The Nicholist #20
"You look like America Ferrera."
Welcome to The Nicholist! My weekly list of pop culture where I gush on everything that’s got me obsessed.
Does it feel like I’ve been ignoring you? Did you even notice I was gone? Well, I wasn’t and probably not. I’ve just been booked—and isn’t that what we all hope for? 💁🏼♀️
God Will Do The Rest
The project keeping me most busy these days is my play God Will Do The Rest.
Official Blurb: After her divorce, a forty-something former teen mom returns to her childhood home after being estranged from her family for almost two decades. But with the collision of her return and her glamorously overbearing mother's 70th birthday, their family homestead soon explodes in an uproar of hidden truths and harbored secrets. With Santo Niño prayers, karaoke and chicken adobo, God Will Do The Rest exposes the complicated ways Filipino Americans grapple with their love and duty to family.
The play had a lovely workshop at the end of January that culminated in a fabulous staged reading for a bunch of rich people (donors), and the aftermath has left me with enough rewrites to keep me occupied for weeks. Most days, you can currently find me at my local WeWork, click-clacking away on a MacBook and sipping on complimentary cold brew.
Multiple Loads
Remember this play? What started as a random brain dump on this Substack has somehow reaped a reward. Multiple Loads is an official selection for off-Broadway’s Abingdon Theatre Company’s Virtual Short Play Festival.
About the play: Under a moon that the sky won't see for another ten years, Luca and Uri share a fateful night that will test their beliefs in love and destiny. Yet on another unforgettable night, under that same gem in the sky, a decade of lost love and found purpose dares to change the path of their lives forever. Multiple Loads is a 10-minute play about the bookends of love and how the stories told in between become folklore.
This morning, I filmed my Playwright Spotlight, and I am currently regretting many of the answers I gave during my interview. Some winners:
“I really love breakfast burritos. But the white people kind.”
“Naomi Smalls is so cunt.”
“I don’t even remember my character’s names. Can you remind me: who’s who?”
If you’ve learned anything about me, you know I love attention and self-promotion—so stay tuned for more Multiple Loads content…
I’m pro-recycling, so now for the non-topical and outdated The Nicholist I wrote before I started drowning in new play rewrites…
Nymphia Wind
It’s official, Drag Racers. I am officially Team Nymphia Wind! First, I was gagged and breathless by her after she gorgeously displayed an actual talent during the RuPaul’s Drag Race Talent Show. Then, won over by her insanely charming quirkiness. But my standom was cemented when she won last week’s Ball Challenge with her jaw-dropping hand-crafted lewk. Go awf, sis!
America Ferrera’s Oscar Nomination
Freshman year of high school I attempted to befriend a girl who looked like America Ferrera. I loved Real Women Have Curves, I own and refuse to Goodwill my DVD of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and Ugly Betty—to me—was the epitome of appointment television. And here was this girl who was an America Ferrera doppelgänger—it was my mission to be her friend. I told her to her face, “You look like America Ferrera. I’m obsessed with you.” But, to her, she thought I was calling her fat.
We did not end up becoming friends. And looking back, that was kinda racist of me to say. But sufficed to say I love America Ferrera and am thrilled that this Emmy Award winner is now also an Academy Award nominee. Do I think her performance in Barbie was so spectacular that it needed this nomination? The answer is: it doesn’t matter because when I was 14, I tried to befriend a Mexican girl solely for the fact that she looked like the Honduran actress America Ferrera. I am a proud American through and through!
My favorite monologic America Ferrera performance:
Erin Brockovich
How have I never seen this movie before? Obsessed.