Actor and writer Daniel K. Isaac is known for giving smart, nuanced, and playful performances and has a quietly commanding presence on stage and screen that draws the viewer in. Let’s face it, those dreamboat good looks and that killer smile don’t hurt either. Alongside creating his own work, such as his playwriting debut Once Upon A (Korean) Time for Ma-Yi Theater Company Off-Broadway and the short film he co-wrote and starred in, According to My Mother, he continues to build an impressive list of television credits including The Deuce, Crashing, Search Party, and The Other Two and films such as Money Monster directed by Jodie Foster. On stage, he received critical acclaim for Every Brilliant Thing at the Geffen Playhouse and won the Los Angeles Drama Critic Circle Award for Solo Performance. He can currently be seen as Lt. Steve Connor opposite Carrie Preston and Wendell Pierce on the hit CBS comedy drama series Elsbeth, which streams on Paramount+.
After appearing in all seven seasons of Showtime’s Billions as fan favourite Ben Kim, Isaac recently reunited with his Billions co-star Asia Kate Dillon to portray their character’s co-worker Emile in writer-director Elena Oxman’s award-winning queer indie drama Outerlands which world premiered at SXSW and is released to buy or rent today on Prime Video and other VOD platforms from Wolfe Video. Ahead of the film’s release, Daniel K. Isaac had an exclusive conversation with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about his experience of growing up queer in an unaccepting environment, getting started in his career, his involvement in Billions and Elsbeth, bringing his own work to stage and screen, and the guidance and practical support he received from established actor BD Wong. With photography for The Queer Review by Steven Menendez.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: taking you back, when did the performer in you first emerge and how did that manifest?
Daniel K. Isaac: “I’m an only child of a single parent Korean immigrant mother. She heard this story about a pastor who got stage fright when he was speaking in front of a larger congregation than he was used to. As a very creative mother aware of her shortcomings, she thought, I can’t teach him how to be a good public speaker, especially as someone who’s not a native English speaker. So she introduced me to theatre hoping that I would use those skills to be a lawyer or a doctor or a pastor, never imagining that I would pursue the performing arts for the rest of my life. That was around fifth grade. I stuck with it and here I am today, decades later.”
How did she introduce you to theatre?
“The Korean church that I grew up in had this intrepid director who would write, produce and direct his own shows for Easter and Christmas. I had seen one of those and my mother asked if I wanted to be part of the next one. She introduced me to him and he had me read something as an audition and that was that. I did several shows there and then started taking theatre classes in junior high. In high school, I tried the sports route but I was much smaller than everyone around me. I was younger than everyone else and would go through puberty later. So I swapped out sports for choir and theatre. My after school activities were just as busy but in a very different part of the high school!”
When did you start to think that acting might be a career choice?
“I declared theatre as a major when I was applying to colleges, so I knew then that I wanted to pursue it. I was at a very academic school with a lot of AP IB students who went to Ivy Leagues. I wanted to set myself apart from them, partially because I couldn’t compete with them, neither in sports or in academics. I found myself carving out space in an artistic way, knowing that, at that time at least, a lot of the Asian Americans around me were not pursuing the arts. It felt like an act of rebellion to my peers and also maybe to cultural expectations. I can be quite stubborn and I became stubbornly determined to pursue this very difficult roller coaster of an occupation. So I majored in it, was very lucky in my training and then moved to New York City. I arrived with two sets of resumes. One to get some sort of survival job as a waiter, bartender, caterwaiter or personal assistant—all of the above, which I did—and another one as an actor. Then I just kept trying to make a go of it.”
You mentioned the church, how would you describe growing up queer in that environment?
“Traumatizing. Though I think that word is used too much. Difficult. I knew at a young age that I felt different and the church I grew up in was saying that it was a sin. I started high school at 13 and in the early years of high school, I voluntarily put myself in conversion therapy thinking that it would be the solution to what I was taught to believe was a sin. That messed me up for a while, but thanks to science-based therapy I’ve been able to undo a lot of that and worked through it.”
“When I was younger, I really did struggle with what it meant to be raised in this faith and to believe that it was the only way to live or be and how that seemed incompatible with my sexuality, my burgeoning desires, and the messiness of puberty. I was very hurt and I hurt a lot of people until I worked through it. I’m still working through it. I know there are different spaces of faith that are much more understanding and welcoming, but I wasn’t raised in one like that, at least in regards to what they considered a sin.”
You drew on some of your own experiences in the 2016 short film you co-wrote with Cathy Yan and starred in, According to My Mother. What was it like to channel some of your own life into a piece of work like that?
“I thought it would be cathartic, which part of it was. I have to laugh at some of the hardest things I go through, the things that hurt me. I think it’s just a survival tactic of mine to make sure that I don’t let it burrow too deep or take it too personally, which I have a tendency to do. Instead, I spin it towards humour. When I would tell my friends or co-workers what my mom had said and what I was going through, their first reaction was to laugh. It made me realize that there was some absurdity to it and that we have to laugh in the face of tragedy. I think our community has been especially great at that. I rest on the shoulders of those queer ancestors who have done drag or laughed in the face of what is very difficult. It’s a coping mechanism that still serves me today.”
