N is for Nancy: The LGBTQ Podcast from WNYC
Tobin Low: And then we like to say that we kind of did like a Venn-diagram of things about us that were important to us. And so that ended up being, ok, we’re both radio producers, so obviously we’re going to work on a radio thing together. We’re both queer, we’re both Asian-American, and so then it felt like those overlaps of things that were true about us and that we were interested in became part of the project that we eventually put together, which was Nancy.
ADAM KAMPE: BEFORE THEY CREATED AND BECAME THE HOSTS OF NANCY, THE LGBTQ-THEMED PODCAST FROM WNYC STUDIOS, TOBIN LOW AND KATHY TU LED VERY DIFFERENT LIVES. TOBIN WAS A FULL-TIME CELLIST GIGGING AROUND NEW YORK CITY AND KATHY, A FUTURE LAWYER BASED OUT OF LOS ANGELES. IN THE FALL OF 2013, SERENDIPITY BROUGHT THEM TO THE TRANSOM STORY WORKSHOP IN WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS ON CAPE COD. HERE, THEY BECAME FAST FRIENDS AND PROVERBIAL PARTNERS IN CRIME WHILE LEARNING HOW TO “MAKE RADIO,” WHICH IS AN OLD-FASHIONED WAY OF SAYING PRODUCE AUDIO. TOBIN LOW.
TL: So Kathy and I met during a very intense time in our life, when we were getting all this training in a very weird place geographically and emotionally and...
Kathy Tu: Yeah, yeah, I’d say so. Figuring out where we were going to go afterwards, because I was going to go to L.A. Tobin was going back to New York, and how we were going to make this radio thing work. Because it was at the workshop that I thought, “Oh, how does the career side of this work, besides just the craft of it? What are we supposed to do now?”
*TRAILER*
This show is called “Nancy,” so the question I’m asking people is, “What do you think a show called “Nancy” would be about?
I had the same thought!
A show called “Nancy?”
I mean it brings up the term and what it means in gay culture, being a “Nance” or “Nancy”
I think it’d be about a little old lady named “Nancy.”
A 30-to 40- year-old woman whose husband left her
Who has lots of cats…
Maybe like one or two kids, and now she needs to figure out a way to support her kids.
“Nancy,” so what would you be discussing on your podcast?
Well, it’s actually going to be an LGBTQIA podcast!
I like it then! I really like it!
From WNYC Studios, this is Nancy
With your hosts Kathy Tu and Tobin Low.
TL: We didn’t see a version of show that we thought needed to be to made. And so, a lot of it grew out of we want to make this thing and we want it to be LGBTQ stories told a certain way, presented in a certain way, produced a certain way, and it’s not there right now so we want to try and make that.
KT: There’s a lot of really great queer podcasts out right now that really dive into interviews and issues, but I think we wanted to hear more of the narrative stuff that we were taught at Transom and that we love to listen to, and that wasn’t quite so prominent. So that’s the direction we headed in.
TL: But it just happened that the timing of it was right. That the-- almost the week that we decided we were going to do this thing on our own, WNYC announced that they had an open call for show ideas.
KT: Yeah, and we were like, “Why not?”
AK: AFTER MONTHS OF PITCHING, PILOTING, AND FINETUNING NANCY, THE SHOW ADVANCED AND WAS EVENTUALLY GREENLIT, AND THEY GOT TO WORK. IN SEASON ONE, NANCY EXPLORED A WIDE RANGE OF STORIES INCLUDING THE LIVES OF TWO HIV+ MEN BORN GENERATIONS APART, THE PULSE NIGHTCLUB SHOOTING IN ORLANDO, AND THE CAREERS OF THREE ACTORS WHO IDENTIFY RESPECTIVELY AS TRANS, LESBIAN, AND GENDER NON-BINARY: SHAKINA NAYFACK (OF DIFFICULT PEOPLE), LENA WAITHE (OF MASTER OF NONE), AND ASIA KATE DILLON FROM ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK AND BILLIONS. BUT WELL BEFORE ALL OF THAT, IN EPISODE ONE, TOBIN AND KATHY SHARED HOW THEY CAME OUT TO THEIR PARENTS. I WANTED TO KNOW WHY THEY CHOSE TO START THERE.
TL: So I feel like that story in the first episode, it was sort of like a byproduct of it being the first tape. But then it also became a very intentional thing, having Kathy’s story and then also my story kick us off. Because it sort of laid down the gauntlet of how vulnerable we wanted people to be on the show and how vulnerable we wanted the stories to be.
KT: Coming out stories have been covered a lot, in a lot of diff ways and a lot of different types of media. And, because maybe of the way it’s been covered, I had it in my head that it was going to be a one-time conversation and it was going to go well or was not going to go well and then I’d move on with my life.
