(from left) Tito Manny (Joey Guila), Regina (Elena Juatco), Eugene (Eugene Cordero), Joe Valencia (Jo Koy), Tita Teresa (Tia Carrere), Tita Yvonne (Melody Butiu) and Susan (Lydia Gaston) in Easter Sunday, directed by Jay Chandrasekhar.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Growing up in a Filipino American family, I always knew we were funny. But I never knew if America would think we were funny. It’s a feeling comedian Jo Koy can relate to.

“There was no representation,” he said during a recent interview with cleveland.com. “And even if you tried to represent, they wouldn’t let you. Every time I would go up on stage or an audition, my note was, ‘Oh, you’re too specific. No one’s going to get it.”

But after more than 30 years in show business, people are finally getting it. Koy is proving on a nightly basis that, yeah, we’re funny. He’s become one of the most popular touring comedians in the world, regularly selling out venues from New York to Los Angeles and Dubai to Manila. His hilarious stories detailing the singular yet universally relatable experience of growing up in a Filipino household have filled three Netflix specials with a fourth due by the end of the year.

His hot streak continues this weekend with the release of the comedy “Easter Sunday,” his first lead role in a feature film.

• Review: Jo Koy’s ‘Easter Sunday’ is a funny, heartwarming and overdue homage to Filipino American culture

“It was always hard for me to get this story across, but you just keep doing it and finally you land a special and then someone like Steven Spielberg is like, ‘Oh, I love that story. Hilarious! Let’s do something with that,’” Koy said, name-dropping the legendary director whose Amblin Entertainment financed the film. “If Steven thinks it’s funny then you know that the world will get it, too.”

Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar (“Super Troopers”), the film is based on Koy’s life experiences. He plays Joe Valencia, a comedian, aspiring TV actor and single dad in Los Angeles who takes his teenage son upstate to visit his family for Easter Sunday, “the Super Bowl of holidays” in Filipino culture. While there have been a few Filipino American films before including “The Debut” in 2000 and “The Fabulous Filipino Brothers” in 2021, “Easter Sunday” is the first film ever released by a major Hollywood studio to feature an all-Filipino cast.

(from left) Susan (Lydia Gaston) and Joe Valencia (Jo Koy) in Easter Sunday, directed by Jay Chandrasekhar.

“This means a lot to me because I’ve also been plugging away in New York City for decades, pounding the pavement, going from one show to the next,” said Lydia Gaston, who plays Joe’s mom, Susan. The actress has a long list of credits that include “The King and I” on Broadway and “The Sopranos” on television but considers “Easter Sunday” her big break.

“My friends are very excited to see them themselves represented on the screen, especially from the mother angle. It’s very important,” she said.

Koy also recognized the importance of making sure the movie would be released in theaters and not premiere on a streaming service.

“I love Netflix,” he told NBC News. “But I felt like if it’d been on Netflix, it wouldn’t do it any justice.”

He added, “I wasn’t gonna have it any other way. Because if it’s not this [film], then how much longer are we going to wait?”

Representation is important because it breeds aspiration, self-esteem and validation. It’s difficult to imagine yourself becoming a standup comedian or an actress when there’s nobody that looks like you or shares your life experience to look up to.

“Hollywood wasn’t being specific for anybody (when we were coming up),” Koy said. “They weren’t giving opportunities for other ethnicities out there. So, Lydia and I had to go and find our inspiration through other actors to motivate us.”

“My first love was dance and then musical theater,” Gaston said. “I would watch ‘West Side Story’ all the time and listen to the music. So, it was the Latino actresses that I looked up to because there was a lot of similarity between Filipinos and Puerto Ricans.”

Koy counts Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy among his biggest influences.

“When I heard those stories about Aunt Bunny and Uncle Gus and the mom throwing the slipper, I felt like that was my voice even though they were Black comics,” he said. “I was relating to those stories mainly because there were no Filipino comics out there telling their story.”

A couple of Filipino actors started to break down some doors starting in the late 1980s. Tia Carrere made her debut as Jade on the ABC soap opera “General Hospital” in 1985 and Lou Diamond Phillips starred as Ritchie Valens on the big screen in “La Bamba” in 1987. Neither played a Filipino character, but we knew. We knew.

“Tia will tell you when she auditioned for ‘Wayne’s World’ (which came out in 1992), the character description was ‘Asian girl with thick accent,’” Koy said. “They didn’t care what accent you did.”

Koy also recalled Phillips telling him about the heat he received from both the Filipino and Latino communities about his portrayal of Valens. Latinos were upset because an Asian American was playing this icon of Chicano rock music and Filipinos couldn’t figure out why Phillips, who also appeared in two “Young Guns” movies around the same time, kept being cast as Mexican-American characters.

“They didn’t understand Hollywood doesn’t care if you’re not Latino or that it upsets anybody. (They’re like) just play it,” he said.

So, when it came time to assemble his dream cast for “Easter Sunday,” Koy knew he had to honor the path forged by Carrere and Phillips by including them both in the film. She plays Joe’s aunt, Tita Teresa, and he plays, well, Lou Diamond Phillips.

“Thank God we got to do a movie like this together and finally play something where the character description is just ‘Filipino,’” Koy said. “But we can’t let that door close. We got to keep that thing open and just keep making more like this.”

Knowing how much the film could mean to the 4.2 million Filipinos in the United States, Koy, along with screenwriters Ken Cheng and Kate Angelo, took great care in paying attention to the details and made sure the film presented an authentic portrayal of Filipino culture. You’ll see foods like Lumpia and Pancit on the dining room table, a Santo Niño statue on the mantle, and, of course, a karaoke machine in the living room. Joe’s Titos and Titas speak fluent Tagalish (a mix of Tagalog and English), and Joe’s cousin Eugene (Eugene Cordero) refers to him as “Kuya,” a term of respect used to address an older male relative. One character even uses Halo-Halo (a delicious multi-layered dessert which translated means “mix-mix”) as a metaphor.

For non-Filipinos in the audience, representation can help break down perceived differences and barriers by fostering understanding and overcoming stereotypes. In one scene, the family packs a Balikbayan box -- essentially a care package filled with snacks, sweets, medicine and other necessities -- to send to family members back home in the Philippines.

“It was just so real to life that when we said ‘cut,’ I started tearing up,” Koy said. “With this movie, now people who aren’t Filipino get to see that part of our culture and understand and appreciate that it’s more than just moving to this country to get the opportunity. It’s also to provide for others that weren’t able to get here.”

If “Easter Sunday” sounds specific that’s because it is. That’s the point. But that doesn’t make it less relatable to anybody who buys a ticket. Joe’s guilt-tripping, passive-aggressive but loving mother and his strained relationship with his son are things many of us can relate to. Everybody has quirky relatives. Sure, your family’s holiday party might not devolve into a screwball comedy involving a bad guy straight out of central casting, a pair of stolen Manny Pacquiao boxing gloves and a “Fast and the Furious”-style chase, but, remember, this is still a major studio summer release.

“The script is really great,” Gaston said. “I worked on it with my acting coach who’s not Filipino... and he was laughing the whole time.”

“It doesn’t matter that we’re Filipino. A family’s a family, my mom’s a mom, my son’s a son,” Koy added. “You’re going to get it.”

“Easter Sunday” is rated PG-13 and playing in theaters now.

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