Queer Horror and the Power of Friendship with Troy Iwata

Mixed Asian Media - April 14, 2023

By Erica Ito

Troy Iwata, friend of MAM and budding icon of stage and screen, was sweet enough to join us for a conversation about  Summoning Sylvia — a much-needed colorful horror comedy that premiered in theaters last weekend and is now available for streaming!

As a longtime fan of both Troy and the genre  of queer horror, I was stoked to share this space. Check it out.

Hi, Troy! Before we talk about Summoning Sylvia, I have to say I've been following your career ever since I was in college when I sat in the first row of Be More Chill and you were on for the lead. It was the first time I saw almost a whole Asian lead cast in a Broadway show. 

Oh my god, so you were there the one night that happened. That was the only night it happened.

That's kind of incredible. I had the best freaking time. Ever since, I’ve always said to people, “Be More Chill is the best musical ever, you don't get it ’cause you didn't see Troy Iwata as the lead.” Anyway, when Dash and Lily came out, I was like, “Yay, Troy!” And now several projects later, here we are discussing Summoning Sylvia. It's a horror film about a gay bachelor party set in a haunted house. 

I absolutely adored this movie. I watched it with my roommate and we laughed the entire time. It reminded me of the Hash Slinging Slasher episode of SpongeBob but like, if SpongeBob was wearing sparkly blue eyeshadow.

That's high praise.

Your character Reggie has notes of Velma in Scooby Doo. Were there any other inspirations that you drew from when you were creating this lovable, nerdy character?

You know, reading the script, for some reason the dynamic of the four best friends was giving me Golden Girls. And to me, Reggie was giving a little bit of a mixture of Dorothy and Sophia.

That's exactly the answer I was looking for. And in the movie there's this really delightful balance of silliness (there's a full musical number) and more grounded storytelling as the plot deals with alcoholism and homophobia. When you were playing Reggie, did you think about that balance between a performance that's more broadly archetypal but also authentically human?

You know, actually no. Because the environment that the creators, Alex Wyse and Wes Taylor created — they made sure that we weren't pushing for something. Everything was really grounded in a sense of realism. And even though the comedy does shine throughout, I think that just says a lot about their writing and how good it is. 

Speaking of Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse, this cast is also composed of Broadway stars. I had to assume when watching that everybody maybe knew each other before going into the movie, and if not, tell me what it was like to meet and work with so many icons of the theatre industry.

I actually didn't know most people! I had done one concert with Alex before. And other than that, I hadn't really worked with anybody. The first time we met, I think it was like maybe a month before filming in the summer of 2021, we had a Zoom reading with the whole cast. It was so much fun and it really solidified that we have a good dynamic here and everyone is really smart and knows exactly what we're making and isn't trying to push it in any direction.

And we played off each other really well. It made it really exciting. Which was good because the filming process was strenuous. We were filming in a non-air-conditioned house in the summer, and we were doing day for night shoots, so they had to put trash bags over all of the windows. We essentially created a hot box. There were times when it was literally over 105 degrees in there with no air conditioning. 

I remember one specific day, I think it may have been the last day of shooting Veanne Cox, who plays Sylvia, she's wearing that thick, black Victorian gown and it was one of the hottest days of the summer and we all had fans in our pockets so as soon as they all cut, we’d run over to Veanne and just start fanning her off. Cause we were like, “She's gonna pass out.”

Nobody looked sweaty so that's really impressive.

There's one scene where Travis looks really sweaty, but then we made it like a bit. He's sweating because he’s nervous.

I love what you said about nobody pushing anything. I remember turning to my roommate and saying, “As ridiculous as the scenario is, I 100% see this happening with the group of people we know.” I didn't doubt for a moment that this was very realistic. It could have been a documentary.

And the queer community has a very rich and sometimes spooky relationship with horror films. In It Came from the Closet, edited by Joe Vallese, he writes that the queer community “somehow can’t help but find immense guiltless, unironic pleasure in them. We’re titillated by the genre, even when it actively excludes us from the narrative — or worse, includes us only to marginalize, villainize, or altogether neglect us.” What was it like to work on a very queer horror project?

I think that the queer community tends to gravitate toward this genre because a majority of those stories tend to be about some sort of outsider, whether that's the villain or the hero. And I think that we can relate to certain storylines and emotions of that, whether or not the character is actually queer. 

What's fun about this movie is that it flips that idea on its head. The outsider in this movie is the straight guy. He's just entering this very, very proud and gay bachelor party. What Nick [Nicholas Logan, who plays Harrison, our straight fish out of water] does that's so beautiful is he's not playing the character approaching it with hate. He just has no idea what this community is about and he's uncomfortable ’cause he's not familiar with it. So he's just genuinely confused and doesn't know what's going on. And I think that that's a really beautifully written character because he doesn't know, but he’s working on knowing. 

It just feels very refreshing because I do think that, not only in horror, a lot of queer stories that tend to get produced nowadays focus on the coming out process or the self-expression and self-acceptance process, or even the hardships that we go through in everyday life with ignorance and hate crimes.

Even though there is a place for those and those are important, there's also an entire life that happens after you come out that is very beautiful and joyous. And I think that's what this movie depicts. That's one of my favorite things about Summoning Sylvia. I've watched it five times in the last week, and which I don't normally do for things that I'm in. But every time I've watched it, I smile so much because this is a movie about four best friends who are having a great time. There's a ghost and things seem scary but they all band together and they all still have that best friend dynamic. I think it’s so important to show that version of queer joy that's not necessarily 100% tied to our sexual orientation. These are just like best friends who happen to be gay. We're not trying to educate the audience on what gay people think and do. You can just watch us. Just watch us and laugh and have fun. 

So you know, there's an ease to it. And I think that's really beautiful.

And it's not like those projects that center coming out and traumatic experiences don't necessarily have queer people behind the camera, but I think it's so evident that this movie does. When you have a film made by queer people, it's authentic and joyous. 

The majority of the crew was queer as well! But there were a small handful of straight people. And whenever we would do a scene and the straight people would laugh, we'd be like, “YES. They get it. That's good to go.”

While I’m probably the exact target demographic for this film, I’m confident everybody can enjoy it.

Yeah, absolutely.

One movie I also had in mind while watching Summoning Sylvia was Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, which I also watched like five times last year. If somebody was gonna sit down for a horror movie marathon night and they were gonna watch Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, and Summoning Sylvia, what would be the final film you would add to that collection? Doesn't have to be a horror movie. It can honestly be an episode of The Golden Girls.

Did Golden Girls have a Halloween episode? Just a Halloween episode of like, any sitcom.

I would love to see a sitcom spinoff for Amazon Prime with all these characters.

Absolutely. 

What is the one thing you hope audiences take away from Summoning Sylvia?

First and foremost, I hope they walk away feeling happy and feeling full of laughter and joy.

I also feel like this movie opens people's minds. We're in a sociopolitical time where a lot of members of the government are focusing on the queer community and layering a lot of fear on us, in a way that they are othering the queer community and the trans community.

I would just hope that this movie lets people know that we are human and we're all the same at the end of the day. And I think a great thing about this story is that what goes down between the straight character and the gay character, at the end of the day, is really just a miscommunication and a lack of exposure, a lack of knowledge. 

Not to spoil the movie, but at the end of the day, we are all the same. We have so much more in common than we realize. If there are people who watch the film who don't have a lot of queer representation in their life, I hope they leave feeling like they have a little bit now, and it's positive, and most importantly, it's funny.

Summoning Sylvia is the movie of the year, everyone. It's streaming now on all the platforms including AppleTV+, Prime Video, and Vudu. Thank you, Troy!