chuckles]

Think of your friend group, right?

You naturally sort of inhabit like,

oh, she's a little more Sailor Jupiter,

she's a little more Sailor Mars.

I just happen to be more Mars naturally.

Having to deal with this idea of presentation

within a cast was really quick because I'm so used to it.

I'm so used to covering and presenting.

I think a lot of queer people are, like,

do you change a little bit

when grandma comes to the dinner table?

You know what I mean?

Like, those are those things

that I'm just more well-equipped to be,

I guess, hyper cognizant of

as opposed to, like, my lovely cast members, Zach and Keith.

Sometimes you're really jealous of white men.

They can just walk into any situation and be like,

I own this room, I own this country.

So initially, it was very obvious,

I was, as you said, like a little sexier,

but it was like, I mean, you're gonna look spicy

in a pile of marshmallows, you know what I mean?

I love Zach and Keith.

I will [beeps] go to war for them,

but they are the softest, sweetest boys you will ever meet.

So I basically just had to like, [sighs],

and they're, like, sexy and serious.

Wow.

Next milestone.

So this was one of my proudest moments

when I was a producer at Buzzfeed.

I was sitting on this rare gold mine,

a platform that reaches millions of people instantly.

And if I'm not doing something with it

that speaks both to, like, my inner scared child

and hopefully a lot of viewers out there

who also can benefit, then what am I doing in this space?

Queer prom has always existed

outside in different variations

for different cities and different events.

But this sort of idea of flying in, you know,

six young people with their families

to experience sort of this, like,

fun LA treatment of a prom was really special.

And it was the first time I feel like

I was able to say on camera that I was queer.

There was, like, a rumor mill always

since I was on camera, since I started.

Like, is he, isn't he?

Which we see in every level of media

and entertainment especially, kind of surrounding

and swirling around people's identities since the,

you know, Hays Code.

And that bull [beeps] was always so awful for me to,

like, wear every day, like, go home to my boyfriend

and just, him being like,

well, there's all these people asking about

if you're gay or not.

Not being able to say it explicitly,

but it's because I wasn't sure about where certain people

very closely in my life would land.

That was even my life

with a relatively liberal family into my 30s

and as someone who was seen on camera all the time,

and at that point, in drag and wearing, like, you know,

lots of, like, gender nonconforming clothes,

it still was, to Asian communities especially,

seen as sort of, like, artistic fantasy and expression.

So when I did something like queer prom,

it was still seen as far enough, like,

arms' length extension of something in my persona,

but it wasn't my sexuality,

you know, it was my artistic expression.

Ooh, one of my favorite comments

someone had said when this first came out was,

Oh, Eugene's not just coming out as gay,

he's coming out as himself.

Which was really just right on the money and made me,

that actually made me tear up a little bit.

The actual title of this video is,

I'm Gay, Eugene Lee Yang,

which people had to force me to do.

I didn't even want my face in thumb.

I didn't even want to be in it initially.

I just wanted to do something that,

for me, was a very comfortable, innate form of expression.

This entire project from the moment that I said

I have to do it to the moment it premiered

was less than a month and I choreographed it, I directed it.

I just went, all right, this is what you've trained for.

And it just kind of, you know,

it was like putting on my old pair of shoes,

but I was most worried about the fact

that I was the central focus of it.

'Cause I initially conceived it

with the idea of casting someone else

because I was more comfortable with this idea

of creating a short film, a music video that told this story

but didn't push my identity or face forward.

I then realized that through the internet,

through being able to find myself

in front of millions of people,

if I can show them this

while also then bringing in every single tool

that they haven't seen from me from my filmmaking toolbox,

that way it crosses creatively

will create something special and unique and powerful.

It is so rare for me to watch something back

and not criticize every small thing about it.

Anything I do, I just, like, look back and I say,

this could be better, this could be bigger,

this could be brighter, this could be bolder.

And this was just one of those things that,

it felt like an exhale,

and there's no way to go back and say,

I'm gonna control the breath.

I watch it and I just feel my body just sort of deflating

and I, like, I exhale with it.

I just can't see it being anything other than what it was,

and it was appropriate for the time,

it was appropriate for my journey,

and it made the family members I had

who were completely in the dark about it,

it started a lot of conversations,

and thankfully, those conversations,

some of them, had a positive ending.

But if they were gonna see me really come out

to not just them but to, like, everyone,

I'm gonna do it in my most authentic voice.

It's the one time really on the internet

I'm just happy that that can continue to live on,

and I wouldn't change it for the world.

