Joy Ride Star Sherry Cola Talks Raucous Summer Comedy – The Hollywood Reporter

Sherry Cola

Courtesy of Natt Lim

After a long day of filming on her upcoming feature Joy Ride, Sherry Cola had a realization while walking back to her Vancouver hotel with co-star Ashley Park. “I said, ‘Ashley, all of the scenes we’ve filmed so far are important,’ ” remembers Cola.

That’s because in the R-rated, Adele Lim-directed comedy, she and Park, who play childhood friends searching for the latter character’s birth mother in China, are at the top of the call sheet. Explains Cola, “We are used to supporting. We’ve been bras for years and now we’re the tits!”

As is all too common for women of color and LGBTQ+ talent, Cola, since showing up onscreen a half-decade ago, has played her share of supporting roles, occupying the comedic relief, the zany best friend and the claustrophobic space in between. But, in a one-month span this summer, she will have not one but two movies in theaters: Joy Ride and then a graphic-novel adaptation, Shortcomings.

Not always explicitly interested in performance but predisposed to entertain, Cola spent her high school years in L.A.’s San Gabriel Valley hosting school talent shows and making comedy videos with her film club, Dragon Flicks. She says, “Believe it or not, it wasn’t Asian-related. It was more Dungeon [& Dragons] related.” It was while on a seven-year track at Cal State Fullerton, pursuing a nebulous degree in communications, that she started working at the campus radio station and began pursuing a career in entertainment in earnest. “I just had so many interests. I chose radio as a place where I could broadcast my personality and also talk about music and poke fun at pop culture,” she says. “[I thought], ‘That’ll be my outlet.’ ” (In a fun twist, the radio station’s manager, Colin Stark, who also counts LaKeith Stanfield as a client, would become her talent manager.)

In 2014, Cola took a job at L.A. station 97.1 FM, at first handing out promotional stickers on the street and eventually working her way up to on-air segments with then-morning show host Carson Daly, who tapped Cola after she went viral with her videos on TikTok forebearer Vine. By the time she got her own Sunday night show, she was being cast in her first major project, the Joey Soloway Amazon series I Love Dick, starring Kathryn Hahn and Kevin Bacon. This was followed by her turn on the long-running Freeform drama Good Trouble and stand-up work that included opening for Ronny Chieng, with both Lim and Shortcomings director Randall Park in attendance.

Shortcomings and Joy Ride each bowed at festivals — Sundance and SXSW, respectively — but first up in theaters is Joy Ride (out July 7), which offered Cola an opportunity to bring more of herself to the screen.

A nightclub sequence in the movie sees the four stars — comedian Sabrina Wu and Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu join Cola and Park — downing shots garnished with preserved egg (think pickleback but with more protein). “I grew up not ashamed to eat thousand-year-old eggs,” says Cola, who was born in Shanghai before her family moved to California.

And while Lolo’s sexuality isn’t explicitly stated onscreen, Cola, who is bisexual, will not be surprised if audiences view the character as being gay. “It oozes through my pores. Everything I touch turns to queer,” Cola says with a laugh. While it’s not explicit to the story, Joy Ride is filled with queer talent like Cola and Wu, who identifies as nonbinary. Explains Cola, “What’s beautiful about this film when it comes to the queerness, we don’t have to make a big deal out of it.”

Cola is aware of the unique position she finds herself in this summer. “I feel lucky to be a part of these two incredible films that show AAPI folks in a different way,” she says. “Moving forward, how can I do anything that’s not equally as intentional?” The actor takes a beat to think about what she just said: “That’s too deep. That’s like an Elton John lyric.”

Yes, Joy Ride, a raunchy theatrical studio comedy led by Asian female and nonbinary stars, is, by its very existence, historic. But that’s not the whole story. It’s also an R comedy that gives its cast the grace to simply revel in its insane set pieces, like having a suitcase full of illegal narcotics inserted into various cavities or Cola going “tongue to tongue” with two-time NBA All-Star Baron Davis. “This film has range,” she says. “It has humor, it has heart, it has horniness — it’s the trifecta of moviemaking.”

This story first appeared in the June 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.