The Boys of Dicks: The Musical Have Some Jokes for Bowen Yang

When asked about their bad habits, Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp responded with a laundry list of guilty pleasures. “Sexual addiction,” said Sharp. “Addiction is not a habit,” replied Jackson. Together, the pair cut their teeth in New York City sketch comedy clubs like Upright Citizens Brigade before graduating to the big screen. The co-writers and co-stars believe there’s always a new joke to be found, bouncing punch lines off one another to create an explosion of the weirdly crass and ridiculously funny. The latest manifestation of their comic sensibilities is Dicks: The Musical, a wonderfully trashy, tongue-in-cheek (and other places) adaptation of their off-Brodway musical Fucking Identical Twins, telling the story of siblings that reunite and try to reconcile their separated parents, like a foul-mouthed version of The Parent Trap. There are cameos from Megan Thee Stallion, as a girlboss CEO type, and gay dad Nathan Lane, along with Bowen Yang, who features as god himself. So, after a long day of press interviews, the almighty Yang put the co-directors on the hot seat, asking them about their dirty laundry, stalking habits, and favorite body parts. –EMMA SCHARTZ

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BOWEN YANG: Hi Josh. Hi Aaron.

AARON JACKSON: Hi Bowen Yang.

JOSH SHARP: So lovely to meet you, Bowen Yang of Saturday Night Live.

YANG: Lovely to meet you too. You’re both younger than me.

JACKSON: We’re both young girls.

SHARP: From Kentucky.

YANG: Well, I’m going to be asking you some adult questions. And I think these are actually very good questions, which is to say that there’s a nice through-line. This first one is, I think, the thing that sets the tone. Okay?

JACKSON: What do you look like naked?

YANG: No, but close. Do you get shy on camera?

JACKSON: I actually don’t get shy.

SHARP: I think some of it is I recognize what a stupid job it is so you just have to own that and be like, “This is silly.” 

JACKSON: I get shy in real life, but performing and on camera, I don’t find myself very shy.

SHARP: People make it out like acting is glamorous and you are furniture. Most of it is just having to stand a certain way and hold your weight a certain way and cock your head a certain way. And then remember to say the joke in the funny manner.

YANG: Exactly. Well, that answers my first question. Second question. This is a meta one. I’m asking you this at the twilight end of a long day of press. Do you like answering questions?

SHARP: To pull the veil back for the reader of Interview, we’re at the end of a junket day where we did like 45 six-minute interviews with a bunch of websites and WKLB Chicago.

JACKSON: And print.

SHARP: And print. And they are asking a lot of the same questions over and over again. But I did recognize how much more fun it is to do with this group of doves.

JACKSON: Bowen Yang. Larry Charles.

SHARP: Even when we’re saying the same answers, we are riffing on it in new ways. There was always a new joke to find.

JACKSON: Always a new joke to find because you are being hit with the soft poultice of the same questions.

YANG: Soft poultice of the same questions. That’s poetry.

SHARP: Which is what screenwriting is. You get a note and you go, “Well, how do I turn this into a joke?”

YANG: Wow.

JACKSON: I think I like asking questions more than answering questions.

YANG: Me too.

JACKSON: It’s fun to learn about someone, and what little freak am I talking to right now?

SHARP: It was very hard to not turn it on people.

YANG: Do you like talking about yourself?

JACKSON: Not really.

YANG: Me neither.

SHARP: You like making your friends laugh. You like when you find a bit.

YANG: But that’s not like, “This is where I grew up.” What are you wearing right now?

JACKSON: Well, we are slowly derobing from our press looks, but I’m wearing pin stripe pants with a Utah Jazz pink tank top.

YANG: Very chic.

SHARP: We all just shared the same stylist for this.

YANG: Michael Fisher.

JACKSON: Michael Fisher’s lovely.

SHARP: And soon we’ll get into our red carpet looks, which are going to give faggot dumb and dumber.  Let it be known now in Interview Magazine that that was the task we gave Michael. 

YANG: How often do you change your sheets?

SHARP: Every one to two weeks.

JACKSON: I’m on a similar path. It’s hard to do every week. In New York, it’s hard. 

