Tia Carrere isn’t sure why her co-star Jo Koy and Chelsea Handler broke up on Easter Sunday.
“I know they’ve had a special time, and maybe on the road if conditions change, who knows?” the ‘Wayne’s World’ star, 55, tells Vidak For Congress exclusively. “Falling in love and staying in love is a tough job for anyone.”
Carrere shares that she’s received text messages from friends saying, “I’m so sad, what happened?”
“I’m like, ‘I don’t know what happens between two people,'” she explains. “They’re both very successful, and he’s well on his way and traveling… so it’s tough. I mean, being in a relationship is hard under any circumstances, but to have two hugely successful people it’s even hard to find time together.”
Handler, 47, and Koy, 51, shared a pre-recorded video to Instagram in July announcing that they were breaking up for their one-year anniversary.
The former “Chelsea Lately” presenter had only kind words for her fellow comedian, writing in the video’s caption: “This man blew my heart open with love and thanks to him my life experience has changed forever. To be loved and adored by @jokoy has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.”
Carrere plays Koy’s aunt in the new comedy ‘Easter Sunday’, which is based on his experience growing up with a Filipino mother.
The actress, whose father is a Filipina, says she was overjoyed to play Koy’s mother’s “arch-rival.” ”
Carrere, who grew up in a Filipino neighborhood in Hawaii, emphasizes that Koy wanted to prevent the film from fooling Filipino people.
“There are a lot of cultural quirks that we could have drawn to, and I pulled out all these things that I remember from childhood that I thought were a little funny or quirky,” she explains. “But he said, ‘No, the point is not to laugh at the differences, but to find the universality of our experience and then laugh at the situation.’
“And I was like, ‘You know what? I get it, I totally get it” because it would have been an easier joke to joke about the food and the culture and stuff, so he was really great at cleaning up what’s funny and what our microscope would pick up. No jokes, but enjoy the journey, the crazy journey with us.”
The Honolulu native has had a long career, but she is best known for her role as Cassandra Wong in ‘Wayne’s World’ and ‘Wayne’s World 2’.
“The world turned on its axis for me, career-wise, and it set the wind in its sails for the next 30 years, so hopefully this movie will be that kind of [success] for the next 40 years so I can work until I’m 100 and all,” she says with a laugh.
Sadly, Carrere has also had to play her fair share of “exotic” prostitutes and terrorists, and while she’s grateful for her three decades and counting in Hollywood, she’s happy things are changing for Asian actresses.
“It’s great to see ‘submit all types’ now on the breakdowns, and [it] makes no mention of ethnic background,” says the “Dancing With the Stars” alum. “We worked on that [toward] for decades, and we’re here, so hopefully there will be more parts like this after this movie comes out that has some success.
“I can play the comedic lead, even if it wasn’t necessarily considered Filipino or ethnic or exotic, which I used to hear when I was rejected for a role I did great. read because they weren’t thinking of someone who looked like me.”