Nico Santos Quotes

We all need to call upon our lawmakers to create a path to citizenship for hard-working, law-abiding undocumented people and their families.

I don’t cook as often as I would like.

I was in the closet up until I moved to the U.S. But I was always one of those kids who couldn’t really hide being gay. Some queer kids are just more straight-passing than others. I was not one of those kids.

I should have been born a crazy rich Asian because I do have expensive taste. I have champagne taste but I’m on a beer budget.

My brother joined the Army. He served multiple tours in Iraq and now lives in Texas with his family.

I want to show people out there that there’s such a huge spectrum of people within the queer and Asian community.

I’m from the Philippines and I moved to this country when I was 16.

It still baffles my brain that I actually get to portray a character on American television that’s this gay, femme-y Filipino guy.

Superstore’ is, like, my fifth acting job.

Shows like ‘Superstore’ and certainly ‘Pose’ are leading the way and showing queer people of color in a much more complex, nuanced light that we’ve never seen.

I often get asked which ‘Superstore’ episode is my favorite. That’s such a hard question to answer. It’s like being asked: Which of your children (and by children, I mean shoes) do you like best?

It’s really mind-boggling to me when I think about where I started and where I am now. It’s kind of insane.

My brownness is something that I can’t hide. There are some straight-acting or straight-passing queer people out there, but I’m not one of them. This is something I would rather not have to hide.

What I’ve come to find out is it doesn’t matter if you’re selling a $10,000 gown or toilet paper: The everyday sort of humdrum of customer service and retail is the same.

I hate that femininity in a gay men is a ‘stereotype.’

I like making adobo, because it’s easy and it keeps in the fridge for a while. Or I’ll make pasta with bolognese – something I can make a big batch of and can keep eating for the rest of the week.

I came out to one or two people in high school and then it wasn’t until I was a freshman in college that I was fully out of the closet. It was like the late ’90s.

Ellen DeGeneres is a huge influence in my life. She’s one of the reasons why I wanted to do stand-up comedy. I was a big fan of her stand-up before she even came out of the closet.

I’m portraying out characters, I’m portraying femme characters, characters that are really outside of the box. I never thought I would get that opportunity to portray those characters at all, much less have a career that I have.

My mom is definitely crazy. She would totally be a stage mom if I was a child actor.

When I moved to L.A., I had no intention of really pursuing acting. I wanted to focus on stand-up. It’s crazy to me that my acting career took off much faster than my stand-up career.

I always thought that when I got into this business that I was going to have to downplay my Asianness and downplay my queerness, which is not an easy thing for me to do.

Never in a million years would I have imagined that this is how my life would have ended up. I just thought I would be living in the States, doing a regular job.

I’ve done retail before.

I never thought in a million years I’d be involved in a project that celebrated the fullness of my identity of being queer and Asian.

My family always believed in me, even when I didn’t. Having that love and support made me not afraid of failing. I knew my mom would be proud of me just for taking a chance and pursuing my dream.

Generally I try to be as healthy as possible, but it’s hard to be on set because anything and everything is available to you. I’m healthy half the time, and half the time I’m like, ‘Sure let me go back and see whatever snack they have laid out.’

The best comedy is based on truth.

The fact that I’m able to portray these complex, fully realized, queer Asian characters? I never thought it would be in this position. You just never see those types of characters and that type of representation.

The fact that I get to play a queer Filipino on television and another queer character in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is huge. I never thought I’d have a career being myself. I always thought that being an actor in Hollywood meant that I would have to put that side of me on the back burner.

It wasn’t until I worked on ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ that I all of a sudden have this Asian crew of friends that I became super close with.

I thought my high school would either be like ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ or ‘Stand and Deliver’ – it was just a run-of-the-mill high school.

I don’t think people should be afraid of portraying people with accents, especially Asian accents.

Within the Filipino community, everybody knows somebody who’s undocumented.

My dad was undocumented for a period of time, my mom was also undocumented for a period of time.

I’m so Filipino. I’m fluent in Filipino.

I come from Oregon, which is this super-white state, so I didn’t really have a lot of Asian friends in high school and college. And my background’s in comedy, and your friends are just your peers in comedy, which is a whole mix of people.

In the early ’80s, my family vacationed to the United States.

People with accents exist and just because they have an accent doesn’t mean they’re less intelligent or what-have-you.

I never thought an opportunity like ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ would ever come my way.

I love my mom! She’s just great and so happy for me that I’m living my dream.

I did stand-up comedy for a long time in San Francisco, and then I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to move to Los Angeles and try and make it!’

I didn’t want to do Chekhov or Shakespeare. So I switched my major from acting to costume design. Eventually, I got a job working as a wardrobe assistant for a theater company. I would dress the actors, fix their costumes, do the quick changes for them and all that stuff.

When I worked at Dior, Paris Hilton and Kathy Hilton came one time and they were kind of crazy.

The fact that I am a Filipino actor playing a Filipino role is crazy. Filipinos are the second largest Asian minority in the United States, and we’re hardly represented in the media and on television.

I grew up in the Philippines and we had all this amazing fresh seafood, but uni was something that I was weirded out by. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I was like, ‘Let me just go ahead and try this.’

I had a rough start when I moved to L.A. I couldn’t find a job, so I couch-surfed for the first two years.

It’s really great to see the queer landscape really change to include everybody and make the rest of the world understand that we’re not just one or two things. There’s so much about the queer community that needs to be represented.