Lydia Gaston channels all Fil-Am moms to play Jo Koy’s in ‘Easter Sunday’

Filipino American actor Lydia Gaston (left) in a scene with Jo Koy in the film “Easter Sunday.” AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT

NEW YORK — Seasoned theater actress and dancer Lydia Gaston stars in the crucial role of Tita Susan, the matriarch in Filipino American stand-up comedian Jo Koy’s feature film “Easter Sunday.”

Opening in theaters on Aug. 5, the film spotlights Jo Valencia (played by Koy), who returns to his family home “for an Easter week of eating, laughing, drinking and riotous fun.” The material draws from Koy’s personal experiences and his popular routines.

Audiences familiar with Koy’s shows knows how largely his mother looms in his bits. “The woman Lydia [Gaston] that plays my mother, she’s phenomenal,” Koy says in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. (Koy and girlfriend Chelsea Handler yesterday announced an amicable end to their relationship of one year.)

The film is touted as the first Hollywood studio comedy to showcase an all-Filipino main cast. In addition to Koy and Gaston, other Filipino Americans in the cast include Tia Carrere (“True Lies,” “Wayne’s World”), Melody Butiu (“Rizzoli & Isles,” Off-Broadway and Broadway’s “Here Lies Love”) and Eva Noblezada (Broadway’s “Miss Saigon” and “Hadestown”). Filipino Canadian Elena Juatco is also part of the cast.

Also in the cast are Eugene Cordero (“The Good Place,” Disney+’s “Loki”), Joey Guila (“Comedy InvAsian”), Rodney To (“Parks and Recreation,” HBO’s “Barry”), Brandon Wardell (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), and Lou Diamond Phillips (“Bluebloods,” “Cougar Town”).

Excitement

A longtime New Yorker, Gaston hails from Negros Occidental province in the Philippines. Her performing career began with Ballet Philippines where she became a soloist at 16. She moved to New York at 18 to pursue a dance career, eventually working with various dance companies, most prominently with choreographer/playwright Rachel Lampert. She has been in national tours or regional productions of musicals such as “West Side Story” and “South Pacific.”

Gaston made her Broadway debut with “Shogun, the Musical.” She was most recently in the revival of “The King and I.” She has worked with Ma-Yi Theater Group, National Asian American Theatre Company and Pan Asian Rep. She is currently an adjunct professor at Empire State College.

Amalgam

“There were several levels of excitement and disbelief [over several] weeks before I got the final okay,” says Gaston of the audition process. “Getting the invitation to submit a self-tape, reading the scenes and loving them, hearing from my agent later to say that they were inquiring about my availability, and then the callback on Zoom with the director Jay Chandrasekhar and Jo Koy.”

Lydia Gaston plays Jo Koy’s mother in “Easter Sunday.” CONTRIBUTED

“I studied some videos of Josie, Jo’s mom. She seems very poised and intelligent. Obviously, she’s very proud of Jo. Her body language does give me clues that, like most Filipino moms, she’s a disciplinarian.”

However, as she prepared to create the Tita Susan character, Gaston watched more videos of Koy where he impersonates his mother. “I’m fascinated by the exaggerated version of his mother because woven into it is his response as the recipient of the constant nagging and criticism. I can detect his exasperation with her, his amazement and bafflement at how this woman, his mother, can be completely confident in the ways she thinks she’s always right.”

“Studying how Jo portrays his mother is seeing an amalgam of Filipino American mothers. And I fit right in. When I first got the [script for the self-tape], I just thought it was so funny and perfect. The way Jo characterizes his mom is very familiar to my ear. I hear my mother’s voice and my own voice when I nag or correct my husband and my daughter. My daughter lives in Europe now but my texts to her are always reminders. With my mother in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, she would send me these long letters full of warnings and reminders.”

A person with feelings

In addition to mining her personal insights as a mother herself, Gaston also worked on the attributes of her character as a whole. “I think accents, like languages, open up different sides to our personality. I do have, I think, a pretty authentic Filipino accent, Ilonggo accented probably. My acting coach encouraged me to embody the accent.”

Stand-up comic Jo Koy (left) and actor Lydia Gaston in a relaxed moment behind the cameras. CONTRIBUTED

“My coach and I really looked at Tita Susan as a person with feelings, not as a person who speaks with an accent. The way she speaks is part of who she is. As an exercise, I would improvise the English lines in the Filipino dialects that I know in order to explore how Susan would say them.”

Gaston says that she and her coach worked hard to build Tita Susan “from a realistic, compassionate point of view. Beneath her toughness is a vulnerability. She is a mom and always wants to be around family. She also wants to be acknowledged for the hard work she always puts in.”

Speaking of family, Gaston and the cast formed one of their own of sorts while filming. “Working with Jo Koy and the Filipino Americans and Filipino Canadians on the set was fantastic. The actors had to live in a bubble and quarantine in our rooms for two weeks. On the first shoot day, we were like children finally released on the playground. It also felt like we were an acting company, similar to theater.”

“We all got to know Jo and he’s just the way we see him onstage: generous, funny, and hardworking. I was also struck by his show of respect and admiration for the actors working with him. It made us do our best work.”