Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Everything’s Gonna Be Okay’s Adam Faison

2020 is in full swing, and actor Adam Faison has emerged as one of the year’s breakout stars. Currently, he can be seen in Freeform’s laugh-out-loud comedy Everything’s Gonna Be Okay. Created by Josh Thomas, the series follows Nicholas (played by Thomas), a gay, antipodean entomologist who assumes guardianship over his two half-sisters after their father passes away from cancer.

Adam delivers a commanding performance as Alex, a twenty-something dental student who starts dating Nicholas and becomes part of the family. Pop Culturalist caught up with Adam to chat about Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, representation in Hollywood, and bringing his authentic self to the character.

Career

PC: How did you discover your passion for acting?
Adam: I discovered my passion for acting when I was five years old. Growing up, I had a lot of energy. I was always running around singing and trying to do the splits. [laughs] I saw my brother in a production of Hansel and Gretel, and my mom asked if I wanted to try out for the next play/musical, and I said, “Yes!” I tried out for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and I was cast as the Black Sheep. I was so excited about it. That was my first taste of acting and stage work.

From there, I continued doing community theatre. I was acting in the Jewish Community Center down in La Jolla. They were really supportive. The area that I grew up in was a little more conservative, so I dealt with this weird bullying situation. The Jewish Community Center was always open and encouraging. So I did a lot of theatre there.

I kept doing theatre and then eventually auditioned for some professional theatre. Then I did a play with the Old Globe, which is a professional theatre. I did a play called How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s actually where Vanessa Hudgens got her start, so that’s cool. The Old Globe is like a professional bootcamp. I got to work with Jack O’Brien, who directed Hairspray. It was a really formative experience for me.

I stopped for a while due to some bullying. Looking back, I feel dumb for not continuing with it. But I eventually picked it back up during college. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was that first seed though.

PC: What has that transition been like going from theater to film and television?
Adam: Great question! For theatre, it always felt a bit more broad, especially because it was mostly musical theatre. For the most part, I felt like it was akin to who I was as a child at that point in time. I had so much energy, and I was always looking for an outlet. It was around high school when I started to become a little more reserved because you learn to adapt to your environment. At the time, I was getting bullied, so I thought I should change into who I thought people wanted me to be. In a way, I became more of a recluse. I remember my family friend Michelle told me that during that time, she felt like the light in me had gone down. I was really sad during that time. But I think as a result, it started to drive me more towards theatre and plays because I found that they could get a little deeper because they weren’t serving the musical aspect.

It was a formative experience to read plays like The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh and Homecoming by Harold Pinter. I found these characters who were deeply wounded, and I found this kinship with them. It felt like a natural progression to go into that mode/genre. I started doing that and more theatre in college. Concurrently, I was interning at NBC Universal. I was trying to figure out if I wanted to go more behind the scenes. But ultimately, I still wanted to perform. It’s something that I’ve always loved and found a home in. I ended up auditioning for plays, TV, and film. I ended up booking a commercial for CNN called “California Tech.” I was this millennial, and I’m sitting on the porch talking about apps. It aired ad nauseam during the 2016 election, which was bittersweet for obvious reasons. [laughs]

That was what catapulted it all. An agent had seen it, and he wanted to rep me for TV and film. I started getting appointments. Liberty Crossing came first, and it was a snowball effect after that.

Everything’s Gonna Be Okay

PC: Tell us about Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, your character, and what drew you to this project.
Adam: Everything’s Gonna Be Okay is about a boy named Nicholas. He’s twenty-five. His dad passes away from cancer. He then assumes guardianship of his two sisters, one of whom has autism, and the other is going through puberty.

My character, Alex, comes in. They’ve been on three dates, and things hit the fan with their dad. He reveals he has this cancer that he’s probably not going to make it through. I’m caught in the middle in this awkward position. Do I leave? Do I stay?

I was drawn to this project because I had seen Josh Thomas’ show Please Like Me. He has a great way of toeing the line between tragic and comedic, which I don’t think many writers do. Fleabag is one that comes to mind in recent memory. I knew Josh was going to do the queer storyline very realistically. In entertainment, we tend to have a lot of people trying to cover diversity but not really being diverse voices themselves. As a result, we get these stock characters. Also, queer people might cover themselves, but they feel heavy-handed and disconnected, trying to be woke. And as a result, they end up not being.

What’s amazing about Josh is he has us being human. We’re not trying to blanketly represent every gay relationship. We are just humans living life who happen to be gay. He didn’t want to make a huge thing about it. We’re gay, and we don’t need to constantly explain that to the audience. We open with that scene of us making out on our first date, and it is what it is! I want to normalize this. If we keep drawing attention to how “groundbreaking” this is, then it becomes as a result not groundbreaking and turns people off. Josh has a great way of depicting marginalized people, autism included.

PC: That’s the perfect segue. The series does a great job representing people who often don’t see themselves represented on screen. For you as an actor, does that bring a different weight/pressure to a project like this?
Adam: Yeah! It’s so funny. In college, we learned about the burden of representation, which is the idea that if you’re the first of something or one of the few in your community that’s visible, there’s this idea that you have to represent everyone in that community, otherwise you’ll let them down. Realistically, that’s just not something you can do. I think you can be a role model and tell your individual story.

Going into this, Josh was very big about the fact that we can’t tell everybody’s story, but we can tell this specific story. Hopefully, people will find a connection in it. I think what’s really great is that we’re not representing every interracial couple. This is our story. We’re dealing with life the best way we know.

PC: You’ve said in previous interviews that in many ways your character is the glue that’s holding this quasi-family together. What has your character taught you?
Adam: Great quote there! I feel like he’s taught me to be myself. Josh is very big about being honest to your truth and who you are as a human. A note that Josh gave us was, “Just be you. I don’t need you to try and be something you’re not. I know you’re an actor and you’re going to want to try and do that, but don’t.” He was really big on us being ourselves. It’s weird, right? As actors, we’re always ready at the drop of a hat to try all these different variations in our performances. But at the end of the day, he didn’t want that. He wanted us to bring our authentic self to this. He wanted us to embrace our quirks.

PC: What part about Alex’s relationship with Nicholas has been your favorite to explore and why?
Adam: This is going to sound crazy, but I enjoy the fights. As a person, I tend to shy away from that. I’ve been in epic fights before, and living through that feeling isn’t always fun. But I found something positive in those fights. It inspired me to be like, “These problems aren’t insurmountable. We can get into the mud about these really small things.” With Nicholas, it’s all this minuscule. It’s a little thing that turns into a big thing. It was inspiring for me to see that these two characters were able to find a way to get over these problems and fight through them and talk about them. Being a queer person, I feel like we tend to shy away from relationships. A lot of the times, it feels like a transactional community with apps like Grindr. It feels very fleeting. I don’t know if it’s because a lot of us have gone through trauma, and maybe a lot of us are scared about going into that dark place again, but in a weird way, it inspired me in real life to not be afraid to have those conversations.

Pop Culturalist Speed Round

PC: Guilty pleasure TV show?
Adam: 90 Day Fiancé

PC: Guilty pleasure movie?
Adam: Big Fat Liar

PC: Favorite book?
Adam: Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

PC: Favorite play or musical?
Adam: Evita

PC: Who would play you in the story of your life?
Adam: Ramy Youssef or Rami Malek

To keep up with Adam, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Catch Everything’s Gonna Be Okay every Thursday at 8/7c on Freeform.

Photo Credit: Brett Erickson