The film delves into the character’s mother not being accepting of him being gay doesn’t it?
“Yeah, and at that time there was a very simple platitude aimed at younger LGBTQ+ people, “It Gets Better”. Nothing against the creation of that or whoever that might’ve helped, but for me—and many others that I know—it doesn’t get better, or that aspect may not get better. That relationship may not change. Maybe now more than ever, we see that people can be very divided and not budge on where they stand in their beliefs. I continue to wrestle with how to have a relationship with someone who hasn’t changed and where it hasn’t gotten better. At times it’s gotten worse. Dealing with what that means and how to navigate that is an ongoing journey.”
“I have no answers, but I wanted to show that perspective. What do you do when it doesn’t get better? What happens when it gets worse? How do you move forward through that when everyone else is saying, ‘Wait till you get married’, ‘Wait till you have kids’, or ‘Wait till you have a house or are successful or have reached some sort of benchmark that will then equal acceptance or change or evolution.’ None of those things, at least the markers that I’ve reached, have changed anything and that sucks and is its own tragedy. I’ve carved out my own chosen family, my own path and relationships, and therapy has helped along the way.”
A couple of years ago, a play that you wrote Once Upon A (korean) Time opened Off-Broadway. What was that whole experience like?
“Incredible. It was my playwriting debut with Ma-Yi Theater Company. I’d written According to My Mother with Cathy Yan as a short film pilot presentation and we were in development to make it into a TV series. That was taking a lot of time, as TV development does, and I wanted to keep writing during that period. I wanted to tell other stories and a bigger mission of mine has always been to create roles for other people who may not have had as many opportunities or as many voices championing them. I had initially written a very different play that was supposed to be produced in the fall of 2020 and of course that didn’t happen. I was very grateful that Ma-Yi Theater Company then championed a different play of mine.”
“To see what you’ve written on the page all the way to the stage is so satisfying. It was difficult too, but I loved the challenge of it. I find writing both torturous and so rewarding. It was a really busy time in my life with both Billions and the theatre show. I had done another Off-Broadway play just before it and I had a commitment ceremony with my ex before that and then I had another play right after that. So 2022 was a very full year. It was artistically very fulfilling, but my personal life was a mess.”
A lot of people will know you from Billions. According to IMDb you appeared in 83 out of 84 episodes. Now that the series has wrapped how do you reflect on it?
“I was actually in all 84 episodes, but with one of them the storyline that I was part of got cut. The executives, Brian Koppelman and David Levien, went out of their way to make sure my character was in every episode and spoke in every episode. That was very generous of them to go above and beyond for me like that. Billions is the show that allowed me to quit waiting tables and bartending and to pursue acting full time. Billions is also the show that allowed me to have the time and space to pursue my writing. I’m very grateful to them and to the friends and colleagues I came out with from that experience. I’d never done 84 episodes of anything before in my life and that’s an extreme pleasure and privilege these days when TV shows tend to have much shorter seasons. They don’t tend to invest or take that much of a risk in letting someone have a show for that many years. We shot the pilot in 2015 and wrapped the final season in 2022, so it was a long life chapter.”
I’m really enjoying season three of Elsbeth which is airing on CBS and streaming on Paramount+ right now. It’s such fun escapism. How did that role come about and what’s that show like to be part of?
“I joined Elsbeth in season two as Lieutenant Steve Connor. The showrunner, Jonathan Tolins, is also a playwright and he’d written a play called The Last Sunday in June set during Pride in New York City. Rattlestick Theater did a series of Pride readings in 2019 that I was part of and that’s when John and I first met and he remembered me after that. The audition came out of nowhere and I self-taped at home like we do these days. I never imagined that it would be my next big gig coming out of Billions.”
“It’s very fun to play a character who is not me but has aspects of me. Lieutenant Connor was set up to be a foil to Carrie Preston’s character Elspeth and to Captain Wagner, played by Wendell Pierce, but now he’s part of the team. What a privilege to get to work with these actors. They’re so talented. Carrie is so funny. Wendell is a legend. I’d just seen him in Death of a Salesman on Broadway so to get to have scenes with him now is an actor’s dream come true. The writers are so talented and so funny. Like you said, it’s a show that is comedy-forward that wants to allow people to escape and to offer them a glimmer of a more happy ending, where good prevails and justice is served. The bad guys get put away and the good guys help to solve it. Isn’t that a nice place to escape into right now?”
It’s the kind of show I watch for comfort late at night.
“Yeah, you can’t watch the stressful ones right before you go to sleep!”
I got to see Outerlands at its UK premiere at the British Film Institute during BFI Flare. It’s a beautiful film and I love your scenes opposite Asia Kate Dillon. Why was that something that you wanted to be a part of?