SHARP: I’ll say, as someone who’s often been unemployed, laundry really gives you half a day’s worth.

JACKSON: What’s really revolutionized my life recently… I used to be anti-top sheet. 

YANG: Interesting. An only-comforter?

JACKSON: Only comforter. And then I read an article about how disgusting that is.

SHARP: Oh, right. Because you don’t wash the comforter very frequently.

JACKSON: Right. But the top sheet is there to protect you.

SHARP: I run very hot. So, I love a top sheet because I take the comforter down and use only the thin layer.

YANG: Let’s move on. What are your bad habits?

JACKSON: Interrupting.

SHARP: I have very little cartilage in my nose, and I just press my nose down a lot.

YANG: Oh, really? I didn’t know you had very little cartilage because you have such a strong nose.

SHARP: But it’s actually really fun to press down, and I’ll just do it while I’m watching TV, and then I’ll break out all over my nose because I’ve been rubbing it. That’s a weird little baby habit. I have worse ones, I’m sure.

YANG: Sure.

SHARP: Sexual addiction. I’m terrible.

YANG: Don’t stigmatize that.

JACKSON: A sex addiction is addiction, and addiction is not a habit.

SHARP: I still have a lot of trouble not biting my nails.

YANG: I do that a lot.

SHARP: I’ve never been able to break that habit.

JACKSON: I don’t lift the seat up always, but I live alone.

SHARP: Yeah. Things that are bad habits are not when you’re living alone.

YANG: Where do you want a reservation at?

JACKSON: I want a reservation as one of Beyonce’s dancers.

SHARP: I want to be indigenous to reclaim all their land.

YANG: Very good answers. How is your relationship with your family? 

SHARP: Mine is really good.

JACKSON: Yeah, mine is good too.

YANG: Very good.

SHARP: After we did our midnight screening in Toronto, at the Q&A, someone was like, “How will you ever face your families after this?” And I was able to be like, “My dad is here.” So yeah, my parents are chill.

YANG: I think there’s an assumption that every family member is pearl-clutchy.

JACKSON: Not all families are like that.

SHARP: And at the end of the day, as pearl-clutchy as you are, they’re just happy we have health insurance.

YANG: What do you like to eat?

SHARP: I have a very eclectic palette. I love all the foods of the world. I love ramen.

JACKSON: Yes.

SHARP: I love, ever since I was a little boy, dipping a vanilla wafer into peanut butter, and then putting it upside down on my tongue, and then taking a sip of milk. It’s a thing I’ve done since I was in third grade, and I still once a week probably do it.

JACKSON: I love goldfish crackers, and I love to smash three against the roof of my mouth, and then swallow them.

YANG: You can probably stick more than three up there now with that big a mouth.

SHARP: What do you like to eat, Bo?

YANG: Fruit by the foot.

JACKSON: That’s a great texture.

YANG: When you were on Fire Island, you bought gushers and that was divine. That texture.

SHARP: I hadn’t had a gusher in a while.

YANG: It is the most processed food can possibly be.

JACKSON: But sometimes that’s joy.

YANG: How much money do you spend on takeout?

SHARP: A lot.

JACKSON: A lot.

SHARP: Because I live alone and don’t derive much pleasure from cooking. So, there’s a few things I can make. I’ll make breakfast and lunches and easy stuff, but often for dinner I’m eating out, or I’m doing takeout.

JACKSON: I’m legally wed, and to who I’m legally wed to is an amazing cook. So, he cooks a lot. I’d say for the average New Yorker, I do takeout less. However, in the summer it’s too hot in the damn apartment, and  we eat out almost every meal other than breakfast, which of course you eat at home. Throw a banana down your gullet, pig.

YANG: Next question. How often do you floss?

SHARP: Every day.

JACKSON: Yeah, I’m good at that. I’ll do that every day.

SHARP: I can’t graduate from the picks. And the picks are an amazing invention.

JACKSON: Oh, yeah.

SHARP: But a horrible—

YANG: Eco flop.

SHARP: Eco flop.

YANG: That’s not an eco king move. That’s an eco flop. What’s your favorite body part, I guess, on another person? 

SHARP: I mean, it’s very person-specific.