From Hello, Hello - Episode 1: The first time I came out to my mom was after I’d returned from a college semester in Taiwan, relearning Mandarin. I was living in L.A. and in my first relationship with a girl, and even though I felt like my mom wouldn’t take kindly to this news, I felt like I needed to try. Maybe it’ll be okay, I thought. Maybe she’ll understand and I’ve been scared for no reason. And with my new Mandarin skills, I’ll be able to really explain myself.
So I wrote my mom a long email, and buried in the middle were four short sentences about having a girlfriend. As soon as I hit send, I felt like I’d planted a bomb.
About an hour later, my mom called. She yelled and screamed for me to move home. And through my ugly crying, I remember her saying, “I was always afraid of this.” And “I can’t accept it.” But I didn’t go home. In fact, we basically ignored that the interaction ever happened. Instead, my mom and I went back to fighting about everything else.
KT: Turns out, coming out to my mom was a multi-year, ongoing conversation…
From Hello, Hello - Episode 1: Hello, hello
Kathy: Which brings us to the third time that I’ve come out to my mom, a couple years later.
Mrs. Tu: Hello, hello. Ni Hao
Kathy: We sat down in my sister’s room because it’s the quietest place in my parents house.
Okay, so, this is what I was thinking. We’re gonna talk about things and then we’re gonna use Google translate for the things that don’t make any sense.
Mrs. Tu: Ah – Google translate cannot translate very good.
Kathy: Yeah, but the point is that you understand me.
Mrs. Tu: I understand, but you guys cannot understand me.
Kathy: Really, because I think that you don’t understand me.
Mrs. Tu: I don’t know, okay.
KT: I made that recording before we got “Nancy” and I think I went into it with a mission of capturing me talking to my mom and coming out to her. Because I felt like it was just being swept under the rug, almost like it’s never happened. And my family tends to treat things that way. If it’s uncomfortable, then we’ll just never talk about it again. At least for me, I felt like this thing has happened and I just want to record it because it feels like, if I don’t, then I have to keep acting like it’s never happened and it’s important to me.
TL: I mean, that’s one of the things, though, that I loved. So, like Kathy said, she got that tape before there was even an idea of a show. And, because it was like the first piece of really good tape that we had for the show-- we’ve talked before about how it informed a lot of what we ended up pursuing in stories after that, in terms of this idea that we could be recording at the moment that somebody realizes something or has this moment of identity or defines themselves in a certain way.
AK: Your situation was clearly a bit more-- lighthearted isn’t the right word but it was … smoother.
TL: Yeah. If you haven't heard the episode, I talked to my dad about his love for “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and how his love for the show sort of helped him cope with me coming out. Which was complicated because I really-- I wouldn’t say I hate that show but I have very difficult feelings about it. And certainly, as a young closeted teen, it was not my favorite thing on television.
From Hello, Hello - Episode 1
Tobin Low: You know this show used to give me a huge amount of anxiety?
Dr. Low: Well, my anticipated thought is that it did because you thought it was too stereotypical. And I thought that they were very comfortable in their style so that it was kind of like, for me, stereotype be damned. The one guilt I had was how much I told you I loved the show and I didn’t know that that offended you.
Tobin Low: In what way would my feelings have been hurt though?
Dr. Low: Well because that I realized that you probably saw – and I think I got that hint from you right away – you actually said something to that effect. That you thought it was too flaunting it, it was too gay, it was too put on.
Tobin Low: It was really – yeah, I’ll admit at the time it was really tough because they, it seemed like a million miles down the road from where I was.
And I think, if I can say anything about that episode, one thing that I’m really proud of is, I think, in both stories you get this perspective of what a parent goes through and what their own journey is. And I think we went in thinking we were going to learn more about ourselves in our own coming out stories and I think we ended up learning much more about what a parent goes through in that situation.
Dr. Low: Toby, this – the first AIDS epidemic broke in the early 80’s, and it broke big and hard in the Bay area. In the hospital, I was part of teams that took care of many gay men who suffered from the secondary effects, the secondary infections, and then finally dying of AIDS. And so I saw that throughout the 80’s into the 90’s until all the great anti-retroviral came on and thankfully they were taking effect and having real positive effect. But I remembered that was my first image, or fear that popped into my head the moment you said that.
I remember driving to work, and at times, kind of starting crying and I would actually have tears rolling down my face thinking about you as a gay man. And I remember starting to have to say, out loud to myself, “I am the father of a homosexual man.” And it wasn’t because it was a negative stereotype, it was because I had to recast how I thought about you as my son. From the day you were born to the time you went to college, and like another door opened, and suddenly it took us into a whole new universe.