“Asia and I met first doing Billions and I got to watch them skyrocket from season two of that series to where they are today. My dream as an artist has always been to work with people multiple times in different projects, the way Wes Anderson or Ryan Murphy do. To have the opportunity to tackle a different project in a different world and a different story. So for Asia and I to get to do that with Outerlands was a real gift. Also, I’ve always loved San Francisco and I got to spend almost a month there for the shoot.”
“Asia had played a nonbinary queer character on Billions, but my character on the series, Ben Kim, was never actually given a storyline that touched on his sexuality, so it was always a question mark. I guess in hindsight that’s nice because I get straight cis Asian American guys saying how much they felt reflected in the character and how much they enjoyed seeing themselves in him. I also meet queer Asian Americans working in finance or government who say that they got to see themselves reflected. How lovely that the audience gets to interpret what they want from what’s there.”
“With Outerlands, I got to play a queer character opposite Asia and that felt really liberating and freeing to get to show those sides and facets of myself that I don’t always get to play with. I really enjoyed that. What a beautiful film and it’s so wonderful to see it go from this little indie darling to now being in distribution. I am excited for people to get to see it in their homes on whatever platforms they watch movies on.”
How meaningful is it for you to be part of queer projects and to play queer characters?
“For me personally, because of my background with religion and conversion therapy, I had actively worked on not presenting queer at a certain point in my young life. I wanted to be straight or at least pass as straight. It was very detrimental to my mental health and for my ability to move through the world as myself. I was always policing myself or thinking about how others perceived me. Then to be in a job where you are constantly perceived was this weird double whammy.”
“I became much freer as an actor once I came out and once I accepted who I was. That applies to all the roles I play, whether they’re straight or queer, in getting to play those different pockets, those wellsprings one may have. It’s very nice to get to play a queer character and to get to think about those aspects of myself and dig through and discover different colors. Outerlands was the first time I’d gotten to play a queer character on film in quite a while. To get to express those aspects was a really nice change and I’m a sucker for wanting variety and to play different things and to wear different hats and costumes. So that was a real delight.”
You mentioned the audience reaction that you had to Billions in terms of folks seeing themselves reflected in your character. When was the first time that you had that experience yourself as a viewer?
“One of the first times I saw an Asian American on screen was BD Wong in Jurassic Park. I learned later that he was also queer, so that was huge for me, but I didn’t know that at the time. I’ve since become friends with BD. Growing up, I didn’t see Asian American or queer people of colour on screen. My first exposure to queer characters was Will & Grace. To see characters like Will and Jack and queer stories through a comedic lens on primetime TV really helped it to feel like there was a life out there for me and that there was a way out. I think it also influenced my decision to move to New York City.”
“I also watched the first American remake of Queer as Folk on DVD, when Netflix used to do DVDs. I tried to figure out something about myself through watching that show. There weren’t many role models, especially that were queer and Asian American. I remember an early Margaret Cho stand-up set that I felt something akin to empathy watching and later I encountered George Takei.”
“I have found a community in the Asian American theatre space and I’m very fortunate that the theatre community really helped me figure things out about myself. I found acceptance and the possibility of pathways to a career in this business without compromising who I was or having to change aspects of myself or hide them.”
Lastly, what’s your favourite piece of LGBTQ+ culture, or a person who identifies as LGBTQ+; someone or something that’s had an impact on you and resonated with you?
“I mentioned BD Wong already, so I’ll continue with him. I did a play at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, which is where I first got my Equity card. Working there felt like a door opening for me to move to New York City to pursue theatre. BD happened to be doing a solo show at La Jolla at the same time and I asked if I could buy him coffee when I moved to New York and if he could give me any advice as a young Asian American queer actor moving to the city. BD did so much more than that.”
“Instead of going out on Saturday nights in New York, BD would always cook a big feast at home and have friends and family over. His son was still at home at the time too. He invited me into that space and him and his friends gave me my first winter coats and warm hand-me-down clothes that helped me to survive my first New York winters. He was literally feeding me and clothing me and sending me home with leftovers so that I wasn’t as starving an artist as when I first came here.”
“I was waiting tables on Union Square at the time at a now-closed restaurant called Republic and BD lived in the East Village somewhere. So I would wait tables and then walk over there for dinner. That was so above and beyond what I had expected. I thought I would have a coffee with this person and he would give me some advice, but he literally fed and clothed me. I hope to try to continue to pay that forward whenever I can because that was such a huge act of generosity which helped me to settle into the city and to meet friends and find community that I still have today. That was all because of La Jolla Playhouse and a chance encounter from working at the same theatre at the same time, meeting this very generous and kind human being and artist.”
By James Kleinmann
Outerlands is now available to buy or rent on Prime Video and other VOD platforms from Wolfe Video. Elsbeth airs on the CBS Television Network on Thursdays (10-11pm ET/PT) and streams on Paramount+. Follow Daniel K. Isaac on Instagram @danielkisaac and visit his official website.
Great interview James & brilliant photos