JACKSON: Yeah, absolutely.

SHARP: Someone’s nose is great. Someone’s arms are great. I don’t know.

JACKSON: I always like a nice arm. Eyes are beautiful.

SHARP: Something about the waist is alluring.

YANG: What do you do when you can’t sleep?

JACKSON: Oh, this is a question for Josh. I sleep very well.

SHARP: Yeah, it depends. Often I’m just like, “Put your phone in the other room.”

JACKSON: Yeah. That helps.

SHARP: I do now finally have a clonazepam subscription. So, if it’s really bad I’ll take one of those once a month.

JACKSON: This is what usually helps me. You put your head where your feet usually are. You just turn around on the bed.

SHARP: Wow.

JACKSON: The reorienting of that makes you sleep.

SHARP: A friend who worked at Calm gave me a free three month of those sleep stories, and they did really work.

JACKSON: They’re good.

SHARP: Have you ever done those?

YANG: I’ve heard about them. I love a rain sound or waves, but the stories I’ve never done.

SHARP: The thing about the story is they’re often just describing a train journey. They’re like, “And then I sat down in the seat.” And then as it goes along they just speak slower, and it paces down in this weird way. 

JACKSON: We went to the spa recently and we all slept like children.

SHARP: And I went to Wi Spa in L.A. just two days ago, and I slept like a baby that night.

YANG: There you go.

JACKSON: Spas are great.

SHARP: I wish I had a steam room in my house. I do sometimes go take a shower too. You get the steam, the heat, and you reset.

JACKSON: You are, in fact, relaxed.

SHARP: Right. Sometimes you got to get out of bed and then remind your body, “Time to get into bed.”

YANG: Uh-huh. I think we really gave a lot of solutions.

SHARP: That one we really got into.

JACKSON: Call us calm.

YANG: Who do you tell your secrets to?

JACKSON: My therapist.

SHARP: Hey, same.

YANG: Where do you go to hide?

JACKSON: You can’t in New York.

SHARP: I was going to say my apartment. Especially now that I live alone, I find it has become much more of an introverted time for me that I didn’t know I needed until I got that.

JACKSON: I go to my imagination. 

SHARP: I go to Walt Disney World of course, and only on peak weeks. I love standing in line.

YANG: What do you tell yourself when no one else can hear?

JACKSON: This is really intimate.

SHARP: Damn, baby, you fine.

YANG: What did you watch last night?

SHARP: Seinfeld before I went to bed in the hotel room.

JACKSON: I read Jo Firestone’s book, Murder on Sex Island. And it jumps off the page. So, it did feel like I was watching something. Please check it out. From Jo Firestone.

SHARP: Her output is amazing.

YANG: I watched an episode of Seinfeld recently. The low talker episode. Classic. I think Larry Charles might have directed it.

JACKSON: Larry Charles, our daddy.

JOSH SHARP: Our father, who’s directed Dicks: The Musical.

YANG: Okay. Who do you stalk?

SHARP: I don’t know that I do stalk. I guess we all have slight parasocial internet relationships, but I don’t have any that are serious.

JACKSON: Parasocial internet relationships.

SHARP: The thing where it’s like, “I know you more than you know me.”

JACKSON: Yes, of course. I’d say sometimes I stalk my friends for fun.

SHARP: We’re going to do this interview again without lawyers, right? Because then I’ll have a different answer.

YANG: Okay, a couple more. What movie do you know by heart?

JACKSON: It’s probably one I watched a bunch as a kid. I watched The Princess Bride a million times. A lot of the Disney movies.

SHARP: Dicks: The Musical, of course.

JACKSON: Waiting for Guffman.

SHARP: Oh, Waiting for Guffman I am off-book on.

JACKSON: Clue, I used to be pretty off-book.

YANG: I’ll say The Sound of Music.

SHARP: Wow.

JACKSON: Wow. That’s good. And that ain’t a short one.

YANG: What’s the best movie theater?

SHARP: We’re weirdly suckers for the AMC Lincoln Square. We’ve seen a lot of great stuff there.

JACKSON: And I love Metrograph. Angelika’s really cute.

YANG: Any theater that will play Dicks: The Musical.