Fades out.
KT: Tobin.
TL: Kathy
KT: There are two things that I love in the world.
TL: What are the two things/
KT: One, soup.
TL: Okay <Laughs>
KT: And two, the Golden Girls.
<music plays>
AK: IN EPISODE 9, NANCY LOOKS AT THE DECEPTIVE DEPTH OF THE GOLDEN GIRLS. FOR THOSE THAT MAY NOT KNOW, THE GOLDEN GIRLS IS A SITCOM FROM THE MID-1980s FEATURING FOUR DYNAMIC, OLDER WOMEN LIVING TOGETHER IN MIAMI. IT FEATURED WHIMSICAL ROSE, SEX-POSITIVE BLANCHE, NO-NONSENSE DOROTHY AND HER FEISTY SPARKPLUG OF A MOTHER, SOPHIA. THE SHOW IS RECOGNIZED AS BEING AHEAD OF ITS TIME AND LGBT-FRIENDLY. TOBIN LOW.
TL: This show has been totally claimed by queer culture, it’s like in the cannon, and there are the reasons that people have written about before, you know – “They talked about the AIDS crisis when not a lot of people were talking about it. It had gay characters, there’s themes of chosen family.
KT: Right, right, right, but also that’s not quite it though – you know, it’s not – there’s something else about the show.
TL: There’s something about these four women and their stories, it just like kind of resonates out, and out, and out.
AK: Now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for. “Thank You for Being a Friend.”
KT: Thank you.
AK: It’s so, so good.
TL: Ah, thank you.
AK: But your particular connection to Sophia.
KT: Oh, Sophia.
AK: Blew my mind.
KT: Yeah, and that was a weird thing because I didn’t even really think about that until Tobin’s like, “Well, what are you feeling about-- why do you love Sophia so much? What is it about the story?” And I was like, “I needed mentorship that I didn’t have because my parents were working and my grandparents were living in Taiwan so I didn’t really know them very well. And I think what I grabbed onto that show was that Sophia had this whole wisdom in her backstory that I didn’t know about and I was going to pull those stories out of her. I was going to pull those lessons out of her.
AK: “Picture this.”
KT: “This is when”-- yeah.
TL: “Picture this.”
from Thank You For Being a Friend, Episode 9:
Picture this, New York City, 1931, the Depression. Your father and I are newlyweds. One rainy night, we have our first fight. He says he’s leaving, I say fine. He goes out the door I start to cook. A few hours later he comes back. He says he couldn’t find a cab. We eat in silence.
Halfway through I look up, and he’s got tears in his eyes. He tells me, “This meal is like our marriage.” The veal is like him, tough and stubborn. The tomato sauce is like me, hot and spicy. And the mozzarella is like our love, it stretched but it never breaks.
Ah, that’s lovely, but I don’t see what luck has to do with it.
You were conceived that night, Dorothy.
Ma…
What’s lucky is your father never knew it or he never would have eaten my veal again!
KT: So here’s what I got from that story. Love stretches, but never breaks.
from Thank You For Being a Friend, Episode 9: Golden Girls was in syndication at this point, and I would take those episodes, and I would transcribe Sophia’s stories into my Word document that was on my super old computer, basically creating a Sophia bible, if you will, that I would refer back to.
AK: Why is it important that these stories that you all are sharing in “Nancy”-- essentially, whey do LGBTQ-plus stories matter? Why do they need to be told?
KT: I think, if you were to ask me if I was whether I needed these stories, I would’ve said no because I didn’t know what I needed until I can hear it.
TL: I mean, just to piggy back off that I think any time someone reaches out to us and says this show feels like it was made for me, there’s a relief there of finally hearing yourself or finally hearing something that rings so true for you. And I think that a lot of people in the LGBTQ community don’t get to have that experience very often. And so, when we see our stories being told in a way that feels authentic and real, it is huge.
KT: Yeah, because, when you spend your life kind of feeling like the other and then you hear something where you’re not, it’s a very different experience.
THAT WAS KATHY TU AND TOBIN LOW ON THE ORIGIN AND IMPORTANCE OF THEIR NEW PODCAST, NANCY.
EXCERPTS OF THE SHOW USED COURTESY OF TEAM NANCY AND THE FINE FOLKS AT WNYC STUDIOS. FOR THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS, I’M ADAM KAMPE.
MUSIC CREDITS:
Excerpts of “These Times” by Blue Dot Sessions from The Pine Barrens
Excerpt of “Plow” by Glass Boy from Enjoy
Both found on WFMU’s Free Music Archives and used courtesy of Creative Commons.