Thousands of Asians in the US

have become targets of harassment.

It was just one of these times where,

with the COVID pandemic,

this heightened focus on Asians and immigration

and the China virus was just the right time to,

like, be able to drop some education into that conversation.

'Cause we know when those online conversations happen,

especially during a worldwide pandemic,

education goes out the window,

like, people don't wanna know about facts.

We have actual leaders coming up

with the most bull [beeps] stories to take things

like critical race theory out of our schools,

which isn't even in our schools.

The passage of the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882,

the first law in the United States

that barred immigration solely based on race.

This is essentially critical race theory.

Being able to put that out there for anyone to see,

even if one middle school teacher picked it up

and showed it to their kids,

I would feel like that this was a worthwhile endeavor.

We can't responsibly live in a society now,

even as artists, without engaging critically

in these conversations because unfortunately,

politics are just like,

just one step away from entertainment.

It's almost the same thing.

The stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center found that bullying,

assaults, and verbal abuse were becoming more normalized

across the United States.

I had a relatively diverse community growing up.

There weren't many other Asians until I was in middle school

and a lot of tech companies moved to Central Texas.

It's becoming more rare,

the experience of growing up in a town where you are,

like, the only of one particular other.

You know, I got bullied and I got pushed around,

and people just thought I was funny

and that my food smelled funny.

And that was, like, for me, extremely formative.

They tried to create a Asian-American Club,

and our principal, we all got the signatures

and our principal shot it down

'cause he said Asian Americans didn't contribute enough

to American society besides the railroads.

Like, that was the type of town I grew up in.

He said, You got diversity club, that's enough.

Which was still, like, fun

'cause it was, like, all the non-white people hanging out.

I learned how to step.

It was a lot of cultural sharing

in a place like a small Texas town.

What else is he hiding?

Who is the real him?

Who am I?

Nimona.

I am so excited for people to see this.

The original story, Nimona,

is by an incredible creative force, Andy Stevenson.

Actually originated as this,

I believe a grad project that was a web comic

and then became a graphic novel.

But it has a huge queer cult following.

The character that I play is Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin.

I was very lucky to have been cast in 2020 actually.

So I've been with this for three years.

The reason my name came up

because I was already kind of asking my agents,

like, I would love to start voice acting

and being a totally different character

where no one can see my face.

This came through directly from the producers

because when they translated Ambrosius Goldenloin

to the film version, they essentially made him Asian.

I would find out later that one of the animators

had used several references

and I was included in it visually

because I guess I've done something in my career

where they said, I'm gonna think of a gay-ass Asian man,

and this character needs to be just,

like, right out of the bat, like, that's a gay man.

I don't care what you say.

Look at his hair, look at that face.

So they brought me in for the audition.

I auditioned like everyone else, and I landed the part.

My version of Goldenloin is a little more warm,

a little more charming, and certainly very much

obviously in love with the other lead baluster.

It's, like, not a question.

And that's what's beautiful about this film

is that I'm not ruining anything.

It's not like a, oh, will they, won't they?

It's not a, oh, you should watch this.

So they have this revelation in the end of the third act.

They're gay from the jump.

It's just gay.

And to have my first voice performance experience

be a character that is dependent on,

at the very least, me informing my perspective,

infusing him with my perspective,

because that's what the directors really wanted.

I thought I was gonna walk in and be way more knightly,

and they said, No, no, no, no.

We want the essence of your queer experience to be

like, to permeate this character.

And that's not something you hear

from higher ups in Hollywood every day.

It was very fortunate and beautiful experience for me

to be able to lend part of myself to this character.

I'm not the villain here.

I know, I know.

I'm sorry for everything.

And on top of that, Nimona herself,

she's essentially this wonderful,

non-binary, gender non-conforming, just rebel.

And I cannot wait for people, especially our community,

to be able to see where this story takes us

and how it resolves and what that message is in the end.

It's a fantastic action adventure film

with a lot of humor and a lot of heart,

but it's also very much for us as a community.

I'm just really blessed to have been part of this film.

Thank you so much for revisiting these milestones with me.

This has been Becoming Eugene Lee Yang.

I can't wait to become even gayer.

That's what's gonna happen right after you stop this video.

I'm gonna be out there, being so much more gay.

It's gonna be wild.

In a year, I'm gonna be in, like, my final form,

just a [beeps] unicorn on fire.

You're gonna see, like, a comet across the sky

and that's gonna be my gay ass,

just like going, yes.

[Eugene chuckles]

Just blinding all the bigots.

[upbeat music]